Aragorn2000 wrote:Found the article:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... -not-treat
When Mr Cameron, in opposition, pledged to bring annual net migration below 100,000, Britain’s net immigration from EU countries, which it cannot control, was around 60,000. Because of the euro crisis, it has soared, to around 130,000 immigrants this year, forcing the Tories to squeeze non-EU immigration in a failing effort to keep their pledge.
...
Viewed generously, his recent pledge to curtail EU freedom of movement is an effort to fix this. “If we have fewer low-skilled Europeans we’ll have more high-skilled Indians,” says a Tory minister. But that is not straightforward. With other European governments primed to slam Mr Cameron’s proposals, which he promises to unveil shortly, it risks leading Britain out of the EU.
Here is The Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher) on the EU...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tetk_ayO1x4
'Margaret Thatcher No No No' [1m11s - note the sound is not too great].
Love her or loath her, at least she had principles and stood up for them.
Same way when the Argentinians invaded the barren sheep-flecked colonial outpost that is the Falkland Islands, they probably weren't counting on her sending an armada of a good proportion of the entire British armed forces down there (8,000 miles) to wrest them back.
Tony Blair ushered in a culture of spin, after all lawyering was and is in his blood. So when he's asked a question you can see the cogs upstairs turning, while he considers the wider ramifications of how he answers anything. So if asked a question he would insert linguistically superfluous and redundant pause/thinking/chaff phrases that acted as a delay while he considered the question. Meaningless things like 'I simply say to you...'.
I mean can you imagine your wife asking if you're cooking dinner and you start off your reply with 'I simply say...' ...I mean really!
Example: Jeremy Paxman (a needling Rottweiler of an interviewer) interviewing Blair, on Newsnight, the daily evening 'serious polical analysis' programme):
"BLAIR:
Well, and certainly not to start speculating who my successor may be [Gordon Brown]. I have said on many occasions he is in my view one of the most brilliant people in British politics, he has done a fantastic job as Chancellor. It is not an ignoble ambition to be prime minister of this country. But as he says and I say, let's win the election.
PAXMAN:
You make him sound like the heir apparent.
BLAIR:
I don't make him sound like anything, I simply say what I've always said. [Note: that is the end of his reply. I.e. he's not replied at all]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1372220.stm
--- and re another parallel topic, here is Margaret Thatcher on credit cards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3CWb9O-q50
'Margaret Thatcher on Credit Cards'
[She has received an application form from the Cooperative Bank, and notes that completing it will result in a donation to the Labour Party, i.e. the opposition party - so she goes for the jugular hehe... (2m26s)].
As for Cameron. He inherited an electorate inoculated against and immune to spin-doctoring. He could say 'I simply say' 100 times in a speech and no one would register it any more, nor care less. The trouble with Cameron is the deep feeling that he presented himself as one stripe of political animal in order to get elected, and is in fact quite another. 6 months prior to an election he'll be banging the Tory drum declaring himself an earnest Eurosceptic; 6 months after an election he'll be off in Brussels signing more treaties and powers away to Europe. He's done that twice now, and people see him for what he.... isn't. [x-ref why there's still respect for the tell-it-like-it-is Thatcher approach]. Hence why you see the rise of the likes like UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party). They are perceived as actually being human, and having cast iron values (like them or loath them) and standing by them.
The Tories under Cameron are a wash-out (wet and liberal). It's hard to know who to vote for. A lot of protest vote is likely to go to UKIP at the next election, plus other more fringe groups.
To the original question:
You can't 'pledge' anything from the opposition benches, only float something as an aspiration, worth precisely that.
Cameron can't alter the freedom of movement within Europe. Hahaha! he's grandstanding, as if he has influence over EU-wide policy, where he most certainly does not.
Yes it's tragic Commonwealth visa quotas are cut as a result of the tide of largely unwanted people washing in from Europe.
- 'leading Britain out of Europe' - Never going to happen. We pay in (net) so much to the EU they will never kick us out. The EU provides so many cosy tax-free sinecures and pre-retirement 2nd careers for knackered national politicians, that these same politicians will never seriously vote against it. Anti-EU chatter from them is sabre-rattling to appease the masses...