On not understanding Tories (3): Inflation

Being an occasional series in which the writer confesses that supporters of the British Conservative party leave him in a state of perpetual perplexity. Part one here and part two here.
 
In my political neighbourhood, the image of the Cameron is now set. He is the smiling assassin whose affable public image hides his ‘Thatcherite,’ ‘heartless,’ ‘Bullingdon Club,’ — fill in any other disobliging epithet you can think of — agenda. He is an extremist dressed up as a moderate; a phoney centrist, who is quietly destroying the welfare state.

Whatever they wish to say about the rest of the coalition programme, on economic policy, my leftish colleagues have got one aspect of this government hopelessly wrong.

A classic dividing line between left and right is that the left thinks that mass unemployment is the greatest economic evil while the right believes that inflation is worse. They do so because overall unemployment hits working class Labour supporters hardest while inflation hits Conservative voters: pensioners on fixed incomes; and savers who have acted responsibly rather than rely on the state to bail them out in hard times.