The Metropolis

The Josh Hall column: The dilettantes running the Tories are winning

Josh Hall | Thursday 6 October, 2011 12:42

Old photo courtesy World Economic Forum

Finally, finally, conference season is over. Three weeks of absurd pantomime, amateurish attempts at rousing spectacle, and insipid speeches seeping with fetid after-dinner jokes about incompetent colleagues. The whole thing is like a protracted public school awards show.

David Cameron’s appearance was, in some respects, even more tragic than the Waco-esque trench mentality of the Lib Dem conference, or the sheer awfulness of Not-So-Red Ed’s rambling ineptitude.

Cameron, like Clegg, was in need of a galvanising moment; a speech that would help to assuage some of those for whom the “tough decision” rhetoric was beginning to wear a bit thin – perhaps because it is beginning to feel very much like the decisions are really only tough for those who live outside Westminster, working in real, precarious jobs, worrying about how they are going to afford their newly increased pension contributions.

Instead, the Prime Minister managed to deliver a speech that fell somewhere between trite and forgettable, between irredeemably clichéd and worryingly myopic.

It basically went like this: “Joke about uppity Osborne…haha a cat…look we saved Libya…something about choice fetish…misleading credit card analogy…destroy ’elf and safety…groundless all-muck-in optimism.”

The depth of the disconnect between Cameron and the real world was thrown into staggeringly stark relief by his bizarre passage on highlighter pens. This was one of the centrepieces of the speech; the takeaway that any half-competent writer knows would be the talking point on the evening news. Why, how, would Cameron ever think that health and safety regulation is likely to be a pressing concern for the electorate? Yesterday, of all days, with Europe perhaps just a couple of weeks away from catastrophic sovereign implosion. It is these odd, jarring moments of proto-autistic behaviour that suggest that Number 10 really has not got its press operation together.

Cameron’s speech wasn’t even convincingly blinkered. It wasn’t as if he stood up, pounded the lectern with righteous indignation, and explained why health and safety is killing business, or why we need to put millions out of work while preparing to bail out the banks again, or why it’s necessary to privatise the NHS. He didn’t even look like he’d convinced himself. He turned up quarter of an hour late, for Christ’s sake – apparently because he was furiously rewriting an exhortation for the squeezed middle to pay off all their credit card debt.

But our Prime Minister’s lack of conviction (in addition to his lack of basic morality, economic literacy and real-world experience) was not the most worrying thing to come out of yesterday’s little Mancunian charade.

No, the most worrying thing wasn’t the delivery, or even the content. The worst part was the realisation that we haven’t managed to beat them. With facts firmly on our side, and with the weight of history stacked well and truly against them, we are still losing to a government of neophytical, dilletantish amateurs.

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This Sunday, hundreds of people will congregate on Westminster Bridge to demonstrate against the proposed privatisation of the NHS. The government intends to remove the Health Secretary’s duty to provide care, while introducing a devastating profit motive – a combination that will rapidly lead to a two-tier health system in which patients’ ability to secure care will ultimately depend on where they live, what their ailment is, and how much money they have.

Sunday’s action marks the beginning of an autumn of civil disobedience. In the coming weeks there are plans for an occupation the London Stock Exchange, mass education demonstrations, and what may well turn out to be the biggest mass strike in almost a century. In addition, we can expect to see a new wave of campus occupations. Join us on Sunday: 1pm in Westminster, to block the Bridge – and block the Bill.

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