Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Cameron has a `Brown` on his back.............
The cracks are starting to show between the Prime Minister and Chancellor
Far from 'seeing eye to eye', David Cameron and George Osborne are cut from different political cloth
Different strokes: Cameron is, at heart, a country Tory. Osborne is an urbanite, fond of the city's networking opportunities, soirées and upmarket burger bars
From the outset, David Cameron and George Osborne have presented themselves as indivisible, as joint leaders of the Conservative Party. The Labour years were defined by total war between Prime Minister and Chancellor, but their time in power, they decided, would be defined by complete unity. But three years into government, it is growing hard to keep it up.
The pair have always had different outlooks on life. Cameron is, at heart, a country Tory, at his happiest romping around muddy fields in a pair of Dunlop wellies. Even in the autumn, he'll dive into freezing British lakes - and he still mourns what he calls the "banned activities" (for PR reasons) of shooting and riding. Osborne, by contrast, is an urbanite, fond of the city's networking opportunities, soirées and upmarket burger bars. If he sees a green space, he tends to wonder why it hasn't been turned into a groovy office block for tech start-ups. But while they have different characters, the duo, as
Osborne puts it, "see completely eye to eye on almost every issue".
Emphasis on the "almost". They fell out over a mansion tax last year; Osborne wanted to go along with the idea, to assuage the Liberal Democrats, and Cameron used his prime ministerial veto. This was partly because it was bad politics, as it would hurt Boris Johnson's chances of getting re-elected as Mayor of London. But partly it was Cameron's visceral aversion to hurting the kind of people he grew up with, who have been amazed to find their family homes soaring in value. Property, he thinks, should be inviolable - and he has publicly promised to crush the idea should it emerge again.
Then there's marriage. The Prime Minister credits his fortune in life to the strength of his family. ("It wasn't the wealth," he says. "It was the warmth.") So his proposal to offer a tax break to married couples projects his personal vision of Conservatism. The same is true for his support for gay marriage: the couple is the unit of society, he believes, and marriage the foundation of a family. Who is he to stop same-sex couples seeking similar status? But this was a later idea. His first and strongest commitment was to a marriage tax break, which is why it was a manifesto pledge.
Even now, Osborne loathes the idea. He is not a social conservative and hates the notion of bribing anyone down the aisle. He has made sure the marriage tax break will not come into effect until the very last weeks of this government - and it will be so small as to be unnoticeable. To resolve the impasse, Treasury officials were asked to see whether they could dump the agenda on to Iain Duncan Smith, so the Chancellor could wash his hands of it. But a tax cut has to come from the Treasury.
read more in the Telegraph.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
commonly known as skid marks.
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
certaintly a lot of decides in the tory party
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