Sorry Cam', I Still Don’t Trust You

Let me start by saying I’m probably one of David Cameron’s target audience. I’m one of his ‘hard-working people’. I voted for him in 2010, in fact, up until then I’d always voted Tory, indeed I’ve been asked twice now to stand as a Tory councillor (and once by UKIP too). Before anyone accuses me, I’m not rich, I don’t come from a middle class or privileged background (my dad was a fireman and trade unionist, my mum did cleaning jobs). I left school with 8 O-Levels; I’ve got no A-Levels and didn’t go to University. I did a five year apprenticeship which got me a HNC, after that I’ve just worked really really hard at my career to make sure I have a nice house, a nice car etc. Nobody gave it to me; it’s taken nearly 30 years of hard work by me to get there. I’ve always had the ethos of work hard and rewards will come, just as Mr Cameron suggested in his conference speech.

Anyway, listening to David Cameron’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, was interesting, some of it was good common sense and what many of us wanted to hear. He spoke about some of the things us ‘hard-working people’ get annoyed with. His promises to get rid of dole bludgers rings true, why should you get more from other peoples hard earned taxes than you can from working yourself? His comments about the UK being ‘a land of opportunity’ where ‘profit is not a dirty word’ are spot on. I also liked the attack on Labour having learned nothing from their last term in office and his insistence to the Liberals that the Tories are the party of tax cuts not them. Overall I suppose it was a fairly good, if unchallenging speech.

It might have come across as a nice, well aimed sound-bite, but today’s Tory party is not the party of the many. Nor is it the party many of us thought it was back in 2010. It is a party for the aspirational capitalist, and very few others. Yes that accounts for a lot of us, but certainly not the majority. They've gone on to prove they are South-centric, traditional, and exclusionary and they ignore, or have little regard for, much of what goes on North of Watford. All very disappointing for someone who campaigned for them in 2010.

However !

It might have been a reasonable, flag waving speech saying what the Tories will do, however, history has shown that it’s not what Cameron says, it’s what he doesn’t say we have to be careful of !!

If We Knew Then What We Know Now

The Tories/ Coalition Government have done so many things since coming to office that weren’t in either of their manifestoes it’s unbelievable. Nobody voted for many of the things they’ve done, so how did they get the mandate ?

Items which spring immediately to mind are the massive upheaval and cost to ‘reform’ the NHS. The Coalition, and I mean both parties to it, is now engaged in the dismantlement of the NHS in England, motivated by a combination of wild ideological zealotry and outrageous commercial conflicts of interest.  They don’t get it, in general we like the NHS and we’re happy to pay for it, it doesn’t need major wholesale reform or cutting. When Cameron came in we all had great hope that for personal reasons and because he ring-fenced the budget that his 3 letters NHS rang true. He said “no top down reorganisation of the NHS”. We believed him. Then whatever the rights and wrongs of the changes, went and did a top down reorganisation of the NHS. My trust in him started to evaporate.

Another big one for me was the decimation of our armed forces. He did this at the same time as utilising them to fight other people’s wars more and more. Just how much long term money we’d already spent was tipped down the drain after the Strategic Defence and Security Review? Our Army has been cut to such a small size that by 2020, in its entirety they can comfortably all have a seat at Old Trafford. The number of tanks we have has been cut by 40%. Our aircraft carriers were scrapped or sold off with the exception of one which is now a helicopter carrier because, wait for it, he sold all our carrier aircraft (the Harriers) to the yanks for spare parts ! The new generation Nimrod’s that were built at a cost of £3 BILLION and were about to start entering squadron service were unceremoniously cut up for scrap almost immediately after the review. How is that good value for money for us tax payers ? Did Cameron tell us he was going to waste this amount of money before the election ? Did he Hell !!

HS2 is another one, was that in the manifesto ? I don’t remember voting for any promise to borrow and spend £50 Billion of our kid’s taxes to spend on a white elephant few people will actually benefit from or actually want. 

The list is endless. Like I say Its not what he says it what he doesn’t say and that’s why I still don’t trust him and for the first time in a General Election won’t be voting Tory in 2015.

So who will I vote for come 2015 ?

Good question, certainly not RedEd who wants to turn the Country into some sort of former Soviet State where he thinks he’s the Union puppet master but he’s actually their puppet. His approach has got Neil Kinnock written all over it, we didn’t want him and we don’t want Ed.

How about Liberal – LMFAO – What do they stand for ? Just to pee from what I’ve seen, and that’s just the women. I think Nick Clegg had his spine removed during an operation as part of the reforming of the NHS, he’s ineffectual in everything he does, a complete oxygen thief.

UKIP? Maybe ! I agree with a lot of what UKIP stand for, but there are elements of it I don’t. UKIP’s prime policy is leaving the European Union of course. Yes, I agree we should leave the EU in its current state. What we should do though is go back in history and work out what we went in it for in the first place. The original purpose and name we knew it by was actually the ‘Common Market’, it was for trade purposes, that’s what we had a referendum about membership of, and we went in on the basis of better trading relationships. 

It appears that trade now takes a back seat to rules, payments, human rights, people movement, quotas need I go on?  Cameron is right that we need to renegotiate our position but I think it needs to go a lot further than he thinks. It needs to go back to just a trading goods agreement and get rid of all the rest of it. How do we do that? The only way really, is in response to a straight in/out referendum. If the country votes ‘out’, the EU will have to sit up and take notice, they’re in danger of losing too much revenue for them not to. That’s when we are in the strongest position to force a change and reversion to what our parents and grandparents voted for in the first place should take precedence.

And as a little postscript, don’t forget it was Edward Heath’s Tory Government in 1973 that took us into Europe, Harold Wilson’s Labour opposition actively opposed it even forcing the referendum in 1975 after they came to power to gauge whether the population actually wanted to be in it (the vote was ‘yes’ by the way). Oh how times have changed.

So in conclusion. the only thing I can say is : You can’t trust any of them these days !!!