Sunday, February 24, 2008

Chameleon Cameron dumps Green and flips back to true Blue...

Remember the Tory election slogan Vote Blue, Go Green adopted by David Cameron...? Well, today's Sunday Times exposes the sham of Cameron's spin and his biggest flip-flop to date.

First there was the former PR manager Cameron dressed as a polar explorer and posing with huskies in front of a shrinking Norwegian glacier...?

Forget (for a moment) that he’d travelled thousands of miles in a private jet – along with the television crews - to get to his photo-stunt to show how much he cared about climate change...

The Arctic stunt was hailed by the Tories as the launch pad of their new approach to climate change.

Cameron kept up the front for months and less than a year ago he was on the BBC Radio Four Today programme advocating VAT on domestic flights.

By last autumn he was distancing himself from that idea, and was instead advocating other green tax rises - though without exactly saying what they would be.

He told Andrew Marr in September:

We made a very tough choice on being green which is saying that air travel is an important contributor to climate change and the tax burden on that has to go up.

And the following month, he was back on Marr saying:

...green taxes as a share of taxes do need to go up. That's not necessarily popular, but I think it's right.

But today's Sunday Times reveals that Cameron is now backing away from those pledges too.

Under the headline TORIES DITCH GREEN TAXES, the ST says David Cameron is to abandon plans for 'green' taxes, fearing a backlash from voters unwilling to pay for climate change.

Cameron's 'vote blue go green' have always appeared rather less than convincing...

First, his cycle-to-work stunt spectacularly backfired when the Daily Mirror revealed that he his chauffeur-driven gas guzzler followed behind carrying his shoes and briefcase!

The Independent said his image as a green leader had 'gone up in smoke'.

And the BBC talked of hypocrisy.

Then there was Cameron's flip-flop on supermarket car parking tax.

Let's not forget the windmill erected outside the Cameron house in a blaze of publicity – only to be taken down a few days later.

And when he thought no-one would notice, he took a private plane from his constituency in Oxfordshire to meet a rich businessman in Herefordshire – despite a perfectly good train which would have taken just a couple of hours.

Now, despite all Cameron hype, it's Tories ditch green taxes.

The truth of Chameleon Cameron's attempt at being all colours to all people is that he only comes in one colour.

So forget: Vote Blue, Go Green. If you Vote Blue, you get True Blue.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In all fairness to Cameron, who clearly does have a fairly hypocritical stance on most green issues...this isn't a "green" busting revelation.

Cameron is arguably right, anecdotally I certainly hear enough about people wondering why companies aren't doing more to tackle climate change while we get more and more green taxes. He's after all not saying here abandon green plans, but to readdress where the change happens and who really makes the difference.

fairdealphil said...

Fair enough Lee.

So he blows with the wind.

Then reaches for his flip flops.