Bloggers4Labour

The Ministry of Truth has covered the announcement of the so-called elite group, or “A-list”, of Tory candidates for the next General Election. Here’s the BBC’s relatively uncritical coverage. Among the trivia:

Ex-Coronation Street actor Adam Rickitt eco-campaigner Zac Goldsmith and author Louise Bagshawe are all on the A-list, the BBC understands.

Maria Hutchings, a mother who famously confronted Tony Blair on live television, also joins the elite group.

Conveniently, David Cameron is able to boast that:

More than half of the 100 first names on the list are women and 10% are from ethnic minorities

That should go down a storm within the party, but read on for some essential background.

The white, vaguely aristocratic Cameron – who coincidentally happens to be a former PR guy, once described as a “poisonous, slippery individual” – belives he has grounds to spin this as an overturning of the established way of things:

…some white middle class men would be disappointed not to be on the list.

Cameron’s way of politics, suggested by his recent speech to the Business in the Community Annual Conference, is cut to pieces over at Stumbling and Mumbling. The real Cameron is not a principled individual with a command of theory, principle, and practice, and the drive to enact the policies that must be enacted, but a sanctimonious, woolly-minded, bleating, baa-lamb. In his rush to become the reincarnation of Princess Diana, for whom human feelings were powerless within a cage of privilege and aristocratic genetics, what hope can there be that:

• Cameron will maintain an adult conversation with the electorate?
• He’ll challenge those who need to be challenged, even allowing himself to be made unpopular?
• He has any understanding of economics, and will use the full range of tools at his disposal, without resorts to mere moral crusades?

Let’s not forget Maria Hutchings, who we covered briefly last year. The sky is the limit if the BBC’s special profile of her is anything to go by.

She describes herself as an “Essex girl through and through”, so let’s hear what she had to say in an interview, last year, with David Aaronovitch:

Then there was Mrs Hutchings’ invocation of MMR. As all of us who have watched this stupid saga unfold know, there is no evidence whatsoever linking MMR to autism and every evidence that the scare campaign about it is leading to epidemics of mumps and the return of measles.

This, however, was not what had the Aaronovitch pachyderm quivering on top of a small stool. It was Mrs Hutchings’s sense of grievance coupled with her feeling of entitlement. ‘With an increasing number of immigrants and asylum seekers,’ she told one newspaper, ‘then the pot is reduced for the rest of us.’ This, of course, is inaccurate as far as immigrants go, but I’ve interrupted her. She went on: ‘Mr Blair has got to stop focusing on issues around the world such as Afghanistan and Aids in Africa and concentrate on the issues that affect the people of Middle England, like myself who pay the taxes which keep the country going.’ Then came this line. ‘I don’t care about refugees. I care about my little boy and I want the treatment he deserves.’

So many questions:

• How long has she been a Conservative Party member?
• Did she keep her mouth shut at her selection interview?
• Was she even put through a proper selection process, or did the Tories think that a woman with right-wing instincts was too sweet a plum to turn down?
• Does David Cameron approve of her contempt for the needs of the world’s genuinely down-trodden?
• If he was aware of her views, are we seeing a BNP-tolerating streak in this Queen of Hearts™ of a leader?
• And if so, can he so confidently claim the moral high ground over Tony Blair, someone who has committed his Government to dealing with international issues.

We shall await DC’s explanation with interest.

A number of people have picked up on the “A-list”/Hutchings story: Bob Piper, PoliticalHack, Lee Gregory, and Stephen Newton, who has been following her progress for some time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.