Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Cameron is quite conservative enough, thank you

issue 12 May 2012

Find me a person who stopped voting Conservative last week because of David Cameron’s vague, half-arsed, lacklustre stance on gay marriage. Go on. I dare you. Or because of the even vaguer, totally-not-going-to-happen proposals to reform the House of Lords. I’ll settle for one of them instead. Just one, and then I’ll shut up and leave you alone. Anyone? Anyone?

Oh, look, there’s probably one. Maybe there are even as many as eight. And I don’t really want to meet them. They’re representative of nothing. ‘But the Ukip vote soared!’ I hear you cry. ‘Their share of the vote is five points higher than a year ago!’ Yes, indeed. But my hunch — liberal, urban, deluded moron that I doubtless am — would be that people voted for the party defined by its hostility to the European Union because they are hostile to the European Union. No?

Sure, Ukip is against gay marriage, but only in the way that they’re against basically everything.

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