This is all about Dave and what Dave feels: we can’t go on like this

By Diana Smith / @mulberrybush

Yesterday, the hoardings went up all over the country: a large head shot of David Cameron enscribed “we can’t go on like this”.

The prospect of five whole months of electioneering is not an appealing one. Yesterday, I tuned in to hear David Cameron deliver his press release on the Health service. I did this because I really want to know. How is it that Dave sees the Health service, what is it that he actually intends to do and how does it differ from the actions that are already being taken by the Labour Government?

Dave’s promise of a less divisive kind of politics – in which he should also acknowledge the positive in the actions of his opponents – is just two days old. And it was a disappointment to me on two fronts: I did not get any of the detail I was looking for and we were back into Dave’s habitual attack mode.

I first became aware of David Cameron’s propensity for such quirks back in March 2009. He came to Stafford for a photo opportunity – a contentious thing to do at the time. A journalist questioned the appropriateness of his being there, and his response of “rubbish” really upset me. At a time when emotions were running very high in Stafford as a result of the healthcare criticisms, it felt both unhelpful and gratuitously rude. It is only subsequently that I have realised that whenever Cameron feels just a little under pressure his response is to pepper his speeches with words like “rubbish”, “fake”, “huge” and “massive”. These are protective, defensive words, used to discourage further questioning. They tell us something about the state of his emotions at a given time, but little about the facts.

Because his speech yesterday morning conveyed little I went to look at his party’s “draft manifesto”. The quirk is evident here too. Take the language in the first paragraph after the preamble:

“We will scrap all of the politically-motivated process targets that stop health professionals doing their jobs properly, and set NHS providers free to innovate by ensuring they become autonomous Foundation Trusts”.

This is followed in the next paragraph with:

“With power comes responsibility, and it is essential that doctors and nurses are properly accountable to patients for their performance. We will unleash an information revolution in the NHS by making detailed data about the performance of trusts, hospitals, GPs, doctors and other staff available to the public online so everyone will know who is providing a good service and who is falling behind.”

This is quite puzzling. There is the data that he likes – data that we need that and it empowers us – and there is the data he doesn’t like: “politically-motivated process targets”

A little further down the page we get to what the Tories believe can be cut and what is sacrosanct. Mr Cameron never makes it clear where the data for the “information revolution” lies. Is it a specially valued part of the health service, or is it part of the amount “that Labour is currently wasting on bureaucracy”?

So far, I am not clear if we are just seeing muddled thinking, or if there is a real distinction which I am failing to see and need to have spelled out.

But my concern is this. Most of us who take our politics seriously understand the scale of the challenges ahead. There will be a lot of words used over the next five months. This is a real opportunity to set out choices as clearly as possible and build a dialogue with the voting public. It can be a very creative process, one which actually changes the way in which our democracy works for the better.

At the moment that is not what we are getting. For me at any rate this is all too much about Dave and what Dave feels.

So now that we have reached day three of David Cameron’s campaign I can’t help feeling: “We can’t go on like this.”