And now long overdue thank-yous to a couple of Tories.
Thanks to Anthony Wells, who, I think, is political secretary to Michael Howard. He linked to my post asking Labour voters what it would take to get them to put a cross in the Conservative box. Thanks are also overdue to Backword Dave who drew it to Anthony’s attention. It pains me to admit that I admire Anthony for tackling this. He’s obviously come a long way already to get to where he is, but I suspect he’s going to go a lot further if he continues to be so savvy.
Thanks to Iain Murray for linking approvingly to me again, having reflected on the Tories polling woes himself.
Now I am going to be cheeky and tell them where they are going wrong.
No matter how much Conservatives try to persuade smartypants urban types like the PooterGeek crowd that they back the sorts of open, radical, meritocratic, and permissive policies we seem to like; we know in our bones that the Tories cannot implement them because the base of their support is the Stannah stairlift, waxed jacket, string-’em-up brigade.
More than one reply to my question brought up the subject of massive EU farming subsidies, for example. Right-leaning free traders and hardcore Europhobes might support their removal, but the Conservatives know that solid Tory rural voters would disappear if the party threatened to withdraw their handouts. The British farming lobby might not burn sheep like its French counterpart, but the Conservative Party might as well try to say no to a knife-wielding junkie as refuse Mr and Mrs Barbour their fix. This is rational. It would make no sense to alienate reliable Countryside Alliance-type supporters in the hope of appealing to people who are, by definition, turncoats.
Both Anthony Wells and Iain Murray have (commendably) tried to work out what it is people don’t like about the Tories, but I think they are both doomed. When you keep getting turned down, the mirror is rarely the best place to look for the cause of your problem. As an outsider, I’d say that the public memory of the Conservative Party in power is stained by three things:
1) the Poll Tax—not so much a policy as a self-administered ritual sword,
2) the damage Thatcher(ism) did to public services—ordinary people do not trust the Tories with the NHS or schools,
3) Europe—the British don’t like the EU, but not as much Conservatives wish (and the ones who truly hate the EU are tempted by the UKIP).
Changing the name of the party would be a good idea—for once, I’m not being sarky—and, much as I sneer at ideology, if you adopted and promoted a consistent set of policies built around what the focus groupies would call your “core values” of freedom, choice, and personal responsibility that would help. Paradoxically, your current efforts to be popular on all the big issues are preventing you from being consistent; in aggregate the majority is always inconsistent, but you needn’t be. There’s still an awkward tension between, for example, your attitude to the market and your attitude to the family, your authoritarian approach to law and order and your professed commitment to personal freedom.
A deeper problem is that, at the next election, 40 percent of the electorate will be pensioners and, hard as it might be to persuade people that you have turned away from the dark doings of your past, it’ll be much much harder to persuade younger, floatier voters that you are prepared to take on your own fogies (both old and young). Manage that and it’s goodbye Labour.
Four more years of us lot then.
I don’t know jack about the Tories and Labor, not enough to conversate intelligently anyway, but would the Tory authoritarian approach to law and order look anything like the Labor authoritarian approach to law and order I saw here?
http://www.fmft.net/archives/cat_society.html#000520
Am I just getting a subjective snippet?
It would indeed. I go fourteen rounds when Iraq comes up in debate with voters, but when they accuse Labour of being authoritarian over law and order I just nod.
Indeed, I partly pointed out Damian’s post to Anthony because I knew it would interest him, and partly to let the Tories know where Labour supporters have real doubts (which seem to me to concern authoritarianism) which might, in turn, make Labour take us seriously. Complex reasoning for any time of day, though.
“Thanks to Anthony Wells, who, I think, is political secretary to Michael Howard.”
Alas I am not – I take the Conservative party shilling but I’m not even nearly that important. 🙂
The name change is something I’m not entirely certain about. We could do with a symbolic break from the past, something that sends out a really strong message that the party is starting anew and deserves to be judged afresh. Labour had it relatively easy as they had a ready made symbol in Clause 4 – we don’t have such a convenient sacred cow at the ready. We don’t have a formal statement of principles to change and there are certainly no policies that really fit the bill (the closest was perhaps Section 28, but that wasn’t really broad enough to strike a note with the wider public and Labour saved us the trouble by killing the wretched thing anyway).
On the other hand a name change would enrage an awful lot of members (who are, surprise, surprise very conservative), could easily backfire if it was seen as silly Consignia-style management rebranding and – perhaps more importantly – it would be very confusing for supporters, especially the elderly. We have hundreds of thousands of little old dears who’ve voted for anything with Cosnervative after its name for the last 60 years. It would be no simple task getting the message across to them that the brand spanking new “Wizzo Party” is actually their beloved old Conservatives.
A name change would probably have to be an informal one, like “New Labour”. The thing is, it’s been done before, and I doubt it would go down well twice.
> we don’t have such a convenient sacred cow at the ready.
Sure you do. Legalise drugs.
Seriously, it fits in totally with ideas of individual liberty, and, let’s face it, the Conservatives need to start getting Libertarian or die. Your traditionalist pensioner voters won’t be around forever, you know you’re going to lose the next election and, barring something major, the one after that anyway, so start thinking long-term and sowing the seeds of electability amongst young people, with a view to getting back in government ten years from now. Declare a belief in a universal principle of individual liberty and shape all other policies from that. Start attacking Labour for not going far enough over their liberalisation of the cannabis laws. Declare an opposition to drug use but at the same time an opposition to The War On Drugs, on the grounds that it doesn’t bloody work. Point out at every opportunity that the number of smokers has been reduced while smoking is legal but criminalising drugs like heroin and cannabis has had no effect on usage. Declare your intention to take money out of anti-drug police action, which doesn’t have any real discernable effect, and pour it into anti-drug education instead.
(And I posted a completely wrong URL in my link there. Oops.)
Interesting site all-round. Consciously avoiding getting into the War / Middle East [could get messy], I’m commenting on the “What are the Tories doing?” discussion.
It’s a discussion I’ve had with friends repeatedly – the reasons the Tories succeeded so well to maintain their dominance in the 80’s must be used as learnings if they’re ever going to claw back Labour.
Capitalising on Labour’s perceived failings in the 70’s, and maintaining power on the back of a War [always works, re: the US this autumn], they were ‘fortunate’ to be associated with the massive economic boom of the 80’s; Yuppies.
Back in those ‘heady’ days of football hooliganism, casual racism and casual clobber, the socially conservative/authoritarian views classically associated with the Tories wasn’t a problem for the educated young professionals adding to the support of ageing pensioners and Mail reading wives; the ‘anyone can make it’/’get rich quick’ attitude pervaded by the Sun et al could even be applied to the working man, traditionally reliant on the Unions but now able to be his own boss, to run successful small businesses on the back of tax breaks and government grants.
Great. But with the hardcore support ageing and dying, the new breed of potential Tory voters cannot reconcile their social views with the party that should be appealing to their liberal economic perspectives; the thousands of graduates filling up law firms, acountants & ad agencies should be cannon-fodder for the Tories, but we just cannot conceivably vote for a party who we all know don’t really like brown people and the Gays. With most educated types having grown up accepting multiculturalism and tolerance, the young support necessary for a party to progress just cannot be generated. And given that most 20somethings these days are partial to a bit of charly, pills ad a spliff, the antiquated views on drugs and pesonal freedom can’t be accepted. And, crucially, with New Labour’s commitment to business & trade, these factors to the economically Right-wing but now Socially liberal graduate can be covered off by the 3rd way.
So when the Tories had a chance to bring in a genuine moderniser, someone like Portillo who actually stood a chance of getting these values accross in spite of the Party’s reputation, they bottled it and went for the epitome of evil, CJA’s Michael Howard.
Personally I’m of a traditional Labour bent, just found it bizarre why my lawyer and banking mates would rather abstain than vote Tory.