Dogwash

Today's Times tells us that the Tories are not just ready to soften their mildly anti-immigration policies but, it seems, to become actively pro-immigrationist.

The Conservatives will next week ditch hardline policies on immigration that were widely seen to have backfired at the last election.

As they attempt to create a more “civilised” approach, David Cameron’s party will consult ethnic minority groups in big cities and begin to extol the benefits of migration,...

By whom, I wonder, were their "hardline" policies widely seen to have backfired? As I recall it, the Tories got cold feet and started soft-pedalling on the topic for all they were worth about two weeks before polling day. What backfired, ie what caused them to lose potential voters, was their failure to convincingly promote and support the one policy that clearly differentiated them from the other two main parties, the Sandals and Sodomy Tendency and the Sultans of Spin.

In the forty years I have been entitled to vote I have never voted Conservative, either at national or local level. Before the final collapse of the post-War consensus, ie before the excesses of Thatcherism and NuLabor, I generally held to the view that (Old) Labour were better at national level, because they had a broader strategic, long-termist vision, while the Tories were better locally because they kept a tighter hand on the purse strings and were less likely to waste the punters' dosh on drop-in centres for one-legged Black lesbians.

But I've never quite been able to bring myself to vote for the Tories, even in local elections. At heart I'm an Old Labour man of the Gaitskellite tendency. Last year, with Howard talking tough on immigration and sounding as if he meant it, I was on the verge of voting Conservative for the first time ever. As will be plain from this blog and my comments to other blogs, I regard mass immigration as the single most important issue facing the UK.

Then the bastard chickened out and left me disenfranchised again.