David Cameron’s Conservative party has several uniquely destructive traits. But perhaps foremost is that it believes the lies of its enemies. And even when it doesn’t, it panders to them.
A perfect example arose three years ago when the shadow minister of homeland security, Patrick Mercer, gave a newspaper interview in which he mentioned the fact that he had heard racist comments while he was in the army.
Even a cursory glance at the interview showed that Mercer was reporting — and deploring — these comments. But Cameron didn’t bother with a glance. Here was an opportunity to show the new Conservative party. So Cameron described Mercer’s comments as ‘completely unacceptable’, issued soundbites about the evils of racism, smeared and sent to the back benches a much better man than himself.
In July the same traits were on show during Cameron’s visit to Turkey. While praising his hosts, he dismissed opponents of Turkish EU entry as ‘prejudiced’.
Partly this is a generational thing. While Cameron was growing up, left-wing views were steadily ingraining themselves. To be a Conservative carried a stigma: the mean, bad, ‘nasty’ party. Cameron and his colleagues to varying degrees assimilated these opinions. Rather than realising that the left is the cause of many of our society’s problems, they instead awarded the opponents of conservatism the right to be the sole arbiters of moral credibility. And so for the new Conservatives it has become far more important to appeal to their opponents than to be remotely pleasant to likely allies. I know because on a very small scale I have experienced it myself.
Almost five years ago I was in The Hague. I was giving the closing speech at a conference in the Dutch parliament organised by the Lijst Pim Fortuyn.
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