Well, I had a day off from all news stories yesterday, choosing instead to enjoy the festivities with my family and to play around with my new Kindle. Today I woke up very relaxed, turned on my PC, checked the stories on the Daily Telegraph and immediately my blood pressure hit the roof - back to business as usual here at the Anglo-American Debate then!Today's story is not a complete surprise, and is from an unnamed source (and so needs to be taken with a pinch of salt) but it does show how the end of the Conservative Party in Great Britain as we know it is a very real possibility, and true conservatives who want their party to represent real conservative values as opposed to some fuzzy liberal-left consensus should be very worried indeed!
In short, the story (found here) from the Daily Telegraph, reveals that a "senior Conservative minister" has backed proposals to field "coalition" candidates at the next election. To clarify, this would mean that the Tories and the Lib Dems would get together and decide upon a candidate that they could both agree upon to run under the banner of "Coalition candidate."
Of course this is absolutely ideal for the left-wing of the Tory Party (a scandal that such a thing even exists) who can select the most left-wing candidate that they like, a candidate who has as much to do with conservatism as I do with the Trotskyites, and then when questioned on it can turn around and say "Oh, well we needed to in order to satiate the Liberal Democrats." It gives them the perfect excuse to make a permanent coalition with the Liberal Democrats (after all, which party would the coalition candidates actually belong to?), meaning that they could drag the Tories away from the Right, and into the arms of a centre-left coalition with the Lib-Dems.
I can see exactly what a "Coalition" candidate would be - some trendy Cameroon trained in media relations and spin who would stand for "fairness", "equality" and "a new way of doing politics in the 21st Century." Great...
Such a decision would be a disaster for the right-wing of the Tory Party, of which I am a part, and needs to be prevented at all costs. The Party is already too far left as it is, and to unite with the Lib Dems would mean little more than a complete rejection of all conservative principles in order to solidify power in the short term. But voters are not stupid, they would be able to see this for what it is. They would know that the Conservatives would no longer stand for anything. It isn't "compromise" or "dialogue" or any of the other fuzzy words that weirdo like Ken Clarke (who I would propose is the "senior Tory Minister" that has approved this) - instead it is a cynical ploy for power, and proves once and for all that the present Tory Party is just a party that will say anything in order to achieve short term power.
This is not what voters want, and will turn people off politics, and will throw them into the arms of Labour on one hand, or UKIP on the other. While I have no inherent problem with UKIP, I do not believe in splitting the right-wing vote. In order to win, the right-wing need to unite under one party, ideally the Tories. But making a permanent principle-less coalition with the Lib Dems will force many of the right-wing of the party out, and will force a split. While in the long term this may lead to the establishment of UKIP as a major political force (it would certainly be where I would begin to drift) in the short term it would be an absolute disaster. The left-wing of the Liberal Democrats are already beginning to migrate to the swelling ranks of the Labour Party, the right of the Tories would drift to UKIP, and it would leave a starved Coalition and hand the next election (whenever that may be) to Labour.Ed Miliband cannot win an election on his own, but if this tasteless coalition continues, then the Tories could very easily lose it, and Miliband may find himself handed the next election by a Tory Party determined to abandon its principles and self destruct at all costs. The prospect of Prime Minister Miliband should spur the right wing of the Tory Party into action and to reclaim the party from nutjobs such as Ken Clarke - who are determined to continue this marriage of inconvenience with the Liberal Democrats.
It is time to stop the madness.
Sounds exactly like the "No Labels" movement the libs who don't want to be called libs anymore are starting over here in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteDishonest. And transparent. But just like BO got votes for his skin color (excellent qualification, by the way...heh..), some dumb centrists will fall for that, too.
Definitely. The minute someone starts blathering on about "co-operation for the common good" and "bipartisanship" and "common ground", there are the usual line of schmucks who will fall for it as they are so arrogant that they believe themselves to be "neutral" and "above political ideology!"
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