There is no public aversion to voting Tory. Far from it, in fact. The Tories did well at the recent local elections. Most of those elected were not like David Cameron, and do not like David Cameron. Such are the Tories for whom people will and do vote.
By contrast, during the Cameron months, super-safe Tory parliamentary seats have become knife-edge marginals, and respectable second places have become distant thirds, on one notable occasion involving a showing barely better than that of the BNP. Voting Tory in a parliamentary election strikes most people as far too close to voting for David Cameron.
The Tories are going to do badly at the next General Election. So badly, in fact, that that Election is not going to take place this autumn, lest the Tories be wiped out, and replaced during the subsequent Parliament with a serious alternative party of government. But look out for just how badly they do in constituencies with candidates drawn from the Cameron A-list, several of whom neither Labour nor the Tories will deny are still Labour Party members, albeit ones who only joined because of Tony Blair.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
David -
ReplyDelete1. Please list all the super safe Tory parliamentary seats that have become knife edge marginals during the Cameron leadership
2. Please list all the Tory candidates on the A-list who are still members of the Labour party
Are they still paying their subs to the Labour Party? If so, that's brilliant work by Labour. If not, then surely they're not still members, even if they used to be and never formally resigned.
ReplyDeleteOf course, once they actually stand against the party in an election they'll be automatically excluded. David should know more about that than us, though.
Jon:
ReplyDelete1. Of the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, Peter Hitchens (whom knock on this only if you can disprove what he says) writes:
"Six months after the election of David Cameron as the supposedly refreshing, transforming leader of the Tories, the electorate punished the main opposition party, the selfsame Conservative Party, for its feebleness.
In the 2005 general election, the then Tory candidate, Eric Forth, had held this extremely safe seat with 23,583 votes, 51.1% of the vote, on a 64.8% turnout. His nearest challenger was Labour with 10,241, with the Liberal Democrats scoring 9,368.
The by-election turnout was well down, at 40.18%. Yet the Liberal Democrats scored 10,988 votes, a higher number than they had won on the higher turnout of 2005 and a far higher share. This was partly because Labour's vote entirely collapsed, to 1,925, a true measure of the public contempt for Anthony Blair which the metropolitan commentariat never understood and which has much to do with Labour's recovery under Gordon Brown.
But the crucial figure was the Tory vote, a pitiful 11,621, only 40% of the severely reduced turnout. That means almost 12,000 votes had gone missing (very few of them to UKIP, which performed weakly and failed to capitalise on the Tory collapse).
Some attempt was made to blame the Tory candidate, who was indeed far from sparkling, but I don't think this could explain the spectacular nature of the failure, especially so soon after the media canonisation of Mr Cameron and their proclamation of a New Tory Dawn.
The other interesting thing is that while Labour did very badly that night, both in Bromley and in Blaenau Gwent, they were performing more than adequately by the time Ealing and Sedgefield came round a year later.
Whereas the poor Tory performance was similar in both and is more likely to represent the true, long-term position of that party.
I wonder how long Ealing and Sedgefield will be remembered, or perhaps they will be written off as anomalies and - like Bromley and Chislehurst - chucked down the memory hole because they do not fit the liberal media’s distorted picture?"
Quite.
2. Every time I mention this, I get emails, sometimes from people of whom I have never heard, threatening to sue me if I mention them by name. This morning was no exception. I always say the same thing: that I haven't named them, and that I can't help wondering what they are so worried about...
I think you do know who I have in mind, actually. Plenty of people do... Indeed, even Iain Dale, himself on the A-list and frightening well-informed, never either fails to publish anything by me on this, or even removes it after publication.
And yes, Anonymous, so far as I have ever been able to ascertain, they are still paid up and card-carrying.
I have also been told face to face by top backroom boys and girls in both parties that there is no plan to expel them from Labour if they stand as A-list Tories against Labour paper candidates for safe Tory seats, and that the Conservative Party has no problem with their membership of Labour, precisely because they only took it up out of admiration for Blair and are rabidly anti-Brown.
Welcome to the One Party State of Britain.
Pro-Blair = Anti-Brown.
ReplyDeletePro-Blair = Pro-Cameron, the Heir to Blair.
Blair wants Cameron to win so no wonder the A-list is crawling with old Blairities, no wonder the Blair-appointed senior Labour staffers are more than happy with that, and no wonder the Cameroons are too.
Labour is going to win the next Election, but several of these people are going to be nominally Tory, ferociously pr-Cameron and anti-Brown MPs with close links to the nominally Labour, ferociously pro-Cameron and anti-Brown members of Blair's court in exile.
Whoever posted at 11:45 has missed the point. This is the Blairite, Cameroon, anti-Brown, anti-unions, anti-Socialism, anti-whatever party within Labour, not some sort of Labour trojan horse within the Tories.
David - I might, for the sake of argument, give you Bromley and Chisleurst - though both you and Hitchens underplay the special circumstances in the by election, and I will wager good money that in the next election the Tories will hold the seat by a good 10,000+.
ReplyDeleteBut that is just one example. And a dubious one at that. Ealing and Sedgefield are not, and have never been, safe Tory seats. The Tories came third in Ealing in 2005, and third again recently. They came 2nd by just over 1000 votes in Sedgefield in 2005, and then a narrow third- so hardly respectable second to distant third.
And I just do not believe that there are Tory parliamentary candidates who are still members of the Labour party, or vice versa. And I think you are lying, frankly, when you claim that people threaten to sue you if you repeat those names. Why do you not find some way to publish them anonymously? Or send them to the media? Or post them on your blog which is hosted offshore?
For members of the Labour Party to retain their membership while standing for the Tories MAKES NO SENSE! Why would they want to do it? If the Blairites want the Tories to win (which I don't believe for a moment, but for the sake of your ludicrous argument) why don't they just join the Tories, unashamedly ripping up their Labour membership cards and cancelling the direct debits which are used to fund Labour's anti-Tory campaigning? It MAKES NO SENSE!
ReplyDeleteJon, the media already know who they are, the way they already know all sorts of things.
ReplyDeleteAnd Anonymous 9:22am, what a sweet, naive soul you are...
OK David, explain yourself. Because as things stand you look a fool. Ending a sentence with "..." makes you appear stupid rather than knowing and well-informed.
ReplyDeleteI've explained it time without number on here. So have other people, from time to time. What do you still not understand?
ReplyDelete