I remember blogging that Brown had no intention of calling an election this year. He allowed the speculation to continue anyway, thereby turning the heat up on the Conservatives.
Instead of calling Brown’s bluff, the Conservative leadership panicked. Policies were spun out one after the other in what was widely interpreted as a shift back to comfort zone issues.
I suspect that most people would now be hard pushed to say what the Conservatives are about. And if this was Brown’s intention then I suspect he’s been successful. I also suspect that weeks of infighting have seriously weakend Cameron.
That said polls have narrowed of late, leaving a margin of error that could result in either a Labour majority or a hung parliament. This pushes the prospect of an autumn election even further away.
But what if Brown keeps the speculation up? As a ploy to keep the Conservatives in a state of panic, it’s worked devastatingly well so far. Therefore why not allow the speculation to continue for the next six months before finally deciding not to call an election.
We can learn from the last few months though. Brown, even when Labour was a good eight points ahead, cautioned not to speculate on an early election. He is unlikely to do so in the near future, and so David Cameron should use his conference speech to launch a true liberal conservative agenda.
In my previous post I tried to explain why the Conservative party will never win an election if it campaigns on tax cuts, immigration, Europe, or the family. And whereas Michael Ancram perhaps has age as an excuse for thinking that we can, there is no other excusable excuse.
Immigration is probably the best example of what not to talk about. To understand this, one has to understand that voters are hypocrites. The right will often say that immigration appears in people’s top three concerns. This is true. However, whenever a politician talks about immigration the response is negative. This is a particularly acute problem for the Conservatives. The answer, like it or lump it, is to pretty much ignore the issue.
The Conservatives will have to understand the public inside out if they want to win a general election. To do so will require a much less simplistic, and perhaps a much more inconvienient study of public opinion.
13/09/2007 at 15:38 |
With all due respect Daniel Cowdrill, I really don’t think that you “understand the public inside out”. You appear to be asserting that any recognisably Conservative (or conservative) point of view is unpopular. That’s simply not so.
13/09/2007 at 16:51 |
I think his point is is that it’s unpopular when we say it. There are 3 election’s worth of evidence to support that view.
13/09/2007 at 18:09 |
If that is the case, Gareth, the Conservatives should follow the example of the Italian Christian Democrats and disband.
As it happens, I don’t actually think we did lose the last three elections, because we expressed some Conservative viewpoints.
14/09/2007 at 09:53 |
Rather than disband, we should do what we have done for 300 years and adapt our policies to changing times. Politics did not stop with Margaret Thatcher and we should stop fighting the 1983 election on loop. Your view, which I have heard expressed many times before, that people voted Labour and Liberal Democrat in the last 3 elections because the Conservative Party was insufficiently right wing, is not one which I think people in our party any longer have any time for.
14/09/2007 at 15:30 |
i must add my voice in support of Dan and Gareth, now is the time for the party to modernise, and to recognise that politics is now fought on the centre ground.
change is hard for those who have been in the party for along time i understand this as they have come from the heady heights of power to opposition and hark back to a “better time” but this is one of the past where it shall remain.
to win back power we must modernise, we must stop trying to oust leader after leader and get consistancy so the public can build up a relationship with our leader so that they can trust us and see we are united. i am golad cameron has finally called for dicipline amongst those who are still bitter about the future direction of a cameron party. a direction that will lead us to success.
18/09/2007 at 07:22 |
Modernise is no argument in itself.
I’m encouraged by the fact that I meet a lot of people who have voted Labour recently who are likely to vote Tory next time. You may be surprised to learn that their key issues are crime, immigration and education and they’re coming to us not because of what we are doing, but becaause the penny has dropped that Labour has failed in all these areas.
19/09/2007 at 10:26 |
The swapping of anecdotes is certainly no argument, as the woman in the bus queue said to me only the other day.
21/09/2007 at 17:46 |
So here’s the full argument. Crime, immigration and the economy are voters top issues in terms of what they say will influence their vote. Labour are seen as weak and failing on the first two, confidence in the economy is fragile and the majority of the public feel like they are overtaxed.
Faced with these open goals/key issues the Tory leadership treats immigration as a taboo, has some strong but underpublicised stances on crime and promises to match Labour spending if returned to power. Surveys show that the majority of the public doesn’t know what a Cameron govt would look like.
We desperately need clarity of vision on the major issues. No lurch intended.
22/09/2007 at 03:24 |
1980s top issues: Health education and unemployment
favoured party to deal with them : labour
The result: Tory election victories
Why? These issues were high profile because of 1980s problems in these areas and once the package of Labour policies was assembeld it looked like a party unready for government. a bit like the Tories and Lib Dems in 2005.
PragueTory you need to wake up. We have been through this so many times before. Until you establish credibility on the economy you aren’t getting in and hearing George Osborne say that you will match Labour’s spending plans for three years is abit like hearing an alcoholic saying that he will stay dry for three weaks when we lal now that immediatly afterwards Osborne will go on a binge of cuts and economic insanity leaving the country with a hangover of recession. Fragile confidence in the economy just helps Labour as it helped the Tories in 1992. it simply pushes the economy to centre stage and hands victory to the party that has credibilty in this area. Voters said that they trusted Labour the most on the issues that they saw as the most important in the 80s. But let me explain something that several senior tories have tried to press through your thick skull: When people are asked which issues they are most concerned about, the issues that have been the most problematic ofr the country and the government of the day dominate the headlines and dominate people’s answers to that question. But on election day, it’s the economy (where you are 25 points behind and that’s without the moronic ideas that I discredited in a previous threads) and who will make the strongest PM. Before responding with your usual trash go and read the comments on the last ten articles and maybe you will undertsand. Then next week I’ll teach you how to count and by 2050 you might have something relevant to say on tax.
23/09/2007 at 20:26 |
Jack Matthew – I don’t know who you are, what you stand for and most astonishingly where you get your self-confidence from, but in respect of previous debates on here, your absurd notion that you won probably suggests you need to seek medical attention, soon.
Of course perceived economic competence is very directly related to voting patterns which is why I have supported having a political heavyweight as Shadow Chancellor.
Meanwhile I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I have little doubt the low tax economy in which I am investing will continue to disprove your arguments.
28/02/2008 at 14:23 |
http://bucf.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/the-young-radicals-and-what-we-owe-them/