David Cameron:

“The Conservative Party has to understand why it has lost three elections in a row and what Blair has achieved over the last eight years. We can’t turn the clock back to 1997 and pretend it has all been a bad dream.”

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the Conservative Party’s biggest problem. When one of its leadership contenders believes that Blair has achieved things - positive things - over the last 8 years and that those years haven’t been a bad dream one can only wonder then how badly he actually wants to beat this man.

Let’s get one thing straight. All that stuff about the public not wanting to see politicians slagging each other off? Garbage. The public loves it. What the public recognise though - and they definitely don’t like it - is opportunistic name-calling that isn’t backed up by meaningful alternatives, sound policy and a compelling vision. Cameron cannot effectively lead the Conservative Party if he is in thrall to Tony Blair. If Blair has an 8 year record of achievement then what, exactly, does Mr Cameron want to change? You don’t want to mess with success so surely you’re left tinkering at the edges?

To wake the British people from their complacency - apathy, to be more accurate - the Party’s leader must attack government failure at all levels and make people aware of just how truly awful Labour is. The Conservative Party is not there to be a better version of Labour, it’s there to be a clean break from Labour.

No true patriot can look at what Blair has done to the country we love and then talk about what Blair has achieved. Blair’s achievements, if you want to call them that, amount to the ruination of a nation:

  • deplorable - and worsening - education standards
  • diminishing economic efficiency
  • a racially divided and alienated society
  • endemic sexual disease
  • industrial scale abortion
  • ever-deepening welfare dependency
  • chronic yobbish behaviour
  • escalating alcohol-related crime
  • widespread casual, drug use
  • surrender to the unions over the public sector pensions crisis
  • the steady flow of British sovereignty to an unelected and foreign parliament
  • a business environment groaning under the weight of government taxes, regulation and social engineering legislation
  • total ignorance of the pensions and health timebomb ticking beneath the feet of all our people
  • the relegation of England to a third-rate region in the nation it founded

    • And so on and so forth.

    New Labour’s record in the UK is an opposition’s dream. There is just so much wrong now - and much of it is directly attributable to Labour policy - that Conservative MPs should be able to wax eloquently for half an hour or so just listing it. To hear a Party leadership hopeful actually praising Blair for the lives he’s ruined and the society he’s degrading fills one with despair.

    “There are some in the party who believe that the pendulum will swing back,” he says. “But the Conservative Party has no right to office. It exists because it has principles and ideas and policies that attract people.”

    Ain’t that so, Mr Cameron. But these are conservative principles - not social democrat. And here, as a gentle reminder, are some of those principles:

  • British laws created by a British parliament only
  • On the whole people run their lives better than governments. Governments only involve themselves in those areas that communities definitely can’t manage themselves
  • the promotion of enterprise in business, society and family is achieved by government not interfering
  • the tight control of our own borders and the restriction - or cessation - of immigration that does not directly serve the free-born Briton or the society s/he lives in
  • a clear recognition of right and wrong behaviour with the former praised and the latter punished
  • government is a servant which rules with our consent
  • we only lock up people who have committed crimes
  • government officials must identify themselves to us, not us to them
  • family is crucial, its breakdown a national disaster
  • our history is our birthright; it’s what binds us. We are not ashamed of ourselves.
  • We are subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.

    • Cameron - and David Davis for that matter - need to quickly prove that they understand this. Davis, I think, does - but he needs now to work hard to demonstrate he does and translate his understanding into policy. Cameron I’ve doubted and it becomes clearer by the day that, unless he produces something dramatic, we are facing an imitation Blair.

    And as we’ve all said before, why would the public vote for Labour-lite when they can have the Real Thing?