Cameron's Sleight of Hand

Cameron pulled off a clever sleight of hand in his newsnight interview, which was as impressive and vague as he gets.

He said he doesn't want anymore immigration. Well actually he didn't. He said he doesn't want anymore EU immigration. Er...actually no he didnt. He actually said.....nothing. His interview last night (which, i painfully have to agree, he was good in) he said (I'm paraphrasing) "the next accession countries to the should have a limit on the numbers allow to come to the UK" and "numbers from outside of the Eu shold be more controlled". Which of course is pretty much government policy now. He refused to use "swamped" to discribe it and said it put pressure on our schools and hospitals, which is clever. What the papers missed is that the EU makes up the bulk of UK immigration and this will continue so the Pressure on schools etc from current accession states would continue under him.

The purpose of this, and lets face it to pretend it was not purposely brought up would be naive, was to have a headline that said Cameron is for lower immigration. And it worked well. Most newspapers lead with the immigration theme today, despite the fact he said very little new about it. It was well timed and showed he is back to his vague yet headline grabbing best. Now (with Iain Dale and others leading the line) they are pretending it was just co-incidence adn media led. Sorry, but there are no coincidences when it comes to spin in politics.

It was also another in a long line of "core value" reach-outs to his party. Recently with crime, he got "tough". Last night he practically fell over himself to be "pro-family" (which he is if "family" means a Mother and Father that are married.) otherwise he is only Pro marriage. He also kept mentioned "Conservatism" and being "conservative" a lot, without his usual use of modern or compassionate as a prefix.

What is clear is that he thinks the fluffy stuff has gone on for long enough and that people should be starting to like the Conservatives enough to hear them out on immigration and conservative basics.

Will it work? we shall see