Tag Archives: david cameron

David Cameron and the EU bill: very stupid

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I know this is a bit late, but it’s worth following up on.

In a previous post, I pondered whether David Cameron’s tub-thumping over the EU’s bill for £1.7bn extra in UK payments was a very clever conspiracy to boost his image as a statesman, or a very stupid tantrum which played into his opponents’ hands.

The answer would be revealed when the UK either paid, or didn’t pay, the bill. And, as it turned out, we payed:

As I said at the time, this could have been played as a triumph: our extra payments were due to better economic performance. Like a recalculation by HMRC which tells you that you owe extra income tax because you earned more than expected, it was annoying, but a consequence of being better off.

Instead, Cameron and Osborne’s handling of the issue was typical of their clueless approach, and has helped to get us where we are now: with Vote Leave ahead in the polls and in control of the debate, looking likely to win the referendum on 23rd June.

Unprecedented flooding

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The Prime Minister David Cameron has described the current floods as “unprecedented”.

Clearly nothing like this has ever happened before.

There’s no way that our political leaders could have foreseen these events.

No-one can blame Cameron for not seeing this coming.

He hasn’t got a crystal ball.

As the Prime Minister said, unprecedented.

Why Labour is in crisis: the disastrous 1997 election

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The worst thing to happen to the Labour party in the last 30 years was its landslide victory at the 1997 general election.

Ed Miliband: a vacuum of leadership (Wikimedia Commons)

Labour is currently undergoing an ideological crisis, similar to the one the Conservative party went through between its overwhelming defeat in 1997, and the election of David Cameron as leader at the end of 2005. It has no idea what it stands for or how to persuade people to vote for it. It is haemorrhaging its core working class voters to apathy, UKIP or worse. Its leader, Ed Miliband, is a catastrophe: vilified as a union puppet by right-wing commentators, but simultaneously, completely incapable of speaking for working people or earning their trust and confidence. The fact that Labour sympathisers now wistfully imagine how much better things would have been if David Miliband had won the leadership – even though the criticisms of Ed (out-of-touch, middle-class, London, Oxbridge, career politician / policy wonk with unfortunate ties to the Blair/Brown years) apply equally well to David – shows how poor and uninspiring the potential Labour leadership pool is.

The existential plight Labour now finds itself in is a direct result of its long period of electoral failure in the ’80s, followed by its resurgence under Tony Blair in the ’90s. Continue reading →

Cameron and the EU bill: very clever or very stupid?

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So the EU has presented the UK with an additional bill of £1.7 billion, and David Cameron is kicking off and saying we’re not going to pay.

My first reaction was ultra-cynical. The Conservatives are faced with the threat of another by-election against UKIP in a couple of weeks. Perhaps the whole thing had been orchestrated in cahoots with the EU as an elaborate charade. Here’s how it works in Cameron’s favour: the EU pretends to be owed £1.7bn, Cameron makes a big stand and refuses to pay, the EU backs down from its fictitious demand and Cameron struts around like he’s proved he can defeat them. Wobbly Eurosceptic voters decide he’s the real anti-EU statesman and stick with the Tories instead of haemorrhaging to UKIP.

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