Ah, the Conservative Future elections – always time for fun, games and embarrassment.
What with the Conservative Party in power for the first time in 13 years and a major programme of essential public spending cuts underway, you might have thought that CF candidates would be competing to show their support for the more radically conservative decisions their party is taking, or even urging them to go further.
Not in Wales, it seems. Take Zahid Raja, for example, who is running to be the Chairman of Welsh CF.
Leaving aside his enthusiastic involvement as an officer of the hyper-politically correct, hyper-socialist National Union of Students, Zahid appears to be strangely enthusiastic about increasing public spending, not cutting it – at least where his own personal interests are concerned.
While the Government implements massive spending cuts, would it look good for CF Wales to be lead by someone who, as a trainee doctor, campaigns for his own profession to be paid even more taxpayers’ money? Or who helps to run protests calling his own University “dicks” when they cut back?
The vast majority of young Tories whom I’ve met recognise the urgent need for public spending cuts. It would be bizarre for them to be led by someone who refuses to accept that the cuts might have to affect him once in while, rather than just everyone else.
Such a person would be a liability, giving credence to the Left’s criticism that Conservatives cut spending on others whilst protecting themselves.
The test of someone’s principles comes when they accept that they might have to take a bit of pain in order to do the right thing. That’s not a test Zahid Raja looks set to pass.