THE OBSERVER: David Cameron has made a crucial misjudgment, simply to appease the City and his own jingoistic rightwingers
The Tories are one of the world's most enduring political parties. But this long life is built on its cultural attractiveness to parts of the English middle class, especially in the home counties, rather than on its political judgments, which have, over the centuries, been almost continuously wrong, especially in foreign policy.
It was wrong to resist revolutions in France and the US; wrong to go slow over abolishing the slave trade; wrong to champion the Corn Laws; wrong to embrace appeasement in the 1930s; wrong to contest the decolonisation of India. The British right's instincts – jingoistic, imperialistic, anti-progressive and isolationist – have consistently led this country into calamities. Today, once again, the Conservative right, indulging its atavistic instincts and egged on by a no less atavistic right-of-centre press, is landing the country in the soup. » | Will Hutton | Sunday, December 11, 2011
