Criticism of Other Parties and Politicians
Upon his election as leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron declared that he was "fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster, the name calling, backbiting, point scoring, finger pointing."
However, in a war of words with the United Kingdom Independence Party, Cameron accused its members of being "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly," leading UKIP leader Nigel Farage to demand an apology for the remarks. Right-wing Conservative MP Bob Spink also criticized the remarks, as did The Daily Telegraph.
Cameron has also criticized ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time) for being "an analogue politician in a digital age" and repeatedly refers to him as "the roadblock to reform". He has also said that John Prescott "clearly looks a fool" in light of allegations of ministerial misconduct. During a speech to the Ethnic Media Conference on 29 November 2006 Cameron also described Ken Livingstone, then Mayor of London, as an "ageing far left politician" in reference to Livingstone's views on multiculturalism.
However, Cameron encouraged Conservative MPs to join the unprecedented standing ovation to Tony Blair at the end of his last Prime Minister's Question Time; he had paid tribute to the "huge efforts" Blair had made and said Blair had "considerable achievements to his credit, whether it is peace in Northern Ireland or his work in the developing world, which will endure".
Read more about this topic: Political Positions Of David Cameron
Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism, parties and/or politicians:
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,—because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign—a bad sign mostly for literature.... But it is also a bad sign when they don’t want to hear the word mentioned.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)