How long is it possible to adhere to a dogma despite all quantifiable evidence that shows you are wrong, in practice and in principle? This question is at the heart of The Cameron Delusion, an updated and snappily renamed version of Peter Hitchens’ book The Broken Compass, in which the former International Socialist recounts his journey from the intellectual left to standard bearer for the kind of romantic pre-war Conservative who enjoys his column in the Mail on Sunday.
The compass to which Hitchens referred was the old right and left which, he argues, no longer exists, such has been the acceptance of so much liberal left thinking by old adversaries on the right. This capitulation by Conservatives, accelerated under David Cameron’s leadership, leaves us in a right old pickle, argues Hitchens in his usual polemical style.
He writes: “It was greatly in Labour’s interest, once the Tory Party had accepted so much of Labour’s programme as unalterable, that the Tory Party should be preserved against the danger of dissolution.” While this may be true, someone of a different political persuasion could argue that if the left had not been so eager to embrace a post-war Conservative capitalist free market we would not now be in the position in which we find ourselves.
Hitchens provokes and infuriates in equal measure. He is predictably scathing about the Iraq war and endearingly romantic about our lost railways, but he is at his most convincing when arguing that comprehensive education has immeasurably damaged the prospects of some of our brightest – but poorest – children. He is right when he says we already have an entrenched selective education system. Surely it would be better, he argues, to select on academic ability rather than on parents’ ability to buy property in catchment areas. It is an argument difficult for those on the left to counter and Hitchens hammers it home aware, perhaps, that this is the strongest policy argument he has to make.
On other subjects, such as political correctness and Tony Blair – Hitchens, with an annoying tic, insists on calling him Anthony Blair; why? – he flounders, and you can imagine the mental contortions he underwent as he struggled to expand the weekly dose of vitriol he administers so brilliantly in his newspaper column into a fully fledged and sustainable argument. Perhaps the secret is to read this book in tiny Peter Hitchens-size bites.
