Time to 'man up', Mr Cameron

How do we go from 5% ahead to an election-winning lead?

You were clear in your views.  You want more attacks on Labour but, perhaps more significantly, you also want the Conservatives to say that Britain is broken.  It's time, in your opinion, for a political leader to tell the truth about Britain.

It's time for David Cameron to tell the British people that Britain is going in the wrong direction.  He needs to say that we're living beyond our means.  We're spending too much and borrowing too much.  We have surrendered our streets to yobbery and incivility.  Britain's schools are failing the poorest members of society.  He needs to promise a government that will put things right and he should tell the British people that it won't be easy or painless.  We need to forget the focus groups and the polling for just one minute and tell the truth about a nation that is in trouble.  Mr Cameron might be surprised at voters' reaction.  Our hunch is that the first  politician to tell the British people 'how it really is' will form a bond with many millions of them.  It doesn't need to be a message that is soaked in gloom.  Mr Cameron can be optimistic about the future but only, he should say, if Britain has the courage to elect a new government with a different agenda.

But Matthew Parris says it so much better in his column for today's Times:

"A change is taking place in the economic weather; and change in the political weather must follow. To suit an altering climate over Britain the Official Opposition needs a change of focus, of message and of tone. The key Tory messages of cuddliness and generosity should now leave the spotlight.

The new Conservative language should be about waste, maladministration, extravagance, incompetence and drift. The new idea should be the need in hard times for rigour, severity and unsentimentality. Sheer necessity should be part of the backdrop to every Tory speech about the economy and public services.

The whole ethos surrounding a party leadership with ambitions to topple the present Government must be of a ruthlessly businesslike instinct to cut the fat, strip waste, sack the incompetent and pare down public administration to its essentials. David Cameron, George Osborne and their team should present themselves as a hit squad of top-flight company doctors, sent in to rescue a flabby and flailing corporation on the verge of insolvency. Tories should not fear or duck the implication that there will be victims, sacrifices and cuts. Shadow ministers should not shrink from the impression that some people are going to hate this new Tory government's guts.

The public are ready for this."

We think they are, too.  Read Matthew Parris' excellent article here.

Comments

[David Belchamber]

Thank you David Cooper at 19.27. I agree totally with your last sentence but fear Cameron will never move Osborne (who could do a wonderful job for us elsewhere).

[Patsy Sergeant]

You are so right Mark Hudson @ 12.06 yesterday, I have only just managed to limp back to my PC with the aid of my sixteenth Zimmer frame, so what would I know about anything. Your cheap jibe shows more about YOUR lack of character than anything else.

[No way]

What does man up mean? I thought this was man down? if you want to sack people. Fire more people well done. More unemployed people. Great idea.