David Cameron is the best and worst of upper-middle class, home counties England – decent enough but saturated with prejudices he has never cared to challenge. He understands his own party and its instincts, but beyond that his touch is uncertain and his capacity to empathise with others close to non-existent. ...His circle is the hedge fund managers who payroll his party, rightwing media executives and the demi-monde of Tory dining clubs, Notting Hill salons and country house weekends, all of whom he knew could be relied to cheer him for his alleged bulldog spirit and Thatcher-like courage in saying No to European "plots".
For him, politics is not about statecraft in the pursuit of a national vision that embraces all the British. It is an enjoyable game to be played for a few years, in which the task is to get his set in and look after them and hand the baton on to the next chap who will do the same.
The over-riding preoccupation was to manage his tribe, now in thrall to the worst of ancient Tory instincts that have been so consistently wrong. ....
The detestation of the EU is largely irrational – even if very real. Britain enhances its power and de facto sovereignty through membership; it loses it by becoming the creature of the financial markets and the City of London so beloved by Conservatives...
None of the eurosceptics baying for a referendum objects to Mayfair, Kensington and Knightsbridge becoming ghost towns owned by foreigners, nor to swaths of our great companies and brands falling into foreign ownership. This loss of control and autonomy is fine. But to make common cause with our European neighbours to enlarge our capacity to act in the world causes collective heart failure.
His article was followed by the following devastating comment:
David Cameron is the Prime Minister for the City of London.
The same City of London which is primarily responsible for the financial crisis.
The same City of London which contributes 11% of tax revenues each year but which is instrumental in facilitating $3trillion of tax funneled to tax havens every year.
The City has become disproportionately dominant over the last 30 years, a period in which the wealth gap in the UK has widened massively, a period in which we have all become massively indebted as real incomes for ordinary people have stagnated.
It's extraordinary that Cameron thinks that his priority is to defend the interests of the City regardless of the impact of EU isolationism on the UK manufacturing sector.
Cameron's stupidity has cheered the swivel-eyed bigots on the Right of his party and his sponsors in the City, but it was not done in the national interest and it will tear the coalition apart, after which it will tear the Tory Party apart.
