David Cameron will do anything to maintain his image, but whether he can follow through on his promises is another matter.
And I’m not talking about policies or manifestos – we all know that election manifestos are at best an opportunity to set out what a party would offer us in an ideal world, and it’s a naive voter who expects them to be followed through to the letter – or even to any extent – after the party is elected. So for this reason I am not going to analyse the manifesto – to try and decipher exactly where the Tories think they’re going to get the money they promise to save from (no sums in the manifesto – maybe Ashcroft will pay for it all?)
But there are some promises which we do need to take more seriously – and when caught out on these, we need to question the integrity and moral fibre of the individual in question.
So it was with interest that I read today of the soldier who confronted Cameron in what should have been a relatively easy meet-the-public format for him on his home turf in Witney. The man said that he had spoken to him when years ago, when he had recently left the army having served in Kosovo. He had nowhere to live, a pregnant wife, and needed help. So he spoke to Cameron who promised to help him, and gave him his card. As the man told him yesterday, he made around 30 phone calls to Cameron, and not one was returned.
Not one. This betrays a contempt of his consituent which entirely undermines his desperate attempts to appear as a friend of the people. And if he can’t follow through on one simple promise to one voter as an MP, what hope is there of anything more elaborate being followed through on?
Reason #5: he is demonstrably unreliable – at worst a bare-faced liar, at best an insincere PR man.