Cameron’s first stupid mistake | James Delingpole

May 5, 2010

Not content with having destroyed British conservatism, David Cameron has decided he might as well go the whole hog and finish off the British economy as well.

He announced it yesterday as one of his key priorities if and when he forms his Coalition of the Suicidal with Nick Clegg. He said he would make “the creation of a low carbon economy a priority.”

Presumably – demonstrating that same sophistication that secured his party such a spectacular popular mandate in the General Election – Cameron imagined he was being frightfully clever. ‘Here’s a sop I can easily afford to give the Lib Dems, without betraying any of my party’s core principles’ kind of thing.

No Dave. I hate to tell you this but committing Britain to a low-carbon economy is not like committing yourself to keeping all phone boxes painted red or promising Britain will never join a currency it was never going to join in a million years anyway.

A low carbon economy is virtually the same thing as NO economy.

It means:

1. Committing your country – at the enormous expense of at least £18 billion a year – to combatting an entirely imaginary problem called CO2, which is plant food, and which makes no serious contribution to Anthropogenic Global Warming.

2. Losing 2.2 real jobs for every “Green job” you subsidise with taxpayers’ money.

3. Crippling industry with higher fuel costs and greater tax and regulation at the very moment in the economic cycle when what it needs is cheap, reliable energy, a slashing of red tape and lower taxation.

4. Squandering still more money on “alternative energy” sources, all of which are enormously expensive, none of which work.

If Cameron tries to push this sort of legislation through, our only hope is that he will be torn apart by the Furies within his party, many of whom are as AGW-sceptical as they are Euro-sceptical.

I agree entirely with Harry Mount: if I were a proper Conservative who’d squandered five years of my life paying lip service to the Cameroons’ liberal pieties in the belief that this would get me into government I should be perfectly livid right now and itching for revenge. Cameron has failed his party and failed his country. He deserves all the lack of the support we can possibly give him.

Related posts:

  1. An open letter from my old mate David Cameron to the people of Britain
  2. Are lefties incredibly stupid or just plain evil?
  3. Climategate: why David Cameron is going to be disastrous for Britain
  4. So much for Cameron’s Cuties…

3 Responses to “Cameron’s first stupid mistake”

  1. Quixote says:May 10, 2010 at 4:15 pmCarbon Trading as of this week should not be mentioned in any “positive terms”, specially by a Political Leader looking to impress his citizens who just elected him.Didn’t he read the papers last week showing that the Carbon Emissions Trading monopoly is under criminal investigation and up to 90% of all participants could be considered “acting unlawfully”?

    This “fake” investment industry will basically destroy the World Economy once again just like the hedge fund debacle two years ago, and don’t ya know who the architect of both these debacles is?. One man who founded the CCX, Richard Sandor.

    Read it at: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532610

  2. Karyn McDermott says:May 11, 2010 at 3:28 pmJames, I know you take an interest in US politics and like my good friend the Virginia A-G Ken Cuccinelli. BYW i was up at 6.am and saw you on FNC – they wonderred after your segment if the UK used the “Hopey Changey” thing also…..Senator Jim deMint said the following and I thought you might find it of interest…

    “I don’t know that I’m always going to be right, but I do know this: I’m not going to sit on the sidelines again. When we tell people we’re the conservative party … I want to make sure we have people sitting in those seats who really mean it.”

  3. kurt janson says:May 12, 2010 at 1:16 pm“We need to cut our carbon emissions to tackle
    the challenge of climate change. But the
    low carbon economy also provides exciting
    opportunities for British businesses. We will
    encourage private sector investment to put
    Britain at the forefront of the green technology
    revolution, creating jobs and new businesses
    across the country.”This quote comes from the Conservative Manifesto – maybe if you’d read it, the announcement yersterday wouldn’t have been a surprise.
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