I reckon the Tories could have had another 20 seats if it had not been for UKIP. The question of who is to govern Britain would then have been decided fairly swiftly. Will the Conservatives learn anything from that? I suspect not. Cameron could have killed off UKIP easily, he just had to offer a referendum, that he wouldn't tells me and thousands of others exactly where he stands on the EU and is why he lost potential critical gains.Tory Bear and The Tap as well as Conservative Home have all started in on UKIP blaming them for the fact that the Tories aren't running the country. Unfortunately for them it's very much a case of Mea Culpa for Cameron. He had many opportunities to kill off UKIP or at least muzzle them during the general election, a simple promise of a referendum on the EU in the Tory manifesto would have done it. But no, because I suspect that Cameron is at heart a EUphile and knows given a choice the UK people would elect to leave he couldn't do that. Instead he went scratting around trying to entice environmentalists when climate scepticism reached a peak. He tried to entice the pink vote only for the B&B scandal to involve Chris Grayling. In the end he even tried for a bonfire of the Labour authoritarian/database state, but too little too late.
UKIP was an easy solution, or at least you'd have thought so, but I suspect that Cameron couldn't or wouldn't give in to a simple request to hold a referendum on the EU after reneging on a promised referendum on Lisbon, he even ignored the re-ratification issue.
So for Tories looking for someone to blame, look no further than Team Cameron, you may have gained 97 seats, but you lost 12 percentage points in the time between the Lisbon denial and the election, perhaps you should aim some of your fire at the man who could have done something about that rather than sticking his head in the sand and pretending the EU as an issue didn't exist. Cameron could have had it all, but his EUphilia betrayed him, the Tory Party and the country, and that is where I'm squarely placing the blame.
2 annotations:
Cameron brought it on himself.
People voted. The politicians need to go and make the best of what the people voted for.
It's not their place to criticise the way we voted. It's their job to make the most of it.
Of course it would have been perfect for them if we had all just had the good common sense to vote the way we were told. Go to palace, kiss hands, get feet under the table. But we didn't. We used OUR votes to vote what WE wanted.
If they aren't bright enough or can't be bothered then I'm sure that their resignations will be accepted.
They should grow up and do the bloody job they are paid to do and stop whinging and blaming all the damned time.
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