Sunday, June 25, 2006

The bland and the blander

There are a number of 'liberal' bloggers who advocate 'anyone but Labour' in order to remove what they regard as the most authoritarian government in history. Whilst I obviously wouldn't accept their solution, I have some sympathy with their analysis. The Government's attacks on civil liberties justified by the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq in the name of... the war on terror, even Gordon Brown's commitment to renewing the nuclear deterrent (who's finger is on the button... if it is a 'unilateral deterrent' can Britain fire these things without US consent - I very much doubt it) in the name of the war on anyone you like, all of these things fuel the 'Get Blair/Brown out at any cost' argument.

But whereas some Labour activists have lived in hope that Gordon (he's one of us, from Labour, not someone who has infiltrated the Party) will bring about a new dawn... what on earth do the 'anyone but Labour' people imagine Cameron is going to bring to the table. He tells Jonathan Ross that he still believes the invasion of Iraq was right, he tells Andy Marr he wants to scrap the Human Rights Act and bring in something else (but unlike the Government, he doesn't have to say what it is) and he is committed to the same nuclear future (in power and weapons) that Blair favours.

The Tory history on sleaze is hardly likely to impress people that electing them is going to change anything there, and their record of running down public services is second to none. So what motive is there in replacing the bland with the blander? Revenge? Punishment? It's about the only one that I can think of, and it does have some validity, but cutting off your nose to spite your face is a bloody painful lesson.