David Cameron has been on the offensive this week after two of his frontline cabinet ministers almost sort of broke ranks at the weekend. Michael Gove and some other bloke who looks like your atypical Tory, and whose name is instantly forgettable, both declared they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum where to be held today.

This gave David an excellent opportunity to appear on his favourite mouthpiece, or rather TV channel, and give one of his endearing head-masterly type speeches where he left us in no doubt that there won’t be a referendum until 2017. I absolutely love watching our glorious leader’s appearances on the tellybox. He’s such a natural in front of the camera, his appearances are NEVER stage-managed unlike that odd-looking commie Miliband fellow and what’s more you simply cannot beat a leader who talks to his subjects like primary school children. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Sarcasm and sick buckets aside, Nigel Farage has really hit a big blue Tory nerve within the last month. You see, the thing about the Tories is they’re a bit like Millwall FC fans in a small way. They know nobody likes them, but the key difference (aside from the fact Millwall fans know what hard graft REALLY is) is that the Tories do care. To an extent. The Tories need us on their side for them to gain and regain power, but they know that their ideologies and policies if presented openly would repulse the common person.

One might think that the thing to do then would be to, I don’t know, change tack? They could adapt policy and/or ideology to suit the political, social and economic landscape around them to win public support. This way Britain would actually move forward and the general public would slowly begin to warm to this bunch of work-shy, trust-funded, elitist toffs.

What the Tories and to a much lesser extent, Farage’s UKIP, do instead is manipulate the political, social and economic landscape to suit their own ideology. A few examples spring immediately to mind: ‘This mess we’ve inherited’ was a phrase synonymous with the first 3 years of Conservative rule, EU bureaucracy accepted a part-time role initially but has sprung to the foreground more recently, the Welfare bill has been under attack from day one, Immigration has been an underlying theme to Tory ideology for decades and this week Boris Johnson said that laziness in the workforce is the reason for our economic woes.

All of the examples above may contain a tiny element of truth. Perhaps the outgoing Labour government did overspend a bit, perhaps EU Bureaucracy can be a little irritating at times, perhaps some benefit claimants do take advantage, perhaps some immigrants have hindered our cause and perhaps some of our workforce are a bit lazy. What Cameron has expertly done is manipulate the public to believe that these issues are far worse than they actually are, and that the only possible solution is his. Effectively he has engineered problems for which the only remedy is traditional Conservative ideology.

So for ‘This mess’ we have swingeing, indiscriminate cuts across the board as well as privatisation of the NHS; for EU bureaucracy we have pointless negotiations leading to an eventual referendum in 2017; for the welfare bill we have the likes of ATOS and Bedroom Tax (with Top-rate tax cuts somehow thrown in); for Immigration we have changes to welfare policy, immigration caps and more pointless negotiations with the EU on Bulgarians & Romanians and for the lazy workforce we have ‘Workfare’ or, as it is known throughout history, slavery.

Cameron has picked up on the media-driven public perception of ‘major’ issues and instead of confronting that perception with the cold, hard facts he’s chosen to buy a high-power wave machine to stir the waters and surf the resulting tidal waves. He then panders to the misinformed public by bringing in legislation that ‘fixes’ these scapegoats or faux-issues whilst the real issues lurking in the background continue to grow and grow. He is effectively the waste management firm that dumps rubbish in big holes in the ground and just hopes it’ll all just disappear. And for him it will, it’ll be someone else’s problem in 2015 or 2020.

What the public need to realise is that David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their respective parties are not actually making one jot of positive difference to this country as a whole, neither in the short, medium or long term. All they are doing is using scapegoats to buy time for themselves.

But why? Well Politics is about the gaining or regaining of power for personal benefit, the benefits of wielding power are enormous. Particularly if you side with big corporations over the little people. And that is exactly what modern Conservatism is all about, large corporations driving forever increasing profits from the pockets of the common person. Presently, the Tories are using scapegoats and false issues to make you think they’re helping you. Well they’re not, they’re helping themselves.