Britannia Radio

Tories! Wake up

MONDAY, 23RD NOVEMBER 2009

As a postscript to my article in the Daily Mail today about why the Tories have not yet ‘sealed the deal’ with British voters, a reader writes:

You are spot-on in the Mail today. I was at a luncheon of nine at the weekend. All of us had only ever voted Tory before. But this time around only two will, with one undecided and SIX (including myself) resolved not to.

In a further message, he adds:

Several of us are toying with UKIP as we have an antipathy to federal Europe. But there is still something slightly seedy about them. The problem with fringe parties like UKIP or, God forbid, the BNP is that however much one fancies protest I suspect one would feel rather unclean after having cast one’s vote. In 1997, after Chelsea put the ghastly Alan Clark up as candidate, I didn't bother voting - I suspect I'll do the same this year. As a footnote, my Nanny (who is from a working class background) is voting BNP. She is no fascist, but I believe she feels so disenfranchised from the general political milieu that they are the only party who seem to voice her concerns. I suspect there are a large number of people from Labour's hinterland that will do the same. Now, THAT is a cause for concern.

I am getting similar messages from other readers, as has been the case now for many months. The despair from such readers is acute. Tories! Wake up.

November 23, 2009

Why voters still don’t trust the Tories

Daily Mail, 23 November 2009

As if some hidden hand is mischievously shaking a giant kaleidoscope, the political landscape in Britain has shifted once again.

Until very recently Gordon Brown was on the ropes, drowning, a dead Prime Minister walking. The cliches used to describe his situation were as predictable as his apparent miserable fate.

The Westminster and media village had decided the General Election was irretrievably lost for Labour. The Tory leader David Cameron was being regarded as the next Prime Minister in all but name.

Now that same political village has suddenly discovered that a hung Parliament, with no one party gaining an overall majority, is in fact the most likely scenario.

The immediate cause of this latest received wisdom is a poll showing the Tory lead plunging from around 20 per cent six months ago to a mere six per cent last week — nowhere near enough of a lead to win the election outright.

Of course, in today’s febrile climate the electoral runes may be saying something different again next week or next month.

But the unsettling fact for David Cameron is that the Tories have consistently failed to be as far ahead in the polls as they need to be.

Because of the peculiarities of the electoral arithmetic, they need an enormous swing to win an outright majority. Yet they have generally failed to have an opinion poll lead big enough to bring that about.

This is all the more remarkable since the almost total implosion of the Labour government should be providing the Tories with an open goal. Nevertheless, David Cameron is struggling to ’seal the deal’ with the voters.

This may seem unfair. After all, considering the parlous state of the party that he inherited, he deserves much praise for turning it into a unified, disciplined organisation which is once again a credible political force.

This is a considerable achievement. Nevertheless, many see him as guilty of the same kind of cynical opportunism and contempt for the public that has turned so many against not just Labour but politicians in general.

Take the shameful episode at the Remembrance Day service at Westminster Abbey. Mr Cameron arrived 30 minutes ahead of the Queen — with his own photographer.

He proceeded to spend around ten minutes in the Abbey garden having his picture taken inspecting the crosses etched with soldiers’ names.

Not to be outdone, Gordon Brown then tried to play catch-up, asking to be photographed with his wife walking through the Field of Remembrance on their way out.

Following a rebuke by the Dean of Westminster Abbey for this disrespectful behaviour, both leaders have now been forced to apologise.

What a bad taste this leaves in the mouth, that even this most solemn remembrance of those who have died to preserve this country’s freedoms should be viewed by today’s callow custodians of those freedoms merely as an opportunity for yet another PR stunt.

There are signs that many voters look upon the Tory leader with suspicion. The most recent example was his reception on Mumsnet, the website for mothers regarded as a barometer of the all-important women’s vote.

Callers repeatedly attacked him for refusing to answer questions directly or even at all. His excuse that his answers were plagued by technical difficulties failed to address the complaint that he came across as a slippery customer and out of touch with ordinary women.

This was particularly ironic since Cameron has put such enormous emphasis on making the Tory party woman-friendly.

But this gets to the point he seems unable to grasp — that the trendy ‘women’s rights’ agenda he follows is in many respects inimical to the concerns of ordinary women.

That is precisely why he has got into such difficulties over the resistance of the southwest Norfolk ‘Turnip Taliban’ to having a ‘Cameron cutie’ foisted upon them as a Parliamentary candidate in preference to their own local choice.

Not only did this play into the politically correct culture of bullying and intolerance from which so many long to be delivered, but it also dismissed as half-witted, reactionary bumpkins those who thought it wrong to select someone who had not only cheated on her husband but had failed to disclose this fact.

This was not only deeply offensive to all who hold similarly moral views, but it made a mockery of Cameron’s endlessly trumpeted commitment to ‘localism’.

It is hardly surprising that this rebellion is now spreading to other local Conservative associations such as Central Suffolk, where there is similar resentment that well-qualified local candidates are being banned because they don’t conform to the fashionable ‘Notting Hill’ image.

People are desperate for an alternative to Labour. But they want an alternative to its cynicism, dishonesty and contempt for the bedrock values of this country.

Yet in so many ways the Cameroons merely promise more of the same. Where they do acknowledge unfashionable concerns such as mass immigration, the ‘ human rights’ farce or the loss of sovereignty to the EU, they merely come up with half-baked fudges which will change virtually nothing.

They bang on about ending ‘big state’ government or welfare dependency — yet they refuse to countenance any root-and-branch change to the centralised NHS or education system or the welfare state.

What people are looking for, above all, is a politician they can trust because he is consistent and transparent and they feel they know where they are with him.

Instead, Cameron has left himself open to the charge that he is a PR man in search of the better soundbite, tailoring his message to whatever the last focus group has told him.

The mistake he has made is to fail to grasp that the country turned against the Tories in the Nineties not because voters wanted a PC agenda, but because they thought the party was sleazy and incompetent.

Now they want a leader who understands just what this country has endured these past two decades — an all-out onslaught on British identity and values, the gerrymandering of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’ and the bullying and intimidation of all those who are not prepared to go along with this agenda.

But instead, they discover to their dismay that the alternative to Labour is a party which believes that it is out of power because it is not like Labour enough.

Why vote for the pale imitation of New Labour when you can have the real thing? No wonder so many are now despairingly considering voting for UKIP and even the BNP.

All of this means that a hung Parliament does indeed now loom as a serious prospect. But this in turn is likely to reignite the pressure within the Labour party to junk Gordon Brown as leader before the election.

After all, goes the thinking, if a hung Parliament is now possible even with him as leader, they might squeak back in with an overall majority if he were replaced by someone more voter-friendly.

For the rest of us, however, such musical chairs is likely to make very little difference.

Unless and until a plausible political leader emerges who has the insight to acknowledge the profound challenges confronting this country and possesses the courage to do something about them, British politics will amount to little more than identikit opportunists dancing on the head of a pin.