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Pots, Kettles, and Blacks
In today’s Independent, Bruce Anderson lambasted the Conservative membership for being out of touch with both public opinion and the party leadership, particularly Cameron himself. Anderson criticised membership opposition to the EU, unforgiving attitude to the IRA, support for grammar schools, and unabating hero-worship of Baroness Thatcher.
However, most hurtfully, he accused 90% of us of wanting the country’s “coloured population” to be “one-tenth of its present total”. Whilst I find some members’ fixation with the European Union somewhat counter-productive, even counter-intuitive at times, his accusation that 90% of us are racists goes too far. This, must I remind you, is the same Bruce Anderson that accused African Americans of “laziness” and “dysunction” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: blaming them for “choosing” to be poor, afflicted by crime and drugs, and being murdered.
Unlike Bruce Anderson, I don’t feel qualified to speak for the entire party membership, so I can’t absolve all members of all criticism. However, on this particular count, I can call it as it is. I’m proud to belong to a party of which I don’t know a single member that holds that sort of bigoted view. But I’m equally proud to belong to a party whose members advocate low taxes, support the maintenance of grammar schools, and count Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, not Bruce Anderson or Polly Toynbee, amongst their political heroes.
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February 19th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
You are right Oliver. I read the article and was unsure if he was totally serious. The Conservatives I meet in Warwickshire are often the most active members of the community. They are members of village and church groups first and the Conservative party second. Their compassion often goes unnoticed. It is very easy for Bruce Anderson to sit in his Independent office and berate them without appreciating the sterling work they do in knitting communities together.
He is right that David Cameron isn’t a traditional Conservative. He is a Conservative nevertheless, we also shouldn’t forget he won a mandate from members to lead the party (although his mandate was not as large as IDS’s in 2001!). If anyone is shown to out of touch by all of this it is Bruce Anderson.
February 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Anderson’s comment is very odd. He says at one point that Tories fantasise about a Britain where “crime is under firm control” - as if it’s a bad thing.
February 20th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I don’t get this.
Isn’t Bruce Anderson a Tory?
February 25th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
such an article does not dignify a response