The facile face of the Tory Party

We don't need the nom-dom scandal to see that the Tories are the party of the rich - we only need to look at their policies for that.

The idea that Lord Ashcroft has bought influence with the Conservative Party is curious because it implies that perhaps there could have been scenario where the Tories would not have pursued "business-friendly" policies with or without Ashcroft's millions.

It's true that the Tories are not the only party with non-dom backing. Labour has its own selection of sleazy millionaires who at least have had a reasonable expectation of influencing policy.

The difference is that Labour's non-doms haven't felt any shame in trying to minimise the amount of tax they pay.

Tory chairman Eric Pickles said that this showed that Labour was guilty of "rank hypocrisy and political opportunism." Although why he should be shocked at this is anybody's guess.

I was terribly excited at the weekend to see that even the Green Party had its own mini non-dom scandal, although disappointingly its non-dom had neither used his status to avoid paying any British tax nor had he donated millions to marginal constituencies.

I guess the Greens need a few MPs under their belt before they can compete in the corruption Olympics.

What the Ashcroft scandal — and scandal it is — does show though is is that there has been a reluctance on the part of one or more leading Tories to be honest.

I know, Earth-shattering news.

Ashcroft only revealed his tax status days before he'd have been legally obliged to do so by the Freedom of Information Act, so it was quite bizarre of David Cameron to thank Ashcroft for helping clear up any misunderstandings, as if he'd done anyone a favour.

He'd been deceiving the public and either most or all of the Tory Party for years after having made a commitment to straightening out his tax affairs.

The public had been guaranteed on his entry to the House of Lords that he would pay all his tax to Britain and that this would, according to William Hague, cost Ashcroft "tens of millions a year" in tax.

In other words, he's been withholding roughly one fully functioning new hospital from the British public a year in the meantime.

Given that Cameron recently announced that voting Conservative was the patriotic thing to do, I wonder how patriotic he sees donating to the party from the millions you've withheld from British public services.

Cameron's promised not to slash the NHS budget, but he doesn't seem too concerned about whether his chums are withholding cash from it.

Of course the idea that this money has bought influence in the Conservative Party is fanciful. People like Ashcroft are attracted to the Tories because the party already looks after his interests and always will, whether or not he donates - he just wants to see his party win the election.

Peter Mandelson said that the fact that Cameron had not sacked Ashcroft showed that the lord had some sort of hold over him.

He graphically described Ashcroft as "having Cameron by the balls," which is an image to conjure up and then instantly forget.

It's also quite wrong.

Cameron's Conservatives are weak and this is just another example of that fact. They are weak ideologically, their presentation is facile and their front bench is lightweight. Ultimately the fact that they are unwilling to confront strong characters in their own ranks is a demonstration of how spineless and vapid they are.

Hillary Clinton recently criticised Cameron for not exerting pressure on his Ulster Unionist partners over the peace process.

Her expectations of the Tory leader have clearly not developed from any experience of the man. Why would Ulster Unionists feel any need to listen to someone whose latest views are newly formed each morning after reading that day's headlines?

Cameron is not a new Thatcher but a thin and vapid front man. While Margaret Thatcher's reign was dominated by clashes of ideology and a holy war to crush the opposition at all costs, Cameron simply is not made of the same stuff - and that puts him in a poor position to do what his class will ask of him to cut public spending and handle the economic crisis.

Thatcher thought the same things on the day she entered No?10 as the day she left it, Cameron's seems to have some sort of political attention deficit disorder.

This distinction is more apparent when we look at Norman Tebbit's reaction to the Ashcroft affair.

While Cameron simply looks on forlornly as Ashcroft does whatever he likes, Tebbit plays the whole thing with a straight bat. Of course Ashcroft should have been open about his tax status from day one and the Tories should have insisted that he was.

After all Ashcroft is only doing "what we all do, if we have any sense," by avoiding paying as much tax as he can.

Tebbit doesn't have the sensitivity to believe tax avoidance may not play well with the voters, but he does have the backbone to confront his friends and bend them to his will.

Cameron is paralysed by his PR man background and finds it impossible to take any position that might offend someone — which means he ends up pleasing nobody.

That makes Cameron eminently beatable in any battle should he win the coming election. He doesn't have a plan to take the nation by the scruff of the neck the way Thatcher did in '79. He doesn't have a plan on what he's going to say this afternoon.

That's all to our advantage and we should not let memories of the past make us tremble in fear at the current mob who've never won a single serious struggle in their lives.

It's excellent that people are using the Ashcroft affair to expose the true nature of the Tories as a party in the pockets of the rich, but the affair tells us as much about how fragile the Tory leadership is.

Bribed or unbribed they are a party of the wealthy, opposed to their very bones to the interests of working people, but today's Tories have far more in common with Tony Blair's image-conscious soundbite politics than they do with Thatcher's fire and brimstone.