Only 7% of Tory members think Cameron can win a majority in 2015

By Tim Montgomerie
Follow Tim on Twitter

Over the last year, since March 2012, the percentage of Tory members thinking that Cameron and the Conservatives can stay in power after the next election has shrunk from 62% to just 25%. The percentage thinking Cameron can win an outright majority has shrunk from 23% to just 7%. The specific expectations are:

• 31% expect an outright Labour majority;
• 9% expect a minority Labour government;
• 34% expect a Lab / Lib Dem Coalition;
• 8% expect a second Tory / Lib Dem Coalition;
• 11% expect a minority Tory government;
• And 7% expect a Conservative majority.

Continue reading "Only 7% of Tory members think Cameron can win a majority in 2015" »

Nearly everything you've ever read about 'the Tory brand problem' is wrong

By Tim Montgomerie
Follow Tim on Twitter

The Tories should stop banging on about Europe if they want to win.

The Tories are too hard on immigration and crime.

The Conservatives are homophobic, anti-women and sometimes even racist.

How many times have we heard things like this said by commentators, our opponents and even Tory über-modernisers?

A new YouGov poll for ConHome suggests that these obsessions of the chattering classes are not, actually, the explanation for why Conservatives have struggled to win more than a third of the vote at four successive elections. The reasons are perhaps more straightforward, obvious and, at the same time, more challenging. The party needs to prove that it is committed to the public services and is on the side of ordinary families. To put it another way - our problem is not that we're too right-wing or insufficiently libertarian but that we aren't seen as committed to 'Britain's social contract' - to the NHS, to pensioners, to a basic safety-net.

Continue reading "Nearly everything you've ever read about 'the Tory brand problem' is wrong" »

No more Lords reform — and dwindling hope for a Conservative majority

By Peter Hoskin
_{Follow Peter on Twitter}

Just another quiet Monday afternoon in August? Not at all. Nick Clegg has just given a statement confirming something that is equal parts unsurprising and politically significant: Lords reform is dead for this Parliament. He says that David Cameron has been unable to persuade enough Conservative MPs to back the proposed legislation, and so it’s been binned. As a result, the Lib Dems will now vote against the boundary changes as currently proposed, although the legislation will still go through Parliament.

The Deputy Prime Minister was eager to suck the poison from this moment, claiming that this is the first time since the election that the Coalition has broken one of the mutual bargains in their original Agreement. But that fact also highlights how noteworthy today’s news is. Today marks a new chapter in the biography of this government, and it is likely that all subsequent chapters will be ill-natured. Many Tories and non-Tories alike are pointing out that Lords reform and the boundary review weren’t actually linked in the Coalition Agreement as Clegg linked them today. The actual passage from the Agreement ties up the boundary review with the AV referendum, as below. So is it Clegg who’s going back on what was promised?

Continue reading "No more Lords reform — and dwindling hope for a Conservative majority" »

Conservatives must champion "the consumer, the taxpayer and the entrepreneur"

By Tim Montgomerie
Follow Tim on Twitter

Matt Sinclair of the TaxPayers' Alliance has written a good blog over at Coffee House defending George Osborne's determination to take on the green lobby and get a better deal for energy users. The Chancellor, argues Matt, is on the side of the consumer.

Standing up for the consumer is just one manifestation of what I've called a "Conservatism of the little guy". In an article I highlighted yesterday from US Congressman Paul Ryan he said Republicans should be the party of "the consumer, the taxpayer and the entrepreneur". Simple, but true. This idea of battling for the Average Joe against the machine is one of the themes being tested in the latest ConservativeHome survey. Item 12 in a list of 23 ideas to win the next election is "a new consumer agenda that reduces the power of big banks, energy companies and supermarkets".

Continue reading "Conservatives must champion "the consumer, the taxpayer and the entrepreneur"" »

Ed Miliband makes fewer mid-term gains than William Hague but Britain has only swallowed 15% of the Coalition's medicine

By Tim Montgomerie
_{Follow Tim on Twitter}

So were the results good for Ed Miliband? He certainly won more council seats than Conservatives expected him to win. Labour certainly performed better than I expected. But are they an indication that Ed Miliband is heading to Number 10? Grant Shapps suggests no, tweeting: "Two years into the Labour govt Hague made a far more impressive 1,300 gains. EdM might note that William never actually became PM!" But Ed Miliband doesn't have to make anywhere near as much progress as Hague had to do. Hague started with 165 MPs. Miliband begins with 258. The Labour percentage of the vote has been boosted by the defection of two million or more ex-Lib Dem voters. These left-leaning voters will not quickly vote Yellow again after seeing Nick Clegg do a deal with the 'evil Tories'. Labour goes into the election with 34% to 36% locked up - not so far away from being the largest party.

And if Labour don't face such an uphill struggle as Hague, IDS, Howard or Cameron did, I'm not sure that the Coalition can look forward to gentler slopes itself. We may be in the mid-term of a parliament but the Government's work is not half-done. It's not close to being half-done. Only 15% of the austerity measures have bitten. The biggest and least pleasant welfare cuts are still to come. According to the Prime Minister we're not even halfway through the €urozone's crisis. The NHS reforms are still around the corner. The Coalition's rose garden moments are behind it.

Some big things could, of course, get better. Growth might resume. Inflation might subside. The boundary review, a focus on defeating Lib Dem MPs and a reunification of the Eurosceptic vote might all happen. It may also be the case that in difficult times voters will prefer George Osborne and David Cameron over Ed Balls and Ed Miliband as economic managers (they do at the moment by 36% to 28%). My overall sense remains that we need a game-changer to win the next election, however, and that, while Ed Miliband may be a liability for his party, his party is back in power in Harlow, Southampton, Plymouth and Reading as well as recovering in Scotland and dominant again in Wales. As I've argued before, there is a distinction between underestimating Ed Miliband and underestimating Labour.