Mr Cameron, your speech was hypocritical, hollow and dangerous

By Rowenna Davis

Mr Cameron, you started your speech today saying you were a rather “uncomplicated” man. Your personal simplicity is perhaps the one part of your speech that I agreed with. Never have I been so proud of being on the left as when I was listening to you just now. Here are just a few reasons why your simplistic agenda fails to come up to scratch:

1) Life is more complicated than “Small Government Good, Big Government Bad.” The world has moved on from such dogmatic ideology. As Obama said, it’s not the size of the state that matters – it’s what works. If you’ve ever met anyone who’s just come out of prison, been long term unemployed or a young single mum you’ll know that simply withdrawing state support doesn’t work. To get people back into work, people need confidence, skills and training. These things are expensive. You can’t just stop investing in people and expect them to give something back. And in a recession, the state may need to pay to create jobs for people to go in to whilst the private sector gets itself back on its feet. Shrinking government now is bad economics.

2) You say that you want society to take the place of the state, but you don’t say how you are going to create this revolution. Just roll back the state and hope everyone picks up where it left off…? Compare your speech to Brown’s policy packed agenda and you don’t just seem like a novice – you look hollow.

3) A word about incentives. You claim there is a 96% “tax” on certain groups that go back into work. This twist of logic blows Orwell out of the water by counting past benefits as taxes. Sure, there is a work incentive problem, but there are two ways to solve that. The first is to increase working tax credits, as Labour has done, and the second is to cut benefits. Doing the second just plunges people already below the poverty line further down. “Incentive” in your dictionary, David, means pulling the plug on the poor. To dress this up as helping the vulnerable, a move which won you a standing ovation, is sickening.

4) You’re a hypocrite on the size of the state. If you think a surge in Afghanistan and an increase in prison building won’t build up this country’s debt, you really are simple. The only difference with spending it on jails and bombs is that it doesn’t reap back the benefits of reinvestment that spending on health and education would.

5) Absolute inequality did increase under Labour. That is undeniably grim. But do you know what, Labour slowed down that growth in inequality massively compared to Thatcher. Just read King’s new book – A Generation of Change, a Lifetime of Difference. It’s got all the facts you need.

6) You’re a hypocrite on benefits. The story you told about Viv Williams, who was forced onto incapacity against his will, is a sad one. But the Tories would perpetuate state enforced dependency in other ways. Theresa May told me this week that the party had no plans to lift the employment ban on asylum seekers, even if the Home Office fails to process their claims for years. Yours talk here doesn’t come from a brave commitment to genuine values; it comes from the worst kind of political pragmatism.

In short, Mr Cameron, you’re over simplistic agenda is hollow, hypocritical and dangerous. Please do us all a favour, and produce some policies that work, even if – heaven forbid! – they are a bit more complicated.

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