The Amazing Daveybloke

The new, cuddly, in-touch, streamlined, modernised Conservative party has made another of its increasingly forlorn attempts to look as though it had some sort of difference of principle with New Labour. First, the superbly-named Shadow Minister for Cultchah, Hugo Swire, was quoted as saying that museums should have the right to charge people for the privilege of looking at their own national heritage. This was not only a bit unpopular; it also looked dangerously close to being a policy, and the infamous Swire, doubtless with much twirling of tweed moustache and swishing of non-animal-product riding-crop, dispatched a tactful spokesbeing to assure the Murdoch Times that he hadn't known what he was talking about.

Meanwhile, Daveybloke has been stiffening the sinews of his very own Tooting Popular Front with talk of a "battle for Britain" which will see the end of the "phoney war" between himself and the Prince in Waiting. How nice to see that the Conservatives no longer play the World War II card at the drop of an opinion poll. Daveybloke clarified the position on grammar schools, promising to introduce a "grammar stream" into secondary schools, but giving parents and teachers the final say. This is certainly helpful. On the threats from terrorism and crime, Daveybloke said he thought we should tackle them. As far as economic stability and social cohesion are concerned, Daveybloke tends to favour these. Daveybloke is in favour of "the family", which is "the one institution in our society which matters to me more than any other" and which is also, rather mystifyingly, what "our collective security is about". Does Daveybloke intend to provide government initiatives to allow stable and loving families to go out and pot a few Islamists at the weekend? I doubt it, but only because I don't believe Daveybloke has John Reid's sophisticated sense of humour. In any case, it is reassuring to observe that Daveybloke is also in favour of "a radical improvement in Britain's economic competitiveness, promoting innovation and stimulating the creation of new businesses and jobs".

In summary, Daveybloke noted that the electorate now has "a clear choice" between "two different visions of society" and "two different approaches to running the country". The likelihood that both visions are domestically neoliberal, anilingually "Atlanticist" and internationally belligerent, and that both approaches to running the country involve more privatisation, no progress to speak of on climate change and a surveillance camera on every corporately-sponsored lamp-post, at this stage should bother nobody. In what Daveybloke or the tabloid crew who write his speeches lauded, with über-Blairite orgasmitude, as "this amazing country in this amazing century", all that old-fashioned Punch and Judy politics, whereby government and opposition got into disagreements over the way things were done, simply has no place.