"Tories still in decline" - 5 comments
Another day, another think-tank. Defeated Hove candidate, Nicholas Boles, is back with Conservatives for change.
They argue - in today's Guardian (hat tip: Neil) - that "Tory gains at the general election have masked the party's continuing decline", especially among young, urban, professional and female voters.
Their message seems to be "reach out" which is, of course, (a) easier said than done and, (b) what every single beaten party says. Makes you wonder how Ted Heath ever won a General Election. Perhaps don't reach out this far, though. Or this far.
The party as a whole seems so brain-damaged it's hard to see how they could come to power in the near future, short of revolutionary cloning technology producing a Boles in every constituency. The upcoming leadership battle doesn't seem as if it'll produce anything but the same old cabbage.
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5 comments so far...
Boles lost in Hove, if he is the best they can do, they really are in trouble.
Not really sure the Tories plan changing any of their rightwing policies, just their image.
Shows how much better they expected to do in this election just gone, by the fact they are wheeling out Farsi and Boles as their new young and ethnic face. Both candidates who couldn't win in marginal target seats!
Signs they are playing the spin game better than Labour lately but they have neglected urban and young voters so long, it is going to be a struggle for them. This was demonstrated by the fact they still can't win seats like posh Cheadle.
If Davis wins, a lot of this more liberal policy change brigade will be ignored anyway.
So.
Boles lost in Hove and forms a thinktank called C-Change to decide how to reform the Tory party.
Henry Smith lost in Crawley and is part of Direct Democracy (a thinktank to decide how to reform the Tory party)
Did every failed Tory candidate join a different thinktank? There must be hundreds of them.
Perhaps this is the party's strategy after all: elect us, or we'll each set up a think-tank in a posh part of London with Daddy's money, churn out vacuous articles for the Guardian and Times, and go on Newsnight to say how hip and 'with it' the modern Conservative Party is (or would be if their little clique got more power).
Funny thing is that when we meet Tories they're nothing like this at all. "Inclusion" and "reaching out" are the last things you'll hear them say.
Winding up Tories aside, shouldn't you actually be concerned about the decline of an effective opposition. I mean, I think it's clear that the Tories would continue the Labour party policy of privatising the delivery of NHS services, and, assuming that both parties now agree on the benefits of private delivery of public services, then there's little to be gained or lost from being governed by one party or another.
The risk is though that the government, in the absence of effective opposition, will remove those civil liberties that they have so far overlooked and that we will end up little more than serfs.
Does this worry the Labour side of the blogosphere? What liberties would you have to have taken away for you to remove your support from the party? Or is it tribal?
On the question of ID cards, for example, I can't recall anyone on our books of backing the plans. I nearly put up the NO2ID badge, but that would have been a bit presumptuous. I think they're pretty consistent social liberals.
I've had my doubts about Blair's commitment, but then there's this. Serf's a pretty strong word to use...
I'm interested to see if the Tories will adopt a radical free-market agenda, dismantling the NHS, and introducing vouchers for all (a long way from the de-coupling and reorganisation Labour is engaged in). I can't see the point of the Conservative party as it stands or how anyone would be sufficiently enthusiastic to allow it to continue with the policies and senior personnel it has - clearly all the good ideas are still at the think-tank stage.
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