It’s in his eyes. Not even David Cameron expects to win the 2015 general election, to be held on May 7th, 2015 according to the fixed term legislation.
The contrast with Ed Miliband’s barnstorming speech last week could not have been greater. Miliband’s speech had a good attempt at intellectual gravitas and a coherent narrative on the abuse of markets in relation to the public good, but did admittedly suffer from a borderline use of clichés and standard rhetorical devices. Still, against the best efforts to discredit him through Damian McBride’s latest pissed-and-tell, Miliband delivered an output which both potential voters and the Unions could agree to agree on.
David Cameron delivered his package like a newsreader trying to make appropriate emotional gestures on reading a flat autocue script. The end result was lack-lustre, unimpressive and frankly unappealing.
It looked as if even he didn’t know what he was doing there. Whoever the script writer (sorry I meant speech writer) was, he or she should be sacked. David Cameron looked as if he was reading a boring an executive summary of an annual report of his organisation. He did not appear like a leader with a vision. He looked like a manager who had consulted with his Chief Finance Officer, George Osborne, that, even after staring the decimal points, he could give a confident projection to investors about future performance.
That bit I can’t blame Cameron for. He was reading out his Annual Report to his corporate investors, quite literally, the people who can make or break his party. Hard-nosed hedgies were there to check their investments would bear fruition. After all, many members of the audience were there to check that High Speed 2 would remain part of the business plan.
Cameron could not of course mention that Labour would definitely repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012). Such a statement would, of course, send uncontrollable shockwaves to corporate investors, who wish to live long enough to witness their return-on-investment through a swathe of procurement contracts in due course.
The key ‘shared values’ were there like ‘aspiration’, ‘opportunity’, ‘wealth creation’, ‘low taxation’, and ‘strong communities’, in keeping with the Conservative Party corporate mission statement. However, they were delivered devoid of emotion, totally ignoring the plight of disabled citizens who had had their lives screwed up because of the benefits system, no reference to the closure of law centres, libraries or Sure Start, for example.
There wasn’t anything controversial there. No mention of ‘zero hour contracts’. No mention of the closure of law centres. No mention of the inequity of Workfare. No mention of the failures of the privatised utilities industries. It was a deadpan speech for an audience whose average age was close to retirement time.
There was no mention of the failure of how he had achieved ‘the Small State’. No mention of the outsourcing failures to the handful of companies, largely the same bunch who were bidding for the NHS procurement contracts, and many of whom have been involved in one fraud allegation or another.
The speech in a sense was quite representative of a totally uninspiring mob of Conservatives: overprivileged, inarticulate about basic macroeconomics, very pro-employer, and frankly delusional in places.
I would rather have had my testicles attached to the National Grid than to travel up to Manchester voluntarily to listen to that. No. I perhaps would have preferred to have all my teeth extracted without any anaesthetic. I am only glad that I have no interest in the performance of the Conservative Party, or I would have been distressed by today’s performance. It was less ‘Breaking Bad’, more like ‘Unbelievably Bad’. It was a performance that even a Carlton newsreader would have been embarrassed at.
It’s definitely in his eyes. He’s already making plans for his retirement.
