It is accepted amongst many that one of the main reasons why the Conservatives won the 2015 election is by persistent (but incorrect) messaging that Labour caused the 2008 financial crash (naughty Labour bringing down the US economy as well!)
And it seems that they continue to risk keeping on twisting the truth in the belief that most voters won’t bother to look further than what they are fed by politicians in power. If they are correct then they have a recipe for continuing in power but are morally bankrupt.
I couldn’t give a damn who is in power as long as they look after those that struggle to look after themselves and genuinely try to narrow the equality gap and create real opportunities for the less privileged to be able to climb the ladder. I am trying not to be cynical but last week’s Conservative Party Conference makes it hard not be cynical and here’s how.
In his speech Cameron said of Jeremy Corbyn;
“You only really need to know one thing: he thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a “tragedy”.
No. A tragedy is nearly 3,000 people murdered one morning in New York. A tragedy is the mums and dads who never came home from work that day. A tragedy is people jumping from the towers after the planes hit.
My friends – we cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.”
Corbyn was on Iran’s Press TV talking about the killing of the al-Qaida leader at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan by US navy Seals. Writing in the Guardian Jessica Elgot dissects what Corbyn actually said:
“This was an assassination attempt, and is yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy”.
But the context to that sentence is key – Corbyn is having a discussion about extrajudicial killing. He says, before that controversial line:
“Well I think that everyone should be put on trial. I also profoundly disagree with the death penalty, under any circumstances for anybody. That’s my own view.
On this there was no attempt whatsoever that I can see, to arrest him, to put him on trial, to go through that process.”
“A tragedy is nearly 3,000 people murdered one morning in New York”
Corbyn not only does not dispute this, but says it himself in his very next sentence on the same controversial programme in question.
Corbyn says:
“The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. Tens of thousands of people have died”.
What I fail to understand is how someone who is supposed to lead our country can twist things so much just to rub someone’s nose into the dirt. What kind of example is that setting? And isn’t it this kind of behaviour that puts people off politics and voting? Or maybe that is another calculated and self-serving gamble.
In his speech Cameron is clearly talking the talk of a party that is claiming the centre ground.
He said “Do you know that in our country today, even if they have exactly the same qualifications, people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get call-backs for jobs than people with ethnic-sounding names?”
Under Cameron–the Equality and Human Rights Commission – has had its budget decimated, having been cut from £70m to £17m.
The Conservatives have said in the past week that they are about “social justice”, are for “working people” are against “the scourge of poverty” and are the “workers party”. Yet the tax credit cuts will leave around 3 million low paid families £1300 a year worse off.
They even claim to be the party of “affordable housing” by boasting that they have forced developers in London to build more affordable starter homes at £450,000. According to Shelter that means that these starter homes can be afforded by someone earning £77,000 a year. Am I living in the past? Is £77,000 easily achievable in London today?
Have we become so depoliticised that we just unquestioningly go along with all this?
Questions, questions, questions. Are we asking enough questions?