Uphill over Dale

Can I be the only one who is wondering precisely why Iain Dale is supporting the Tories? Apart from the fact that they are willing to give him a seat, of course. I only ask because he has made quite clear, in his latest post, his opinion on climate change. [Emphasis mine.]

On Thursday US Climate Change hypocrite Al Gore will address David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet. He will no doubt be instructing them all on the art of preaching climate change religion bollocks while at the same time creating a carbon footprint the size of a mammoth's. I wonder how many of them will find they have a subsequent engagement...

So Iain presumably thinks that the whole CO₂ causes climate change argument is "bollocks"; well, I can't fault hm there. I think that it's utter horseshit and, having watched The Great Climate Change Swindle, which, incidentally, backs up my contention that scientists are prepared to cheat and lie to save their income, I am even more convinced.

So what's the problem?

Well, the fact is that Cammy-Baby and his merry little playmates—like that patronising bastard Letwin or the smug fuckwit, George Osborne—are prepared not only to impoverish us but also to cede yet more of our hard-won freedom to the EU in order to further their convictions.

The Tory Party will unveil radical proposals for a set of new environmental taxes intended to curb air travel today - but their plans are already facing a backlash from airlines.

Harsh new taxes on air travel, including a strict personal flight "allowance" are part of a plan that would penalise business travellers, holidaymakers and the tourist industry.

The proposals, to be disclosed by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, include levying VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights for the first time as part of a radical plan to tackle global warming.

The Conservatives will also suggest - most controversially of all - rationing individuals to as little as a single short-haul flight each year; any further journeys would attract progressively higher taxes, a leaked document entitled Greener Skies suggests.

What the fuck are these bastards playing at? Are they mad? Is Cameron so blind to dissent that he did not see Channel 4's programme (I've provided a link, Dave, so you can watch it online. Oh, and should you actually be reading this, your pathetic lack of intellectual rigour is a disgrace to The Old Coll, you fuckwit).

The thing is that this "green" effort is central to Dave's policy platform; it informs everything that he has proposed. He has proposed taxes "green" taxes on cars and on flights; he has proposed that more of our policy be governed by the EU, and now the fucker has started banging on about his "3G Europe": global warming, global poverty and globalisation. In every single case he has chosen precisely the wrong stand on each issue.

Dave acknowledges that it is trade—global trade, globalisation, whatever you want to call it—that will help to enrich the Developing World, and then proposes more involvement with the EU, a customs union whose barriers, tariffs, subsidies and quotas are designed to undermine and destroy the trading opportunities of those very countries that Dave emotes about.

Dave also wants to engage the EU, an organisation with one of the most abysmal environmental track record, to help tackle climate change in order to solve a problem that doesn't exist via a method that will make sod all difference. The man is a total fuckwit, as are his advisors.

But what has this to do with Iain (or, for that matter, Tim Montgomerie or any of those other Tories who hang around and about ConservativeHome and 18 Doughty Street)?

Well, so far we have seen that the Tories do not support lower taxes, although Iain (and almost anyone else with half a brain) does; now, to give him his due, Letwin said that it was unlikely to happen immediately because the Tories will probably inherit a massive overdraft from the Gobblin' King.

But Iain is a free-trader who is anti-EU. And yet Cameron is pro-EU, and naive enough to believe that he can change it. And even were the EU's very existence a mockery of—and a good portion of its revenue derived from inhibiting—free trade, we cannot even set our own trade policy in this country. After all, if we could, we would have had free trade with the US since 2003 and certainly be substantially richer as a result.

Iain is also against the state-funding of parties, whereas Cameron is pro.

To state this quite clearly and for the avoidance of doubt, Iain Dale is fundamentally opposed to Cameron and the Conservative Party on all of the major issues that the Tories have deigned to pronounce on. And he is not the only one; very far from it, in fact.

So what is the motivation? Does Iain know something that we don't; being something of an insider, does he know that the Tories are going to renege on these ideas once in power? Because there are two problems with this theory; the first is the obvious one that Dave & Co. seem pretty damn sincere to me. The second issue is that, if this is the case, then that means that—should the Tories win—our next Prime Minister will be a proven liar on the very instant that he takes power.

And, is being a proven lair any basis for being leader of Britain? If your answer to that question is "yes", then what's your problem with Blair, precisely?

The second option is that Dale and others are merely trying the Matthew Sinclair tactic: they have decided that it is better to try to persuade the Tories of the rightness of their position from within the party. The problem with this is, of course, that not only has Cameron ably demonstrated that he couldn't give two cunts about what his party think but, were he actually to change policy now, it would make the Tories look deeply indecisive. Besides, the Conservative leadership have been mulling over their policies for a year and I think that it is safe to say that if Cameron has announced any policy, the Tory leadership have definitely decided their policy and stuff anyone who thinks different.

Which, of course, makes the chances of trying to influence or change the Tory Party's announced policies about as likely as me gaining eternal life by bathing in the blood of virgins. And since the Conservatives have released policy on many of the important issues—climate change, the EU, the direction of tax changes (if not the precise scale) and party funding—that means that constant protests or subtle influences will have no effect.

Which leaves us with the third option: that some people will happily support any policies, no matter how wrong they believe those policies to be, in order to gain power.

None of those three alternatives fills me with any hope for the future, frankly.