In the last couple of weeks there were some disappointing signals about the party’s narrational direction. The first sign was an anti-sign: the near silence over the ongoing “issues” surrounding the Speaker, whose laughable suggestion it is that the best way to investigate the problem with parliamentary expenses was to set up a committee of investigation, led by Harriet Harman, which would report back to MPs sometime before the end of the decade. Given that the Speaker is himself the target of some serious allegations about the misuse of public money, and that Ms Harman isn’t exactly what one might call, in this week of triumph for the Italian Centre-Right, le mani pulite, to put it mildly (she can always ask Mr and Mrs Jowell to translate – I’m sure they’re quite au fait with Italian political terminology, though I doubt whether they approve of this one), then this proposal from the Speaker wasn’t satisfactory. But the response from Tory Leadership Towers wasn’t deafening. Why was that? Why only Douglas Carswell brave enough to stand up and demand a new Speaker?

Next came a disappointing answer from Mr Cameron to Sky News’ Adam Boulton, who interviewed DC on the morning that saw thousands of Londoners demonstrating their opprobrium for the Chinese regime and its thuggish PR tactics. When asked a simple question about whether or not he would attend the Olympics opening ceremony, Mr Cameron gave a noncommittal answer – something about not yet having been invited, so therefore the question didn’t arise. I expected that a liberal-Tory leader would just say “I won’t go to a celebration in China, designed to add lustre to an unpleasant political regime. I send my best wishes to our sports men and women, but there should be no British politicians at the non-sporting opening ceremony”. (News just in from Amnesty: China continues to execute more people than any other country in the world: about six a week. Hope the gunshots and screams of terror, including those of political dissidents, don’t drown out the cheering when the torch makes its way from Tibet back to Beijing).

Finally, there’s the corruption investigation into BAe and Saudi Arabia. More specifically, the lukewarm Conservative support for the then-Attorney General’s “decision” (which we now know had more to do with Tony Blair’s orders, rather than any judicial or legal interpretation of the law) to suspend the original enquiry. I heard William Hague giving some good responses on Any Questions last Saturday, but the problem was that it sounded a bit too Jesuitical. When the government first of all simply ignores the law which protects our liberty, and then proposes to amend the law so that the Attorney-General can decide to halt any such investigation, particularly when the investigation in question is about corruption (something which we used to pride ourselves afflicted Britain at a lower rate than was the case in many unluckier countries), then, in general, surely any liberal knows that they are in opposition to the government’s intentions?

I’m not trying to be a Cassandra. There have been some fantastic advances in the space occupied by Tories under David Cameron, space which we had all but allowed Labour to colonise as its own. I’m thinking primarily of the work on mending our broken society and the focus on social justice. But that only makes these three issues seem to jar more than they otherwise would. To put it another way: I would have expected the Conservative Party in the 1980s to take all three positions – defending the Speaker (if only by silence), attending the opening ceremony for the Chinese Olympics, and supporting the suppression of the inquiry into alleged corruption over an arms deal. I guess I just don’t expect it from the modern, liberal Conservative Party.  

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 6:38 pm , written by Graeme Archer and is filed under Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.