Well David Cameron has announced his revised Built to Last mini-manifesto today. In it his party is pledging to scrap ID cards. This after eventually kow-towing to Labour at every step of the way of the legislative process since first coming out in favour of them 2 years ago.
Now if the Tories had only come to this sensible and logical conclusion to Labour's Big Brother proposals at the start of the process the fight would have been lost by Labour every step of the way. Instead the Tories have now after the process has gone through every level of Parliamentary scrutiny and voting has now come out against it. I'm glad the Liberal Democrats took a principled stand on ID cards the whole way down the line standing up for our civil liberties.
This looks like the latest case of Opportunistic Conservativism, just like Vote Blue Go Green and other proposals that Dave has been spourting forth over the months he has been in charge.
Cameron seems to be trying to play to different groups in the tory party at the moment.
ReplyDeleteOn the radio this morning he was full of talk of cutting back central government etc, but then talked about increasing the Home Office's budget...
He was pretty good on the environment this morning however, don't trust him on it though...
I was also prepexed by the BBC reports phrasing saying he was 'scrapping the government's proposed ID card scheme and unelected regional assemblies'.
ReplyDeleteLast time I checked the Scottish Parliament, Welsh, Northern Irish and Greater London Assemblies were all elected were they not? Maybe he's not talking about these as they all have some form of proportional voting and is talking about his proposed English Assembly. Otherwise known as of the banning of Scots voting on English matters at Westminster.
Maybe he's going to reform the electoral system. Then again...
What a travesty of the truth. I started working for David Davis on May last year. It was Conservative policy at the time to scrap ID cards and it has been so ever since.
ReplyDelete