Are The Tories Being Progressive?

So David Cameron the political shape-shifter, just like Odo from Deep Space Nine but with less humanity, is spinning away the true nature of the Tory Party again today.

This seems to be his main tactic - either lie about what your party believes in, ignore anything your party may have believed in the past, or preferably believe nothing at all.

For example, say you are the party of co-operatives (even though you have never been in favour of mutualisation or helping co-ops and have done your best to obstruct them in the past) and then not have any of your MPs turn up to a debate on co-operative solutions to education.

He has also tried similar tricks on the environment, Iraq, poverty, the Union, paternity and maternity leave, the NHS, popular TV references, donation scandals, capital punishment, national service and public services. Perhaps he should have stuck to his dream of being a truck driver instead?

But today the Tories have outdone themselves. Writing in The Independent, David Cameron claims the Conservatives are the "true progressives" of British politics. (No, really.)

Cameron says:

"If you care about poverty, if you care about inequality, if you care about the environment - forget about the Labour Party. It has forgotten about you. If you count yourself a progressive, a true progressive, only we can achieve real change."

Then we turn our attention to the Tories' Shadow Education Secretary, Michael Gove, who uses an interview in The Guardian today to say that children have been let down by progressive education policies.

"If you come from a poorer household where you don't have your own bedroom, where the only printed material is the Daily Star, then school is the only place you learn, and progressive methods let you down," he said.

Nice to see the Tory front bench singing from the same hymnsheet - what do you think they actually discuss at their "policy" meetings? It doesn't shock me that they are now a many faced beast, claiming different approaches and beliefs for different audiences, but you'd think they'd be able to co-ordinate their press work so that they didn't release these articles on the same day!

(BTW, Congrats to ePolitix for putting these to press announcements back to back in their Daily Brief today - I presume this was intentional!)

If the Tories really want to be taken seriously as a Government-in-waiting, then they'd better decide what they actually believe soon. And sharpish.
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(Photo Source: Land of Hope and Glory, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Davidcameron.jpg)