Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Cary Gee – Out and about

EUROPE, tax-cuts, immigration, homophobia and some good old-fashioned racism. Have the Tories spoken of anything else in recent weeks? It seems that you really cannot teach an old party new tricks.

The latest row to engulf the Tories and expose the lie of “caring compassionate Conservatism” concerns remarks made by Nigel Hastilow, who has now resigned as Conservative parliamentary candidate for the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis.

Hastilow earned his 15 minutes of infamy by declaring in a regional newspaper article that Enoch Powell was right 40 years ago when he spoke of “rivers of blood” and said that allow further immigration would be “literally mad”.

I feel almost sorry for David Cameron, who I met once at a restaurant in his Oxfordshire constituency.

He was then, as he is now, personable, charming and basically sincere. I do not believe Cameron has a racist or homophobic bone in his body. However, as the pretty face of an ugly party, he is in an unwinnable position. Just how difficult his job is can be shown by the level of support Hastilow received from his local constituency association.

“I am shocked but not surprised”, said former Labour MP Oona King, following Tory MP Patrick Mercer’s apology for army racism. No one should be surprised by this latest row either. An unrepentant Hastilow has defended his views by stating that what he wrote was “in line with Conservative Party policy”. It’s the only credible remark he has made so far.

The latest racism row follows a virtually unreported case of homophobia involving the leader of the Conservative student society at the Univeristy of Central Lancashire. Fergus Bowman has been expelled from the party (to the Tories’ credit) after creating a group on website Facebook which he called “Homos Burn in Hell”.
The homepage for this featured a picture of a Klu Klux Klan member standing beside a burning cross above the words: “Everyone knows homosexuality is against God’s wishes.”

He wrote: “Calling them gay is destroying the English language…. I prefer to call them AIDS monkeys” Bowman maintains that his comments were made as a private joke among friends, adding entirely unconvincingly: “I do not advocate homophobia.”

Sadly this incident, appalling though it is, is not a one-off. While researching a different story, I keyed the word “homosexual”’ into the Tory Party’s official website. I failed to find what I was looking for, but came across a debate on the “Stand Up, Speak Up” pages.

Under the heading “Fixing Our Broken Society”, a remark was posted concerning a director of the Notting Hill Housing Trust, Gerard Lemos. He was described as “the Labour homosexual protégé’”.

Why? Whether or not you approve of his professional competence, surely his sexuality is utterly irrelevant.

Why would you bother to conflate the man’s choice of sexual partner with his political affiliation? The site editor is Conservative MP and rising Tory star, Stephen Crabb.

Why, when the Opposition is standing astride a very deep fissure, does Labour seem intent on throwing itself in with them? (Patrick Mercer has been embraced by Gordon Brown in his ‘big tent”).

Instead of leading the debate on Europe, taxation and immigration – the “dog-whistle” subjects essential to any party’s chances of winning an election – Labour seems almost happy to continue its daylight raids on an increasingly empty policy chest.

Once again, his party has confronted Cameron with an ugly dichotomy. Either he steers his preferred course through the centre ground of politics – which he must if he is to have any chance of maintaining his recent poll advantage – or he risks alienating the xenophobic, racist and homophobic members he relies on to deliver election victory for him.

This is not dissimilar to the problem Labour faced from the Militant Tendency in the 1980s, which took the party 18 years to solve. At best, Cameron has 18 months to salvage, not just his own ambitions, but the very existence of the Conservative Party as a credible force in British politics.

Now, more than ever, Labour must hold its nerve while attacking the “nasty” party and reminding the country why it returned Labour to power in the first place.
It will take much more than the sight of Teresa May spinning on her kitten heels at a gay disco in Blackpool to convince anyone that a little cosmetic surgery can save the terminally sick patient that is David Cameron’s Tory Party.