Melanie Phillips on David Cameron's first year

I had lunch with Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips yesterday and she recorded this five minute assessment of David Cameron's first year as 'Blue Labour leader' for 18 Doughty Street Talk TV.

Comments

[Chris Palmer]

I'd agree with that.

[Seamus Donovan]

Melanie Phillip's manages to contradict herself quite openly in this leaving her open to the patronising charge of intellectual and philosophical incoherence.

She says that the Tories did not lose the last few elections because of their views, but their incompetence. But then she says Blair won because he managed to position himself as a small 'c' Conservative (failed to deliver, yes, but the people voted for him because of that)and people liked this... So which one is it?

On the charge of being to the left of the Labour party? Erm, how?

- Anti-Americanism. Cameron said we should be a 'critical friend'- just like Maggie. So is Phillip's saying Maggie is the latest to join the anti-US anti-Israel brigade?
- Climate Change- Cameron is saying that taxation is not the means. He wants to win this agenda with right-wing policies based on responsibility
- His emphasis on the family
- Sharing the proceeds of growth with tax cuts and spending, not just labour spending
- Building more prisons
- Scrapping the Human Rights Act
- No to European consitution and euro

What planet is Phillips on? All Cameron has done, rightly, is soften the stance on a number of important policies that make them relevant to many hard-working people in this country, and not over-paid columnists who spend their evenings bemoaning the state of this country at dinner parties in West Kensington.

[TomTom]

She says that the Tories did not lose the last few elections because of their views, but their incompetence.

This is patently true.........they were incredibly incompetent...........it was as if they were being paid by Labour to be so incompetent

[David Walsh]

I agree with Seamus Donovan above. Although I very much respect Melanie Phillips on a lot of issues her interview did reveal a couple of logial fallacies.

First, her assumption was that it was media exposure that has given DC his poll lead and that similar exposure would do the same for GB. Is this necessarily true? Might it not be the case that media exposure will turn the public off GB and Labour?

Second, it was argued that TB won in 1997 by appealing to inherent conservatism. Whilst this might be true for Labour, does it necesarily follow that DC would win an election by appealing to public conservatism? Might it not be the case that TB's appeal to conservatism in 1997 was to indicate that he was a moderate in a left-of-centre party? If this was so, then a similar approach by DC might portray him as a radical in a right-of-centre party.

[Happy Tory]

Melanie, lots of nice words. You're just wrong. What he's done had to be done. Now we start from a much better place. But there's certainly work to do.

[SimonNewman]

I think Melanie's analysis is basically correct, although I think the Cameron 'go left' strategy can be genuinely electorally advantageous in London, which is well to the left of the rest of the UK - look at our mayor. And since the media is London-based this also gives a media-presentational advantage. But the value of this advantage may be overestimated as the country itself is worried and probably shifting rightwards.

[John Hirst]

I lost count of how many er, er, er, ers the incoherent Melanie Fibs uttered in this garbled rambling from someone some people actually take seriously as a political voice.

[SimonNewman]

Re America, I disagree with Melanie Phillips and basically agree with Seamus Donovan; if US policy is patently wrong, as with Iraq, the UK should not support that policy with British troops. Re Israel, I have mixed feelings. Western policy towards Israel always seems to start from the false premise that the Arabs want peace with Israel, rather than to destroy Israel. OTOH Israeli policies, like US policies, are sometimes mistaken and counter-productive; eg Israel's war with Hizbollah should not have extended to attacking non-Hizbullah targets in Lebanon, doing so just weakened the Lebanese state, which is bad for Israel. So I guess a 'critical friend' stance is best re Israel too, but with emphasis on 'friend'.

[SimonNewman]

"I lost count of how many er, er, er, ers"

When real people talk impromptu to camera, that's how we speak.

[esbonio]

Well said Melanie.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

One thing that makes me laugh about what she had to say. How or when has Cameron come out with anything that is the slightest bit libertarian? I mean come on...high taxes, government being used to bludgeon people into behaving a certain way and every increasing size of government. Where is the libertarianism in any of that?

[Richard]

Melanie Philips always talks a lot of sense and this was another example of that.

Mark Styne, Peter Hitchens, Simon Heffer and Janet Daley are all saying very similar things as well.

When asked about our policies pre 2005 a majority of people said that they supported them, it was only when they heard they were Conservative policies that people started to think again.

The same can be applied to why we lost in 1997. De we loose because we had the wrong policies? No we actually won all the arguments in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was Labour who had to accept our arguments and it was Labour that had to change to be more like us in order to win power. We lost in 1997 because we were seen as divided and incompetent.

People on this website seem to be getting a little carried away with themselves. Since David Cameron came to power we have been ahead in the polls which is good news, but with labour in the mess they are we SHOULD be ahead in the polls! We have also done well in the local elections but under William Hague we did well in local elections, we even won the European elections with a landslide in 1999. Under IDS and Howard we also did well in local and European elections.

David Cameron has a long way to go and I do feel that Melanie Philip's analysis of his first year is pretty accurate. Outside of the South east is Cameron actually having much impact?

[Alexander Drake]

I am amused, that was probably the nicest stuff I've ever heard Melanie Phillips say about David Cameron! Maybe she is starting to warm to him. : )

I couldn't give a tinkler's cuss whether Cameron has given the Party an intellectual coherence, I care about whether he is wooing voters needed to win marginal seats and get rid of this Government. From what I've seen, he's doing that on a scale that beats anything else we've seen lately from the Conservatives. If you're onto a good thing, stick to it!

[Alexander Drake]

Richard, if people don't feel that the economy's performing too badly, why would they want chuck out a government? Moral outrage finds it hard to beat self-interest.

[Richard]

"From what I've seen, he's doing that on a scale that beats anything else we've seen lately from the Conservatives. If you're onto a good thing, stick to it!"

Is this really true? There have been three Parliamentary by-elections since Cameron became leader our share of the vote fell in the two we didn't win and in Bromley where we did win our majority collapsed!

Yes we did well in the local elections but as I said we did just as well under Hague and not just in the South East. When Hague was leader we even won control of places like Carlisle. In 1999 we walked it in the European elecvtions and then lost the 2001 General election.

We did very well in London but how many local parties fought Cameron style campaigns? I don't know many that did. Hammersmith and Fulham won on a tax cutting agenda and as I have previously stated how many council seats did we win and how many councils did we take control of in the Midlands and the North of England? Not very many!

[esbonio]

Richard is quite right to point out that the Tory pre-election policies were popular and it was only when they learnt their provenance that some people were put off. This suggests to me the strategy should be to stick with the policies and add a bit of rebranding where necessary. As for the branding, insulting your own voters was not and is not a good start. Either way we should not throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Michael McGowan]

Alexander, if people think the economy is performing OK, then on your logic why would they want to replace Gordon Brown with David Cameron?

And why are you so keen to see this Government replaced even if the Opposition has no intellectual coherence? Do I hear the sound of a full-time baying for a job?

[Chris Palmer]

"Richard, if people don't feel that the economy's performing too badly, why would they want chuck out a government? Moral outrage finds it hard to beat self-interest." - Alexander Drake

You are wrong, of course. Look at the latest US Mid-terms. A good economy and yet moral outrage over sleaze and pork barreling by the Republicans had them tossed out by the American electorate.

Not everyone bases their vote on rational choice - far from it.

[TomTom]

Might it not be the case that TB's appeal to conservatism in 1997 was to indicate that he was a moderate in a left-of-centre party?

Labour Leaders are always rated higher when they are at odds with their party - it indicates a strong leader.

Tory Leaders are always better when they are leading their party and not fighting it

[Derek Buxton]

She was right, Cameron is not going to win anything. His lead of what, 2% is nowhere near enough. He has thrown away any principled ideas, having none himself, he only wants the power and money. Incidently he did call for green taxes and wants more of them. But he does not explain how they will help the world, obviously he thinks as one of Canute's courtiers. Hyprocrisy seems to fit the bill.

[Jorgen]

Melanie, well said!

[Gunther]

Melanie Phillips supporting the Conservative Party is one reason people are put off. Can't she go and support UKIP or BNP?

[Jack Stone]

I agree with Gunther.The Conservative Party can do without extremist of the sort Melanie Phillips represents.

[Jorgen]

She would probably suggest that Gunther and Stone alternatively went to the Lib Dems.

[Rebecca]

Gunther is right. If she is a member, can't she be thrown out? It's bad enough that she writes for the Daily Mail. It is enough to throw the Cameron Project off track.

[Sean Fear]

Gunther is right. If she is a member, can't she be thrown out?"

What for?

"It's bad enough that she writes for the Daily Mail."

Hardly a sin to most Conservative voters.

"It is enough to throw the Cameron Project off track. "

And?

[Michael McGowan]

Jack, if you think Melanie Phillips is an "extremist", then you must be a closet member of Respect. Come to think of it, you probably are given some of your earlier ethically diseased postings about the need to "talk to" Al-Quaeda.

As for Gunther's comment, the reason why Melanie Phillips would not support the BNP is that she is not a leftwing racist. She spends most of her time attacking leftwing racists. So why would she want to support the BNP?

[Jorgen]

Gunther is right. If she is a member, can't she be thrown out?"

What for?

Because she has the audacity of not praising Cameron's political experiment. Is more reason needed?

[Richard]

If all critics of Cameron were thrown out of the Party there wouldn't be many people left!

[Lucy]

Was Hitler a left wing racist? Of course BNP is extreme right wing.

[Richard]

Hitler was a National SOCIALIST.

[Gunther]

Melanie Phillips spends most of her time attacking Liberals, and anyone criticizing Israel in any way.

[Lucy]

The National Socialists had the support of business leaders and the military. They were right wing. Cameron calls himself Liberal Conservative. That does not make him Liberal.

[Jorgen]

Cameron calls himself Liberal Conservative. That does not make him Liberal.

His policies does.

[Martin Bristow]

It should not give us any pleasure in admitting that Melanie Phillips is correct in her analysis.Cameron has repositioned the Conservative in a place that it is simply not consistent with Tory value and philosophy.

The basic assumption of the Cameroons is if you can't beat em then join em.They appear to me to have swallowed the myth that the Blairite consensus is here to stay and indeed that we ought to applaud that.

It is my belief that this consensus far from being the solution is the cause of our malaise.A systematic undermining of the traditional family accompanied by the extension of welfarism has created a client state devoid of personal accountability.

I am deeply concerned that DC does not recognise this and further from this will do nothing to challenge and reverse the trend.

[Michael McGowan]

Lucy, I know lefties hate having Hitler described as rightwing because that would deprive them of their favourite pantomime villain "rightwing extremist". But leftwing is exactly what he was: he believed in the state control of the means of production, five year plans, etc etc. Most of German industry was semi-nationalised under his rule so the fact that those running the businesses collaborated with him doesn't really prove much. He had the support of military leaders because he was a nationalist too. But nationalism is consistent with being leftwing too: look at Stalin.

[Michael McGowan]

Weasel words, Gunther. The only "Liberals" Melanie Phillips attacks are politically correct cultural Marxists who style themselves as "liberal" but are anything but. She is of course a doughty defender of Israel (especially its right to exist) and tends to go over the top.....but I can forgive her that given that many of her detractors are closet anti-Semites and apologists for Islamic extremism.

[Sean Fear]

The BNP's views on immigration, and their social conservatism would place them on the right of the political spectrum. Their hostility to cultural marxism makes them potentially attractive to some disillusioned conservatives.

However, their economic policies and a number of their social policies (such as mass council house building) are virtually identical to those of the Labour Party in the 1930s and 1940s.

It's no wonder that they do increasingly well in parts of the country where the population is both socially conservative, and pretty keen on old-style socialism.

[Sean Fear]

Thinking more about Hitler & Stalin, Michael, it's probably the case that the similarities between totalitarian states outweigh their differences, regardless of philosophy. Whether Stalin and Hitler should be regarded as extreme left wing, or extreme right wing is probably not important, given that they resembled each other so closely in their methods.

[Martin Bristow]

Melanie Phillips is a traditional Conservative whose view I personally share.Her philosophy emphaises the centrality of key themes these are:

The Traditional Family
The Nation State
Rule of Law for all
End to moral relativism
Individual Freedom and personal liberty balanced by reponsibility for one's actions.

I fear DC does not share these priorities.

[Michael McGowan]

Martin, I would have said that she is more of a classical liberal than a Conservative. Her view on freedom of speech and thought and equality before the law are classically liberal. Not that it matters apart from the fact that if you call her a "traditional Conservative", it enables her many enemies on the left to lampoon her as an authoritarian reactionary, which she is not.....although many of them are.

[esbonio]

Well said those sticking up for Melanie. Last week we had to endure the Guardian writer Polly Toynbee being praised; this week writing for the Daily Mail is attacked.

[Crighton]

Melanie Phillips mentions aping Blair and also makes a point about the necessity of trusting a leader.

Sadly the outcome of the EPP withdrawal promise hardly helped in developing trust.

Nor, sadly, does the example quoted in Simon Heffer's Telegraph article yesterday, which I didn't see mentioned on CH.

Heffer commented,

'Mr Cameron said of Lord Moore: "He suggested that because 'the stark Dickensian poverty of a hundred years ago' had ceased to exist in Britain, poverty itself was history." For this, he added, Lord Moore was "wrong". Sadly, what Lord Moore said was rather different. He did indeed use the words quoted by Mr Cameron, but used them to support his unarguable point that "the true history of our economic development this century is not a story of failure, it is one of tremendous success. To pretend otherwise undermines confidence in the system that actually has abolished the stark Dickensian poverty of a hundred years ago." Was the quotation out of context incompetence, or was it the unscrupulousness of a PR man keen to make his point? You choose.'

Trust?

Heir to Blair?

[Tommac]

I just don't get the many people criticising Cameron here.

We are at least two, probably 4 years from an election, for god's sake.

Every policy Cameron has brought out has been stolen from him by Labour, whose amjor tactic is simply to smother any attempt at getting a distinctive Tory policy into the media. In such a situation, it would just be stupid to fling out a load of hard policies as a gift to Labour, when they have so much the whip hand in the media and the political timetable.

We all know that elections are lost by the incumbants. And we all know that this ludicrous government is perfectly placed to screw things up. So let's bide our time, work a bit on our image, and give Labour the rope to hang themselves.

[TomTom]

Was Hitler a left wing racist?

I don't really know Lucy - his Party certainly was Left - it was founded by Anton Drexler and Hitler was the 55th member. I suppose it addressed people's concerns trying to be all-embracing as political parties try to be........."inclusive"........that's the buzzword.

Stalin called it 'Socialism in One Country' the NSDAP called it "National Socialism".........after all Germany had been occupied until 1923 and they probably wanted to rebuild their nation.

Trouble with the modern education curriculum is the focus on 1933-45 as a sort of indoctrination about the Nazis without reference to Lenin-Stalin and their Fascism in Russia, so the teaching is a bit superficial and every GCSE pupil trots out the pre-packaged guff about Hitler gleaned off the crisp packets used as textbooks.

Try read some Hannah Arendt Lucy to get away from superficial assessments. Everyone who exercises State Power is by definition "right wing" even if the policies are Left....................Ernst Roehm certainly was a militant gay revolutionary socialist arrested in bed with his chauffeur

[Martin Bristow]

The idea that Labour will hang themselves is a non starter.We can not just sittight improve our presentation a bit and expect to win.

We need substance built upon a sound anslysis and a consevative perspective.Moving ever closer to the idiotic utterings of people like Poly Toynbee is a bad bad error!

[Old Hack]

As Australian PM John Howard said about Kevin Rudd, his new Labor opponent recently: "[Mr Rudd] talked about style, and style is quite important, very important, but substance is even more important. And the Australian people want substance from their politicians, not style,"

John Howard, another clunking old fist.

[Pickwick]

I agree with what Melanie Phillips says, and what's more I know exactly what she is saying.David Cameron leaves me totally bemused.

[Larry Green]

Melanie Phillips is a true Conservative and a great champion of Israel. I warmly welcome her criticisms of Cameron.

Jack Stone's rather disgusting attack on Ms Phillips is clearly motivated by his own paranoid hatred for Israel, which has been expressed repeatedly. Personally I feel soiled that someone of his type is claiming to be associated with the Conservative Party.

"Every policy Cameron has brought out has been stolen from him by Labour"

You mean every one of his so-called policies has been stolen from Labour, don't you?

[mason]

Isn't Zionism Leftwing ?