Are we throwing the Election away? Even if, like UK Polling Report, one rejects the view that the Conservatives need an eleven point lead to get an overall majority, a lead of only seven points is nerves-making territory.
Here are five things to do. There's no guarantee that if you do these things you will win, but if you lose doing this, at least you won't have thrown the Election away.
- Be right. How happy would you be to argue for something you thought was wrong and then lose anyway? That doesn't mean "be extreme". If you worry that what you believe in is extreme, then the first step is to wonder whether you are actually right. That doesn't mean "be unrealistic". There is only so much of what we believe to be right that we can implement at one go, and it isn't right to try to change too much at once (this should be axiomatic for a Conservative). But being right is your greatest ally in politics, and when you consider your opponent is right and you are wrong, politics is a pretty miserable business.
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Be worthy of victory. The British electorate almost always elects the Party most worthy of victory. If you are incoherent, dishonourable, bereft of ideas, unpleasantly fixated on certain out-groups, or badly split, you won't win - and you won't deserve to.
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Be clear. If you have something worth saying, you should be able to convey it simply and comprehensibly to the electorate. This is not a matter of lies or distortion or empty PR. It is a matter of being clear to yourself about what you want to do and being willing to spell it out clearly to the voters and opinion-formers. If you can't be clear, that is probably because you don't yourself know what you want to do or because you don't want to tell.
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Be relevantly substantive. There's little point in victory if you have nothing substantive to do (or substantive not to do). But the substance of what you want to do must be relevant to the issues of the day - especially given the costs of change. We all have our own pet concerns, but national policy must be relevant to genuine current national issues. That may not always be the issues that the public or the press starts off thinking are the most important - you can convince them that something else matters. But that should be because those issues are in fact the most important, not because you don't have anything to say about the actual important issues and want to avoid discussing them.
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Be proportionate. Don't exaggerate the significance or danger of minor issues or underplay the significance of major issues. We want politicians as big as the issues we face. Charismatic meddlers or hysterical doom-sayers can be dangerous in times of peace and prosperity. Petty-minded yes-men are unlikely to be up to addressing difficult situations that might require big calls and a willingness to make such calls and then be wrong.
I repeat: even if you do these things, you may lose. But this is what "submitting yourself to the Electorate" is about.
