THIRTEEN years ago Theresa May - ever the phrase-maker - stunned delegates at the Conservative conference when she told them “some people call us the nasty party”.
Back in October 2002 the newly-appointed Tory chairwoman was keen to shed her party’s image as an unattractive, cruel and feuding bunch of politicians in a bid to create a more electorally-friendly one, one which could form a reputable government. Her leader went on to do just that.
Well, in case anyone had any doubts, May’s inflammatory speech on Tuesday to the party conference and the backing she is to give today to an EU plan to deport refugees refused asylum, confirms the Tories are indeed the nasty party of old.
The Home Secretary may have thought she was being clever laying out her stall in a calculated bid to become the next Tory leader and, worryingly, Prime Minister but her position not only undermines the attempt by Cameron to yesterday present a kinder, gentler face to Toryism - with his talk of championing social mobility - it has also damaged her own leadership dreams. Even right-wing commentators are turned off by her rhetoric.
Her arguments to drastically reduce immigration rehashed all the false arguments to whip up prejudice towards people fleeing war and persecution: that they’ll steal “our” jobs, push down wages, drain frontline services.
At any time such words strike us as the epitome of intolerance but what makes her stance truly lacking in basic human decency is that it comes as the worst refugee crisis facing Europe since the Second World War unfolds across the continent, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Yesterday, though, the Prime Minister was determined to show a different side of the Tory party. So one is left wondering: what is the true face of the Tory Party? The one presented by a former PR man, or the one his Home Secretary is presenting?
Cameron made wild claims that it would be his government that gave the people of the UK “equality of opportunity” and claimed he would “end discrimination and finish the fight for real equality in our country today”.
David Cameron won the General Election in May with a majority he didn’t expect. He won it because Labour were just not that good across the UK and a joke in Scotland.
Labour party members and supporters believe they lost because they were not left-wing enough. That’s why they’ve backed Jeremy Corbyn and that’s why Labour now moves away from the centre ground it has inhabited for the past two decades.
Not content with beating Labour at the last election, Cameron wants to destroy them. There will be plenty of Labour voters, people who comfortably voted for Miliband, Brown and Blair who will now have little difficulty in making the move. Though if they fall for Cameron’s soft words, they are voting for the cruel policies of people like May.
Up here, Ruth Davidson has seen the gaping black hole left by the implosion of Scottish Labour. It would have been unthinkable just five years ago for a soft Blairite Unionist Labour voter to have switched to the Tories. Now it looks like the Tories might be their only choice – if they prize the union above all else – given the collapse of Labour and the LibDems.
What the Tory Party conference has shown us is that the nasty party is back.
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