Dust and twigs: how the Tory ideology is detrimental to our national interest

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

It never rains in Manchester. It pours. And the waters sluicing out of Manchester’s Tory conference are an unstoppable torrent. More than ever before we are getting to know what Cameron’s Conservatives are like. And it’s not pretty.

You can take your pick on where to start. The billions of pounds of spending commitments is as good a place to start as any: austerity is for the headlines, but it is clear that George Osborne does not have the slightest grip on the spending commitments that his party is making.

The Independent reported that these commitments could total £54billion or more. This week we’ve had commitments to build more prisons, spend more on some training programmes, eliminate National Insurance Contributions for new small business, and a whole host of other things. The calculation is clearly that they can get away with anything. So used have the Tories become to an easy ride in the media that they now believe they can say or do just about anything.

Fortunately, it won’t always be that way. Andrew Marr’s interview with David Cameron on Sunday morning signaled the beginning of more serious scrutiny of his programme. It was a flannelling display by the Leader of the Opposition. His policies are full of holes and inconsistencies; his approach continually descends into the absurd. And yet, he rides on.

But the road gets rockier, the terrain more unforgiving from here.

Someone described David Cameron as a ‘tea-bag’ to me the other day. As he explained, you don’t know what’s in a tea bag until you dip it in hot water and see what emerges. On the evidence of Sunday morning, Cameron’s tea bag is full of dust and twigs.

The dust just washes away leaving a foul taste behind. It’s the twigs, though, that are the real concern.

More than any Opposition in living memory, this Cameron Conservative party is hell bent on pursuing major policies that are extremely detrimental to the UK’s national interest.

First up is the economy. Barely a day goes by without another leading economist or economic body raising major concerns that an early austerity package could reverse the economic recovery that now seems to be in motion. For all the attempts to re-brand the Conservatives as the party to deal with unemployment, it is ultimately growth that will protect and create employment.

Actually, the Conservative proposals do not create employment at all other than in better times, as they are exclusively focused on the supply-side. Some of these changes are desirable. In fact, much of it is Government policy anyway.

Without a focus on the demand side also, it is utterly toothless. James Purnell has torn apart the proposed package with ease. Without the short-term job creating aspects of the Government’s stimulus and the Future Jobs Fund which guarantees employment for 18-24 year-olds, the Conservative package becomes meaningless. It won’t create jobs but it will create hardship. Well, at least you can say it is a quintessentially Conservative proposal.

Just in case you thought that it couldn’t get any worse than the economic policy, try the Tory foreign policy for size. As Phillip Stephens explained in the Financial Times on Tuesday, the Conservatives are set to jeopardise not only the UK’s relationship with the EU but with the United States, too.

Britain’s influence in the EU and its global influence are inseparable. We know that the Tories are sceptical in the main about European integration – the incomprehensible thing is why they turn this into willful destruction.

What exactly was gained by establishing a party grouping with bigots and crazies? Nothing. What has been lost? Well, the Tories’ credibility in Europe has been shattered. As a result of Cameron’s petulance towards Europe, Angela Merkel’s CDU has downgraded its relationship with the party Sure, should Cameron win in May there will be a cosmetic rapprochement; that’s the way it works. But it will be nothing more than cosmetic.

And we haven’t even begun to discuss the desperate desire within the Tory party for a referendum, whatever the cost. It was to be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty but now that is likely to be ratified by May, some Tories – the Mayor of London, about whom Arnold Schwarzenegger had it about right, for example – want a referendum on pretty much anything. It is knee-jerk, emotive, and completely embarrassing. What is an embarrassment for the party could become a national embarrassment from May next year.

Now the demand is for some sort of issues-based referendum on the Social Chapter (which no longer exists, incidentally) and maybe Justice and Home Affairs.

One could make an argument for the importance of social measures, not just for workers in Britain but also to prevent social dumping inside the internal market; or the importance of police and judicial cooperation in fighting organized crime, terrorism and ensuring orderly immigration and asylum procedures could be explained.

But what’s the point? The Tories have a pathological anti-Europeanism and a pointless and utterly destructive referendum is to be the Weapon of Choice.

The vision is to reinvent the UK as Norway. No offence to Norway but it has no say on the regulations it has to adopt anyway if it is to trade with the EU. That’s why Norway has been termed a ‘fax democracy.’ Rules and regulations come in on a fax from Brussels. We are in the EU not just to trade but also to have a say and influence. There is no alternative viable vision of the EU available; there is only the one that actually exists. So we’re either in, on the margins, or out.

Surely it’s far better to flex our muscles to ensure we maximise our influence? It is one thing for the captain to break the bats of the rest of his team. It is quite another to break his own bat.

The charge sheet against these Conservatives is clear. They have an ideology and manifesto that is detrimental to the national interest. Between now and the election, that will be relentlessly exposed.

Is the next election a foregone conclusion? Absolutely not.