Conservatives
Rather than posting about last night’s Leaders’ Debate on the whole, I thought I’d just ramble about my dislike of the Tory party in general, which was further emphasised to me by the debate and follow-up Question Time.
The whole party strikes me as very sinister to its very core. I get the feeling the Tories are loving the fact that these leaders’ debates are turning our UK General Election into a US-style, vote for the PM rather than your MP, style election since they’d struggle to put together a list of 10 down-to-earth, understanding representatives (Of course I’d say they have none but I’m a bit biased). So the fact that they only have to produce one man who could possibly be argued as meeting the above criterion suits them perfectly. I’m sure you can imagine the Lords and Barons, the double- and triple-barrelled named Tory prospective MPs who will be standing across the country that are perhaps less media-friendly than Mr Cameron.
Now their policies. This is where I feel my bias against the Conservative party is of no actual influence — I’m just using common sense here. So much of the Tory manifesto is just nonsense attempting to “please the crowd”, you might say. “Putting the power in the hands of the people”, “Cutting down the bureaucracy”, “Time for change” — these are not policies, they are nice-sounding ideas with no facts, figures, or any implication of how to apply them. As Nick Clegg kindly exposed last night, they don’t even have an idea for a figure on their supposed “immigration cap”. Cameron’s response to Clegg’s question about the figure did not consist of an answer, but instead a nervy comment about it being a “replay” of last week with Gordon Brown — instead of being a dismissal it only served as a reminder of the fact that Mr Cameron has been questioned on his policies before, and again cannot or will not provide an answer.
And it’s this question-dodging that bothers me most. William Hague, probably one of my favourite members of the Conservatives (this is not saying much), was guilty of this on the live Question Time that followed, and reacted to, the Debate. He seemed to desperate to talk about the other parties’ flaws at any opportunity that he seemed to neglect to mention why you should vote for his party, so obsessed with slagging the opposition was he.
And why should you vote for the Conservatives? David Cameron doesn’t seem to know? In what was, actually, probably his best moment of the night, Mr Cameron spoke at length about the need for society as a whole to band together to improve our country, not just the Government to attempt to come up with some quick fixes. He talked about the decreased role that the Government has to play. A good point perhaps, but then if the Government is less important, why should we vote for Conservatives? It doesn’t make a difference who’s in power, surely?
