The Conservative Party's Current Strategy is a Disgrace

Cameron dropping the Manifesto in the skip - maybe.

If you are going to sacrifice your political principles and form an alliance that makes a lot of your own party turn against you and label you a traitor, then you had better make damn sure that the party you are forming an alliance with is worth it.  If it is worth it, then you can declare yourself to be a political genius, and your opponents to be backward numptys who do not know the meaning of the word 'compromise'.

However, if the party you form an alliance with turns out to be a waste of space, then all you have done is destroy both the opportunity of getting your agenda through Parliament, and your chances of getting re-elected in the future.  This is exactly what has happened with the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition that we currently have in power in Great Britain - and I use the term "power" very loosely, because surely there has never been a Prime Minister in recent history with less power than David Cameron?

Last night was the first by-election since the formation of the dreaded Coalition, and it was hoped by both Lib Dems and sell out Tories that the Lib Dems could pinch the election and gain another seat, of which they already have precious few.  This required the Conservative Party to refuse to fight, and essentially throw the election by putting out only a symbolic campaign for the Tory candidate, allowing the Lib Dem to pick up the Tory votes and beat the Labour candidate.

But it failed.  In fact, looking at that sentence doesn't do it justice so let me try again - IT FAILED!!!  That's better.  Labour won by an enormous margin, and the Tory strategy is in tatters.  For this strategy to work, the Conservative Party had to leave its dignity and its principles behind in order to throw this election to the Lib Dems, and yet the useless Lib Dems still lost.  As much as Tory cronies such as Baroness Warsi are laughably scolding us that they fought a great campaign and that the "Tory Right" should stop complaining, I am yet to meet one independent voice who actually believes her.

I wouldn't be a fan a Coalition with the Liberal Democrats even if the Dems had 20% support, because I believe that politics should be fought on principles and ideas, not slogans and opportunism.  But, the fact that the support of the Lib Dems is as low as 7% in some polls, and their leader Nick Clegg - once the Obama of Britain - is now hated by many of his own party, turns this whole Coalition into a complete and utter farce.

So, we have thrown our principles and dignity into the trash, and do the voters respect us for it?  Do they admire our sense of "compromise" and our ability to "work together for the common good"?  Of course not.  The polls put Labour - who less than a year ago were suffering from catastrophic levels of unpopularity - ahead by 8%, we lost the by-election last night, and there seems no sign of this turning around any time soon. The effects of this strategy in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election last night will have far reaching consequences with the electorate nationally as well.  The message was clear, "Don't vote for us", and this means that next time the Tories do want people do vote for them, many will just see a party that doesn't value their vote, and will choose to vote for someone else.

Unless we abandon the Coalition
 this man may be your next Prime Minister

The standard call from Tory HQ is that cuts are always unpopular, and this explains the dip in popularity.  This is nonsense.  Yes, cuts are unpopular, but you can prevent it being as bad if you come out and passionately argue for why we need them, and what the conservative vision is for the future - a vision that most people actually agree with when you flesh it out.  However, our big spending Lib Dem partners don't like any of this,  and don't believe in the conservative vision, which puts a muzzle on the Coalition.  Cuts are made without explanation, which allows Labour to come in and say anything they want, and create their own narrative about "evil, rich Tories vs poor, voiceless people" with no Conservative voice coming out and fighting for the cause in fear of offending our wishy washy Liberal Democrat friends.

This whole Coalition is a disaster, and the only way out is not a new strategy, but to abandon this pathetic Coalition at once, drop the dead weights that are the Liberal Democrats, and fight the next election on principle.  Yes, an election next May might be one we lose, but it might also be one we win off our own backs, and the longer we carry out this charade, the harder it will be to lose the image of a party that is happy to sacrifice its own beliefs for power.  If we don't shake that image soon, we might find ourselves under another 13 year Labour government, led by Prime Minister Ed Miliband - a Prime Minister who would make Blair look like Thatcher.

In Stockport, England - Liberal Democrats Bow to Islam.....Again!

Let's get this out of the way first.  This story has very little do with Muslims and a LOT to do with the left.

In my hometown of Stockport, England, there is a small business - a sandwich shop called "Beverley's Snack Shack."  The place has been there in one way or another since 2002, but now it is under attack.

There is no doubt that living near a sandwich shop that serves hot food can be unpleasant at times.  Anywhere that cooks food will have some sort of smell coming out of it, and that smell will not always be a pleasant one!  These factors are always considered whenever planning permission is given for a place of business such as this, and when any extensions are made to the business.  Conversely, it is also taken into account when house prices are considered - so someone buying a residence near a place where food is professionally cooked will almost certainly pay a lower price for the property than they would if the restaurant or shop did not exist.  Therefore, the free market allows prospective buyers to place a value on the inconvenience and work out whether the asking price matches compensates enough for that inconvenience and/or discomfort.  So a £160,000 home may sell for $120,000 if there is a strong smell coming from next door.  The prospective buyer has to work out if that added inconvenience of the smell is worth £40,000.  If it is, they buy the house, if not they go elsewhere.

This is what has happened in Shaw Heath in Stockport.  Yet, with the basic replacement of an extractor fan, the next door neighbours to the "Snack Shack" have complained about the smell.  This case would of course not be a case - they knew the risks, they knew the smell, and the replacement of a fan does not alter that.

However, the next door neighbours have been sneaky, and made a political statement that would set alarm bells ringing in the heads of the Stockport Council - a Council which is dominated by the hard-left Liberal Democrats.   The neighbours wisely stated that the smell of bacon was offending Muslim visitors to the house.

Of course, this pushed the panic button in the Chambers of Stockport Borough Council, who immediately retroactively denied the restaurant permission for the fan (can you even do that?) meaning that the store has had to remove the fan.  I am not sure how the business is now operating, but Stockport is an area that was hard hit by the recession, sandwich shops are not exactly corporations and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this decision is not making it extremely difficult for them to stay in business.  Over-sensitive lefties have attacked a hard-working business just on the basis that they might have inconvenienced the most protected group in our society.

Once again it shows that the Left always respond whenever Muslims are seen to be offended - even those who might only be a visitor to somewhere once every blue moon.  We have seen it in the last week with the firing of Juan Williams at NPR, and we see it on a daily basis all over the world - the Left are absolutely terrified of offending Islam in even the most minor way.  The left have no problem putting Christians and other groups through the mill and making all sorts of hateful comments about them, but offend a Muslim even accidentally, and it is as if the world is going to cave in.

This isn't just political correctness, it is cowardice.  These people are sensitive to Islam because they are scared of its radical elements getting angry.  The whole left-wing approach to radical Islam has been to lay down and surrender until they are no longer angry with us, and this has been extended to all Islam.  It is time for this to stop!  It is not Islam that is the problem, it is the left who mollycoddle Muslims as perpetual victims that are the problem.  Do they really believe that this will lead to greater integration in our society?  Do they not see that it will lead to anger, intolerance and divided communities, as it has done already?

Everyone must be treated equally under the law in a civilised democracy - special exceptions made to so-called "persecuted" groups is not the answer.  It also sends a message to radical Islam that there methods are working, as our politicians are bending over backwards to meet their every need, all out of fear.

So, if you live in Stockport - go to Beverley's Snack Shack and buy 10 bacon butties......EACH!!

Britain's Spending Cuts - Inconsistent!

With France having exploded into rioting over the last week over the extension of the retirement age from 60 to 62, we have seen similar outrage today in Britain as Chancellor George Osborne has announced what are, for the most part, pretty meagre cuts.

Do not be mistaken by the Left's rhetoric, these spending cuts are not strong enough, but they are a start.  The Financial Times for instance is trying to paint these as some sort of mega cuts, but 4.5% cut over 5 years isn't exactly earth-shattering  But, with a strong left-wing movement in Britain, as well as the hard left Liberal Democrats having significant influence in the new government, the current cuts are really all that are politically feasible.  And I believe that on the whole, these cuts will work out well for the Coalition.  It will restore at least some confidence to the markets, and possibly to job creators too, in spite of the tax increases that will hit over the next few years.  Personally, I would have liked to see more cuts to welfare, cuts and reform to the NHS (which has remained untouched), less cuts to the military and less tax increases (which will only prevent growth).

I have an article coming out over the next few days which specifically cover the military cuts, but in the mean time I would like to focus on something that caught my eye that not many media outlets have picked up on.  We have seen that NHS spending has been ring fenced, and this has been debated by many.  But, today it was announced that International Aid has been increased by a stunning 33% and Climate Change funding (whatever the hell that consists of) has been increased by a hefty 18% - you can find an easy to read graph of all the cuts etc here.

Now, I'd be pretty annoyed had they not been cut, but for the budgets to be increased!?  It is quite clear that this is a total fop to the Liberal Democrats.  No conservative with any understanding of immigration would support a massive international aid budget.  The only way to get countries out of poverty is to encourage market growth, not to support big government programs and fund state sponsored dictatorships.  There is no country that has been lifted out of poverty by international aid, not one.  In addition, when you are giving some of that aid to India - a nation that has its very own nuclear weapons program - you know your policy is broken.  Yet this is not being tackled.

Climate Change - well, unfortunately, whether or not you believe in Climate Change or not, this is nothing more than economic stimulus for supposed "green jobs".  As we have seen in both America and Britain, this doesn't work.  True green jobs, like almost every job, is created by the private sector, not by tax and spend policies subsidising pointless industries.  Again, conservatives know this, left-wingers don't, so why on Earth have we increased the budget?

The spending cuts tell us a lot about the strength of this coalition.  It shows that they have managed to get spending cuts through, but they have had a hell of a lot of compromises to make to the left in order to get them through.  Increases in Climate Change budgets and International aid are enormous concessions, as are enormous cuts to the military budget.  In addition, even with these moderate spending cuts, we are beginning to see a massive backlash from vested interests in the unions and public sector - it is not going to be easy

If the Coalition wants to try and push forward a conservative agenda that is going to put Britain back on the right track (so to speak), it is going to have to fight tooth and nail for it, and with the gaggle of "centrist" Tories and hard-left Liberal Democrats, I just can't see how they are going to do that.  

Liberal Democrats - "The Prisoners Must Be Able to Vote!"

I always say that one of the reasons I never made it as a left-wing sort of person (as I flirted with being in my teens) is because my brain isn't wired in the way it needs to be wired for one to be left-wing.  This is especially the case with the British Liberal Democrats (who are neither liberal in the traditional sense, nor particularly democratic.)

It is a peculiar person who watches a criminal being carted off to prison and immediately thinks "Oh no!  I hope his rights are being protected!"  Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing for no rights for criminals, but the unusual fervour with which the left desperately seek out more and more advanced rights than criminals are being "denied" is very difficult to work out at times.

So today, when I saw that the Lib Dems are back on their old hobby horse of trying to give prisoners voting rights again, I had to really sit back in wonder at them all over again.  However, when one thinks about it, it is not particularly strange that the Lib Dems are very keen on this measure, and it is in fact very clever, and a particular characteristic of many left-wing parties internationally.  Nile Gardiner has a great analysis of Clegg and co's decision to go ahead with this surge, and he points to Clegg's ideological dedication to unification with the EU, who needless to say are so keen that prisoners get voting rights, that they want them to sue the taxpayer for compensation!  Yeh, amazing isn't it?

However, the segment I feel that Gardiner misses out on is that political parties always canvass for votes, and left-wing campaigners have a habit of trying to create new segments that they can "protect" and therefore gain votes for life from.  It has been very successful.  For instance, it is no coincidence that a great many of those who vote for massive tax-rises by voting for left-wing parties don't happen to pay any income tax themselves.  In America, Obama is trying to grant amnesty to tonnes of illegal immigrants - he knows that the second they become citizens, they will probably vote Democrat.

So, back to the Lib Dems and prisoners.  We know that prisoners will be interested in a number of things. 

1) Prison conditions

2) Shorter prison sentences

3) General soft attitude to crime

4) Voting (maybe)

5) Welfare (a high proportion of criminals will be on welfare at some point.)

Now, look back over that list and who do you think covers most of those points?  Thats right, the Lib Dems!  They know that they will get tens of thousands more votes, some in tight constituencies, should the prison population be able to vote.  It is an extraordinarily cynical move, and it will do a lot of damage in the long term.  For instance, it will encourage politicians, specifically left-wing politicians, to scramble over one another in a race to be more "compassionate" and "understanding" towards criminals, who after all are only "victims of society themselves."

One may argue that nationally, the prison population is relatively insignificant.  Maybe, but in constituencies with a large prison, it could be enormous.  MP's in those constituencies will pander more to the voices of prisoners than they will to the voices of teachers, doctors, nurses, business owners, members of emergency services etc.  The prison population will become a powerful advocacy group in certain areas, and will therefore have significant influence on policy.

This should not be allowed to happen.  Conservatives forced into this current alliance with the Lib Dems should break off and condemn the scheme as insulting to law-abiding citizens, insulting to the victims of crime, and ultimately as a cynical ploy for more votes that will only contribute to the break down of law and order that left-wing parties always encourage without fail.