Cameron warns Davis over ‘lecturing’ tone
David Cameron today warned his Conservative leadership rival of the “tone” he adopts in talking about anti-social behaviour, suggesting it was giving the party a bad name.
The shadow education secretary took David Davis to task over his claim that binge-drinking and drunken disorder meant some town centres were “no-go areas for decent people”.
During an otherwise amicable debate on Sky News, Mr Cameron warned that such language risked alienating young people – and reinforcing the view of the Tories as a party that lectures people on how they should behave.
“There is a problem [with binge-drinking] but that doesn’t make everyone who goes out on a Friday or Saturday night a criminal. This is a danger we have to understand – it is something we did get wrong in the past,” he said.
The two men were asked whether the Tories’ failure to win the last general election was down to the perception that they were not socially liberal, but Mr Davis disputed this.
He said: “The reason they didn’t vote for us five years ago was division, this year they saw us as a privileged elite interested only in ourselves. That’s what we’ve got to break through – to show that we’ve got answers to their problems.”
Both candidates insisted they could appeal to younger voters, saying they offered idealism – Mr Davis’ came in the form of wanting to help the weakest in society, while his rival believed it came through helping people gain control over their lives.
And questioned as to what they would personally bring to the Conservative party, Mr Cameron said he would be able to unite Tories both in parliament – he has the support of more than 100 Tory MPs – and among party activists.
Mr Davis said it was the effort to help those people “at the bottom of the pile” that “turns me on”, and would make him a good leader.
Meanwhile, both men reiterated their commitment to cutting taxes, although Mr Cameron warned that these would have to be married with other policies, such as investing in universities and cutting regulation, if they were to have an effect.
He criticised his rival for coming up with detailed tax policies four years before an election, but Mr Davis defended his plans for £38 billion tax cuts as a way of showing “how big a prize [there] is in controlling public spending properly”.
On Europe, both men said they would keep Britain in the single market, but they called for a “different formulation” on how much power European bodies held.
Mr Cameron has previously promised to pull out of the European People’s party (EPP), with which Tory MEPs are aligned in the EU parliament, on the basis that it supports the EU constitution and the idea of federal Europe – both anathema to Tory policy.
While his rival accepted this argument, Mr Davis insisted that there was no point leaving one party, which afforded the Tories influence in Europe, if there was nowhere to go – this would just leave them in a “rag-bag” with the fascist parties, he warned.
Looking further afield, both men expressed concern with the situation in Iran, calling for diplomatic pressure to be put on Tehran but not ruling out military action. And in Iraq, Mr Cameron and Mr Davis said they would continue to back the coalition presence.
In a pop quiz about the two countries at the end, however, the candidates were both unable to name the prime minister of Iraq, nor the president of Iran, although Mr Cameron did manage the name of the Iraqi president.
