Potemkin Villager wrote:
I believe Cameroon has actually been put in a very sticky wicket situation by the electorate and is actually far far worse off now than before the election because:-
He is now in a John Major majority situation.
Because of the Libdemexit he is now beholden to the swivel eyed loony right ring anti europe backwoods men in his own party.
If they mess with him he is faced with the even less savoury prospect of seeking comfort in the arms of the even more right wing swivel eyed loony Democratic Unionist Party.
Yes, he's in John Major's situation of starting with a small majority which will inevitably get smaller, and therefore at the mercy of right-wingers in his own party.
I don't agree that he's in a worse position that before the election, but it is certainly a position with plenty of potential to go horribly wrong, for a whole host of different reasons.
As far as the Europe issue goes - he's already committed to a referendum, so I'm not sure what the problem is, particularly as I'm expecting the referendum result to be "out". If it turns out to be an "in" then they, and UKIP, surely have to just accept they've lost. There will not be a second referendum in the forseeable future.
IMO the issue which has the single most explosive potential is actually the repeal of the ban on fox hunting. It is totemic of the cultural and moral divide between the tories and the rest of the population, and the idea of re-legalising something that should have been consigned to history - and something which was always also about class and about the land-owning class demonstrating that this is
their country and they'll do what they like with it, regardless of what the majority of people think...?
I can see that being the issue that turns an ugly situation in this country into something involving serious violence. People are going to get killed.
Also...if they re-legalise fox-hunting, what happens when a non-tory government next gets elected? Presumably they'll ban it again, and this time make sure they also completely dismantle the infrastructure that allowed it to be resurrected (e.g. make it illegal to keep packs of hounds too). And then does a future tory government re-legalise it? Seems to me this is the very definition of "progressive". Can the tories continually drag us back to the dark ages, or are even they realistic enough to realise that riding around the countryside on horseback hunting foxes with a pack of dogs has no place in 21st century Europe?
