United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron used his first post-election party conference to try and grab the empty centre ground of British politics. The electoral collapse of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party’s appointment of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as its leader has given the Conservatives a huge opportunity to become the dominant forces at the centre. This also has the advantage for Cameron of allowing him to ditch the right-wing rhetoric he had used during the campaign when he panicked in view of the apparent threat of United Kingdom Independence Party.
Therefore, Cameron used his conference speech to focus on fighting poverty by creating more ways to get people into better-paid jobs. But his comments were undermined by research from the Resolution Foundation, which suggests that the government’s welfare cuts in the budget will drive at least 200,000 working households into poverty under a definition that the government is about to abolish.
In addition, the think tank estimated that the number of all households in poverty by the end of the parliament will have risen by 700,000 to nearly four million. This did not deter Cameron from making his pitch. But more importantly, Cameron’s speech lacked a sense of strategic direction. He is in charge of the first completely Conservative government since 1992, but he does not know what to do with it. There is a curious lack of vision in the new government that is summed up by its vacuous conference slogan: “Security, Stability, Opportunity.” It seems to say that the government plans to do nothing until it is forced to act by circumstance.
It was also a pity that Cameron failed to make a clear statement of support for Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU). It is a miserable comment on his lack of direction that he has consistently dodged the looming struggle over the EU in his unnecessary referendum. He has said that he supports staying in a reformed EU, but he has never said so with a clear sense of ringing commitment.
