Tim Worstall

The Rt. Hon. John Gummer PC.

Now this is interesting. John Brignell brings up a little piece about the Rt. Hon John Gummer PC. Start here. There here.

Gum Gum, as he’s affectionately known, runs a business that advises corporations on how to align their business with sustainable development. It’s called Sancroft.

The Rt. Hon John Gummer PC also lead the writing of the Tory Party’s Quality of Life Group report on sustainable development. He did not mention his business interests in his biography in that report.

That report, of course, tells us all how much more seriously corporations have to take sustainable development.

Isn’t the Tory Party (indeed, aren’t all of us) so lucky as to have such a well respected expert available to advise?

In

6 responses

  1. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    Yes – but the really important issues are why is David Cameron trying to green the Conservative Party and does it make good electoral sense to do so?

    Reply
  2. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    John Gummer is no different than other prize tossers like Al Gore and Tim Flannery who are cashing in on there doom mongering. The real issue is why the hell would a libertarian, small government, individual rights and responsibilities tory vote for this bunch of statist twats? Gordon Brown may be trying to make the tories irrelevant, but Little Boy Blue and his buddies are doing their utmost to make it impossible for true tories to vote for them.

    Reply
  3. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    The main challenge for the Conservative Party, surely, is whether a Party compliant with the aspirations of True Tories could ever win enough seats in a general election to be able to form a government with the support of a majority in Parliament. Evidently, David Cameron has his doubts.
    For all I know, he could be right because I’ve an uneasy feeling that not many in the electorate at large are impressed by such buzz terms as “libertarian”, “small government”, and “individual rights and responsibilities”.
    OTOH a sizeable slice of the electorate really would like a functioning health service, schools in their neighbourhoods without discipline problems and capable of consistently achieving good educational standards and more reliable and affordable public transport. The evidence suggests that they are even willing to accept an increase in the burden of taxation in the hope that the government might, perhaps, manage in due course to fulfil their aspirations.
    The fact is that membership of all the mainstream parties amounts to only about three-quarters of a million, compared with an electorate of 44 millions. In the last general election, more of the electorate didn’t vote than the number who voted for Labour candidates. Estimates of the size of the floating vote – which switches allegiance between elections – range from around 20 per cent of the electorate upwards. Political activists are an extremist minority, that’s all.

    Reply
  4. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    What is the point of the tory party if it doesn’t stand for tory beliefs? If it wants power at any cost, as per Tony Blair’s Labour, why bother? If people want a statist governemnt that controls every aspect of their lives, Gordon Brown can deliver that. Cameron has no chance if his strategy is to compete on the same ground that Brown occupies.

    Reply
  5. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “What is the point of the tory party if it doesn’t stand for tory beliefs?”
    There’s absolutely no point to a tory party unless a sufficiently large slice of the electorate are willing to vote for tory candidates because they feel that tory candidates, if elected to government, will go someway to fulfilling their aspirations.
    We have to face the doubtless unpleasant fact that not many folk identify with what they take to be true tory notions, and that is what David Cameron is trying to focus on.

    Reply
  6. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    If Cameron can only offer an imitation of the Labour Party, the UK might just as well have the one party state Gordon Brown is after. Happily, we shall not be in the UK for the next general election but, were we there, despite being a life long tory voter, I could not vote for Cameron’s tories because they are not tories. The British people are being offered a choice between two statists, trying to compete as to how much they interfere in peoples’ lives.

    Reply

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