Same Old Tories

Tory hypocrisy on scaremongering

"Stop scaremongering" says David Cameron.

The Tories have been telling us that a hung parliament would be 'catastrophic', have distributed leaflets with a bloody machete on the front, and have run a poster with a tombstone on it.

Of course, this is nothing new for the Conservatives, they have a history of scaremongering, from warning of the 'promotion' of homosexuality to bring in Clause 28, to saying that Britain was becoming a 'foreign land' (Hague in 2001) to their spiteful posters in the 2005 election.

For all their talk of 'change', when it comes to scaremongering they're still the same old Tories.

Cameron ducks question on links with ‘Conservative madrasa’

In an interview with Time Out last Wednesday David Cameron was probed about his party’s relationship with the Young Briton’s Foundation, a controversial self-styled “research and training organisation” which has been described as a “Conservative madrasa” by its own founder.

Cameron denied YBF’s involvement in training Tory PPCs three times and still had time to throw in the remark that the views of Dan Hannan – the Tory MEP who famously told Fox News he “wouldn’t wish the NHS on anybody” – “are nothing to do with the Conservative Party.”

However easy it was to write-off Hannan as a lone “eccentric”, it may be harder for Cameron to dismiss the views of the Young Briton’s Foundation, considering Party Chairman Eric Pickles, MPs Liam Fox, David Davis, Michael Gove and, yes, Hannan himself, have all addressed events held by the organisation in recent years. The chief executive of YBF, Donal Blaney, one-time national chairman of Conservative Future, has openly advocated water-boarding and shooting climate-change protestors who trespass on public property..

YBF itself makes no secret of providing political training to young Conservative activists, with at least 11 Tory Parliamentary Candidates having been delegates or speakers at YBF conferences. At the 2009 Party Conference, YBF and Conservative Future teamed up to run an exclusive training event for activists who were members of both organisations. Conservative Central Office, whilst denying “official links” with YBF encourages activists to attend courses run by Blaney.

Their links with the American right are strong; having been inspired by the neo-conservative Young America’s Foundation they sent activists to campaign for John McCain in 2008 and on training courses in Virginia to handle submachine guns and assault rifles. An up-coming YBF event is the Thatcher-Reagan Summer Conference Programme and books recommended on their website include “The Reagan Diaries” and “The Case Against Barack Obama.”

Harking back to the glory days of Reagan and Thatcher’s closeness and suggesting that there is a left-wing bias in British media and education (echoing the hysterical fears which led to the creation of Section 28) the Young Briton’s Foundation seems to embody the exact opposite of what Cameron is trying to tell us the modern Conservative Party has become. In fact, the YBF are betraying the truth behind the spin; the views of Conservatives – grassroots activists and senior MPs alike – are just as chilling as they were thirty years ago.

Cameron’s Councils

“Our Conservative Councils will demonstrate how we will run the country.”

Eric Pickles, Conservative Party Chairman.

Taking Pickles at his word Cameron’s Councils is here to show us how the Tories act in government, by revealing the unfair, dogma driven behaviour of Conservative run councils.  A Cameron government would bring the approach of Barnet’s ‘Budget Airline Council’ to Westminster, with public services segregated, forcing people to go without, or pay extra to access the services they need.

Read up on Cameron’s councils here.

“Gay sex as big a health risk as joining the army” says Tory candidate

There are reports that Julian Lewis, candidate for New Forest East, launched into a homophobic tirade at a local hustings event in his Hampshire constituency.

It is claimed that Lewis, who has voted against equal gay rights in Parliament, said:“Gay sex is as big a health risk as joining the army, and that they don’t let people join the army until the age of majority, so why should gay sex be allowed at 16 if joining the army isn’t.”

Local activist Andrew Tindall has reported that not only did Lewis proclaim gay sex a health risk but had previously wrongly claimed that homosexuality alone poses the risk of HIV/AIDS, which is why he still opposes gay sex at 16.

This latest revelation will come as a setback to David Cameron who said last night on the BBC 3 show “Dermot Meets” that “ the truth is that...the Conservative Party now accepts wholeheartedly the equality agenda for people whether you’re black or white or straight or gay, man or woman”.

However, it appears that yet again Mr Cameron is at odds with the rank and file of the party over LGBT rights.

Read more here.

UPDATE: The Independent has reported that David Cameron has been urged to sack Mr Lewis.  

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said: "[Mr Cameron has] been seeking the votes of gay people ... but [his] frontbench team includes people who are against any notion of homosexual equality. [He needs] to show some leadership and sack Mr Lewis."

A Tory spokesman said, "These are Dr Lewis' long held and personal views. They are not the view of the Conservative Party and the terms in which he expressed them is wrong. Under this Labour government we have seen a massive increase in HIV infections and STDs across all the population – straight and gay."

However, Mr Lewis has been allowed to keep his job as a front bench spokesman for the party

Tory candidate causes outrage with Muslim comments

A Tory shadow cabinet member has been making lurid and unverified claims about Afghan Muslims. 

Speaking at a public meeting in Peterborough, Stewart Jackson claimed that "fifteen year old Muslim boys’ initiation rites are to rape a woman and shoot a foreigner". The shadow minister for communities and local government claimed to have been told the story in a Ministry of Defence briefing, but an MoD spokesperson has questioned this, saying:

"I can’t say that nobody from the MoD has ever said that but that is not the sort of thing we would ever say in an average MoD briefing".

Despite the MoD rubbishing his story Jackson has refused to withdraw his comments after being asked to by the Labour candidate for Peterborough, Ed Murphy. 

A Conservative Party spokesperson has said that the allegation is “"absolutely not [Jackson’s] personal view", but if the MoD didn’t tell him the story, then where did he hear it? And what does it say about how Conservatives see the Muslim community?

David Camera On, Camera Off

More great work from Left Foot Forward on the difference between what Cameron says and what Cameron does.

Read more here.

Vote blue, go blue

In 2006, the Conservative Party attempted to show off their “green credentials” by introducing a scribbled, slightly lopsided blue and green tree as their new logo, in place of the red, white and blue torch you can see above.

Since then we’ve had Boris on a bike, Cameron on a bike, Cameron’s briefcase in a car behind his bike, and a host of other Conservative PR exercises designed to show the voters that the right cares about the environment too (as well as handily demonstrating that their leading figures are capable enough to pass a cycling proficiency test.)

In the run-up to the election, the Tories have attempted to hammer this message home even harder. The 2010 Conservative Party manifesto uses the word “environment” no less than 46 times, and “green” 44 times. Delving further in, we see their plans to build “a greener and more pleasant land.”

Part of the Tories’ vision for this is turning Britain into “the world’s first low carbon economy” where “wind and wave power” help us achieve carbon-reduction targets and end our reliance on non-renewable energy. Waxing lyrical about the importance of the environment, the manifesto promises to promote low-carbon energy production, wind turbines being a key part of this.

A report in today’s Times, however, tells a very different story.

“Only 22 per cent of Tory candidates in winnable seats strongly supported Britain’s target — set by the European Union and endorsed by the Conservative leadership — of generating 15 per cent of Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2020.

“The statement was strongly supported by 44 per cent of Labour candidates and 71 per cent of Liberal Democrat candidates. A total of 54 per cent of Conservative hopefuls, but no Labour candidates, disagreed with the statement. Among Liberal Democrats, 14 per cent disagreed.”

The world has acknowledged the need to end reliance on coal, oil and gas, and sustainable technology such as wind turbines is undoubtedly the way forward.

Yet apparently the Conservative Party hasn’t. The consensus has passed them by. Underneath the new veneer of head-office imposed soundbites for environmental campaigners, lurks a party which is reactionary, scornful of renewable technology, and is in opposition to their own manifesto commitments on the environment.

No guarantees from Cameron

Throughout last night's debate David Cameron refused to give any guarantees on how he will protect public services and safeguard the recovery. Watch him dodge the issues in this video:

Caption contest: What’s Dave thinking?

David Cameron has a lot on his mind. But ... what, precisely?

Post your caption in the comment section.

Same Old Tories reserves the right to delete comments that are illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory or otherwise injurious to third parties.

The Return of Thatcherite Economics

Ken Clarke gave an interview to the FT yesterday outlining the Conservative plan for business and the economy. The FT sums up the Tory policy as “a laisser faire approach to business based on low taxes, deregulation and less state support.”

Ring any bells? It should – here is an excerpt from the Conservative Party’s 1983 manifesto.

“When we came to office in May 1979, our country was suffering both from an economic crisis and a crisis of morale. British industry was uncompetitive, over-taxed, over-regulated and over-manned.”

The 1983 manifesto contained a whole section entitled “Lower and simpler taxes” and another on deregulation.

It also seems that the biggest financial crash since the great depression was not enough to convince him of the need for regulation of business and finance.

“The fact that we have got into such calamitous trouble because of bank failure, bad regulation and government reckless spending does not mean we start throwing out all the things that made us a competitive economy before,”

Ken Clarke has had a number of non-executive directorships including serving as Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco, Deputy Chairman of Alliance Unichem. In June 2007 he was appointed to the Advisory Board of Centaurus Capital, a London based hedge fund management company.

Clarke dismissed plans to impede hostile takeovers and hedge fund predators as “populist nonsense”.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Ken Clarke has not strayed from Thatcher’s economic thinking, he was industry spokesman from 1976 to 1979.

Let us just remind ourselves of the success of these economic policies. The number of unemployed people in the UK peaked under Thatcher in 1986, at just over three million (over 10%).