The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Cameron's Children

David Cameron, one of two people called David who aspire to lead the Conservative party to its next defeat, has begun the Sisyphean task of the Great Redefinition with a helpful hint. "The Tory party is many things, I don't think it is an internet party," he said.

In order to prove just how non-internet the Tory party is, David Cameron has come up with a proposal to drag Britain's youth back into the early 1960s. As with everything in British politics except the Freedom of Information Act, Cameron's proposal has been plagiarised from the United States - in this case, from Kennedy's Peace Corps. The idea is to tackle the "ghettoisation" of Britain's inner cities by getting school leavers to build hospitals in Rwanda and work with social services in Stepney. Gosh. As with National Service, it could be compulsory; and the military might be involved, as with National Service. "This is not bringing back National Service," Mr Cameron told the Political Studies Association's conference on Britishness. The Political what?

The Political Studies Association, which considers itself the leading association in its field in the UK, today hosted a Values of Britishness conference for which, to my nearly lasting regret, I am too late to register. The idea was to discuss "the future of a multi-faith, multi-ethnic Britain" and such burning questions as "How 'British' do we feel?" and "What do we mean by 'Britishness'?"; and David Cameron apparently used the Keynote Address as an excuse to flog his warmed-over dead president's colonialism-lite to the Conservative Party's 300,000 non-internet users. No doubt the Political Studies Association was duly grateful.

Other speakers included the Secretary General of the Muslim Council, the First Minister of Scotland, a sociologist, the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, and someone from the Centre from the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. Lord Kinnock, co-redefinitionist of the Labour party, was there too. So were three representatives of the business community, which must have been a great help.

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