Abstract
In an article of July 2008, designed to advertise his credentials as a future prime minister, David Miliband chose to attack the opposition leader instead of praising his own chief, Gordon Brown. David Cameron, Miliband conceded, ‘might be likeable and sometimes hard to disagree with’. However, with no ‘vision for Britain’, Cameron was ‘a politician of the status quo … not change’. ‘His problem’, Miliband concluded, ‘is that he is a conservative’.2
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Notes
M. Garnett, ‘The Free Economy and the Schizophrenic State: Ideology and the Conservatives’, Political Quarterly 75.4 (2004), pp. 367–72.
On Blair’s centralising propensities, see S. Jenkins, Thatcher and Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts (London: Allen Lane, 2006), Chapter 18.
The most notable act of penance came under Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership, when several senior Conservatives contributed to G. Streeter (ed.), There Is Such a Thing as Society (London: Politicos, 2002).
See commentary by P. Toynbee in Guardian (11 March 2005).
G. Lewis, Lord Hailsham (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), pp. 326–7.
See, for example, D. Seawright, ‘One Nation’, in K. Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, now Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 69–93.
See, for example, Cameron interview with J. Ashley, The Guardian (3 December 2005);
A. Tyrie, One Nation Again (London: One Nation Group, 2006).
See also P. Dorey, ‘A New Direction or Another False Dawn? David Cameron and the Crisis of British Conservatism’, British Politics 2.2 (2007), pp. 137–66.
See, for example, M. Phillips, Daily Mail (28 July 2008).
On this point, see A. Denham and P. Dorey, ‘A Tale of Two Speeches? The Conservative Leadership Election of 2005’, Political Quarterly 77.1 (2006), p. 38.
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© 2010 Mark Garnett
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Garnett, M. (2010). Built on Sand? Ideology and Conservative Modernisation under David Cameron. In: Griffiths, S., Hickson, K. (eds) British Party Politics and Ideology after New Labour. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248557_15
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