If only she could find the building she could solve the problem of public expenditure at a stroke
If only she could find the building, she could solve the problem of public expenditure at a stroke.David Cameron knows too much about the realities of government to indulge in the fantasies of opposition. When policy questions come up at Shadow Cabinet meetings, he always says: “What would we do if we were in government?” This cheers up his colleagues; they enjoy the references to government. But an opposition leader who is too close to the exigencies of governing can have difficulty in rousing the troops.This is an especial problem for the Tory party. Modern Toryism is an uneasy coalition between economic liberals and social conservatives; between those who are at ease with the cultural changes of recent decades and those who think that the country is going to the dogs.The latter group can make out a stronger case than many liberals would happily admit. The canine tendency always said that coloured immigration would create social problems, as would the welfare state, by encouraging dependency.
It argued that if the death penalty were abolished, the murder rate would rise. To the canines, the 1960s was not the decade in which the country learnt to enjoy itself It was the one in which the family began to disintegrate. They also insisted that Europe would increasingly prevent us from making our own laws. It is not easy to persuade the canines that they have got everything wrong.David Cameron understands them, and does not dismiss all their anxieties. But his natural sympathies are with the young and aspirational, not with the elderly and discontented. Yet he needs them all inside his big tent.Margaret Thatcher, whose own instincts were much more canine, had the right body language to make the malcontents believe that they had an ally in 10 Downing Street.
It will be harder for David Cameron to pull off the same trick. But over the next two or three years, he will have to find a way of growing beyond the Notting Hill set nonsense – his equivalent of Bambi – and persuading the voters that he is rooted in Middle Britain, not in a smart London postal district
More from Bruce Anderson. It’s hard to squeeze out even the most crocodile of tears for Slobodan Milosevic as he completes the tired character arc of tyrants throughout the ages – from zero to hero to Nero to a reviled grave. He died well-fed and well-clothed in his sleep, a luxury denied to more than 125,000 European men, women and children who died in the wars he stoked, poked and pioneered. But the doors of justice for the crimes committed in the Balkans in the 1990s should not slam shut with Milosevic’s coffin, nor with the handover of those indicted Serb butchers Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. Today, there are men who helped and facilitated Milosevic’s crimes at the heart of the British establishment.
Indeed, these men are universally lauded as liberals and all-round Good Chaps. They have still not answered for their actions.
More from Johann Hari. Come along you townees and children – it’s time to go out into the countryside again, to see what spring has brought us! So let’s go for another nature ramble with the knowledgeable Uncle Geoffrey, and his ever-willing nephew and niece, Robert and Susan. ***
There were catkins on the branches but there were also a few snowflakes waltzing down out of a grey sky as Uncle Geoffrey, Robert and Susan trudged along the lane through Farmer Langley’s fields.”I expect Mr Langley will be out lambing today,” said Uncle Geoffrey.”Well, his sheep might be lambing,” said Robert, “but I don’t suppose he himself personally will be lambing.”"Oh, don’t be obtuse,” laughed Susan “It’s just a figure of speech, as well you know. But Farmer Langley identifies so strongly with his sheep that he might well be giving birth himself.”"It’s true,” said Uncle Geoffrey. “Every time he loses a lamb, or indeed a sheep, he seems quite inconsolable It’s like losing one of the family for him.
I suppose they are his family.”"Which makes it all the stranger that he sends the lambs away to be slaughtered without a backward glance,” said Robert “You lavish all that love on them, and then kill them. What sort of family love is that?”"It makes sense in a way,” said Susan. “If you think of all the other professions which breed for killing, there is no false pity there at all.”"What other killing professions are there?” said Robert.”Nursery gardeners,” she said promptly. “Millions of flowers are grown every day only to be cut down in the prime of life and stuck in vases to bleed their life away. We talk about cut flowers as fresh flowers, but they are only fresh in the sense that they are freshly beheaded.”"You might say the same for the growers of Christmas trees,” said Robert. “They’re all baby trees as well, killed before they grow up.”"Ah, but they are also killed before they get old and feeble,” said Susan.
