The Tories are now in the media cross-hairs

EVER SINCE JEREMY CORBYN'S election to the leadership of the Labour Party, all media attention has been focused on The Naive One - he has entertained the sane and sensible with his sometimes odious, and at other times, comical views. An example of the latter being his intention to allow our Trident fleet to set sail and patrol the oceans without any missiles, in order to reach a compromise with the unions who are against abandoning our fleet of submarines because of the thousands of jobs that would go as a consequence.

                

                But attention is now turning slowly away from Labour and settling on the behaviour of the Tory government: and guess what? This latest micro-civil war which is beginning is once again about Europe and the betrayal now being felt by Tory eurosceptics toward David Cameron. The sceptics have kept their powder dry because they were dazzled, and not for the first time by their current leaders promises (as was always the case with Labour). This time; the promise of an uncompromising renegotiation of our membership with Europe: it was not the first time Cameron was taken at his word (whatever that means these days). Cameron is a political thimble-rigger; he will promise the earth to sustain himself in power; especially when he was confronted with the rise of Ukip - a party that procured four million votes last May only to feel abandoned by the first past the post electoral system.

                

                Last May Cameron thought he was going to lose. He is, as all politicians are, addicted to the polls; they govern or even micro-manage an election campaign. All the polls got it wrong in the end; but because they called it so tight, Cameron, in order to win back those Tories who had already changed their vote to Ukip, or those who were thinking of doing so; he toughened up his rhetoric on the EU. He would hold the EU to account; he would deliver a set of reforms on the free movement of peoples, migration and the other concerns of the sceptics; that if found unacceptable to his EU masters; he would deliver a referendum; and at one point even suggested he would be prepared to leave the EU. And so Cameron's own eurosceptics trusted, yet again, the word of their leader.

                

                On May 7^th 2015, and against all odds and to the embarrassment of the pollsters; the Tory Party were returned once more, and with a workable majority of twelve. The result was as shocking for the Tories as it was for Labour. The Tories had believed that, at the very least, another coalition with the Lib Dems was the best they could hope for at the beginning of the campaign; and when even this was in doubt he sought to bring on board those one time Tories who he had attacked as swivel- eyed loonies (or words to that effect) when they crossed to Ukip.

CAMERON has always believed and always will believe that this country's destiny is within Europe. His one priority in politics, as it is any modern leader of a political party, is to do great things that history will have determined to have been pivotal in the management (as far as it is capable of being managed) of their country's history. Thus we have, in the war and post war era the successes of Churchill and Thatcher.

                

                 Cameron believes in the European Union without any omission or exclusion, apart from the purely rhetorical exception to plan and advance his career. He conned his eurosceptics, as he did all such disbelievers in the EU who belonged to the Tory Party when he felt his party faced defeat at the 2015 general election.

                

                 Our prime minister, having won the election he did not think he could win; has now reduced (some of his fans would suggest moderated) his demands in favour of what Europe is willing to accede to. He has even boasted of his intention to vote for continued membership, whatever the outcome of the negotiations. So it comes down to whatever the EU is prepared to grant us.

                

                 Whatever this is will be sufficient for Cameron: in all and every circumstance Cameron will be fully prepared to lead his nation into a concoction of democracy that will diminish into dust; it will do so along with the nation state. Next month this whole carnival of renegotiation will hopefully reach a climax when Cameron travels once more to Europe for the final showdown when the media will be on hand to promote it as something more than the ritual it is. Cameron has, since his election taken a scythe to his previous Eurosceptic rhetoric. He has lowered his peoples' expectations for a deal that would keep this nation in existence.

CAMERON HAS twisted and turned over Europe, just as other Tory (and Labour) leaders have had to do. The art of politics for a political leader is to maximise your support in order to advance your career; and this is what Cameron has had to do to keep his political ambition solvent. But in terms of keeping the trust of the electorate; Cameron will make the electorate ever more cynical by his opportunism regarding the EU.

                

                 We now have two political parties; both, one bizarrely, the other disingenuously, but both asking the electorate for their votes by, in Corbyn's case incredulity, and the Tory's case an honourable and gentlemanly trust of the leader – the latter which once, but not today means anything.