Last week I posted Mikey's "depressing list" of reasons why the right might be unhappy with David Cameron. One reader sent me an email response via Tim Montgomerie. As with Mikey's list I have decided to republish it.
"Dear Mr Grove,
Your list of reasons why right wing conservatives were unhappy with Cameron has provoked me to put fingers to keyboard. I think of myself as a right winger; I adore Lady T; backed Davis in 2005; and am now very enthusiastic about Cameron. Mikey had 14 points. Rather than rebutting them 1 by 1 as your correspondents did, I offer 6 positive reasons why right wingers of all types should be excited about Cameron becoming PM.
Force of emergency circumstances.
The public finances are so shocking that a 'steady as she goes' course will be impossible. Cameron will have to reshape the state. It may not have been his first path of choice but he will have to be open to radical thinking. In better economic times he might have chosen to ignore the counsel of David Freud, Andrew Haldenby, Andrew Lilico, Edward Leigh, Liam Halligan, Fraser Nelson, Tim Montgomerie and the Taxpayers Alliance. He will be more inclined to listen to radical voices because do nothingness is now the road to national bankruptcy. The State will look different in five years because the current State is too unaffordable. It is reform or bust.
Power to the people.
The Cameron prospectus is stuffed full of ideas that will give power to people. My top 5 are the power to set up new schools; to elect police chiefs; to veto large Council Tax rises; to abolish Regional offices; and to set up Local TV. These are dispersals of power that politicians will never be able to take back once people have tasted them.
Family values.
John Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith all promised to support the traditional family but were not popular enough to deliver. Cameron has talked about marriage from the time he launched his leadership platform until now. He is serious and left wingers of the Harman-Toynbee axis hate him for it. It is a brave policy and right wingers who know the importance of strong institutions beyond the reach of the State should be cheering him at every hurdle. And make no mistake there will be many hurdles.
Euro realist.
I much prefer the describer Euro realist to Euro sceptic and Cameron is a Euro realist. Thatcher did not wake up to Europe until her Bruges speech in 1989. By then she had surrendered large slices of sovereignty. Cameron is a Eurosceptic before he has even got to Downing St. He has already left the pro-Union EPP. He will not give away more powers without a vote of all the British people. The national powers Cameron will inherit (and they are too few) will be locked in a chest to be opened by the British electorate or never again.
Unionist.
Cameron is often accused of being an opinion poll chaser. The most obvious temptation for an opinion poll chaser would be to play the England card. There are many votes in dismantling the Barnett Formula and promising goodies to the English. Cameron has not trodden that path. He has put the integrity of the UK first although he will probably gain no seats in Scotland from this principled high ground and will make it harder to win south of the border. Cameron's decision to establish in Northern Ireland means the Conservative Party will be the true party of the United Kingdom next year. Cameron's Unionism comes from his sense of history and conserving institutions that work.
A right wing team around him.
Thatcher had to do nearly everything on her own. There was Sir Keith Joseph but the carpet of her Cabinet room squelched from all the dripping wets. Cameron has the children of Thatcher at his side. Osborne, Hague, Grayling, Fox, Gove and Herbert are light years better than Pym, Prior, Heseltine, Gilmour, Carrington and Walker. And it's not just the top team. The conservativehome poll of next generation MPs points to more and more Thatcherism to come. You and Mikey should be rejoicing rather than crying into your G&Ts.
Yours in Thatcherism!"
