Yesterday, the London Evening Standard's Paul Waugh reported that David Cameron was warning that a lurch to the Right would not have won the last General Election. Jonathan Isaby's own review of the Prime Minister's talk to defeated candidates is here.
Frankly, talking of a lurch to the Right is a straw man argument. It is a smokescreen that is intended to hide the real reasons why the Tories didn't successfully seize the best opportunity we had in a generation to win a majority.
In ConHome's review of the election there is only one conclusion which can be fairly presented as urging a Right-wards move. That is our observation that issues like immigration and welfare reform were under-used. I'll always be puzzled as to why a day of the election was dedicated to the launch of an already-forgotten schools music competition but the potent issue of immigration never got a day's billing.
But the bigger arguments in the election review were about professionalism and proper process rather than ideology:
- The election debates gave the Liberal Democrats by-election status, and disrupted an already disjointed Tory campaign (91% of candidates agreed);
- The Big Society agenda is an exciting governing philosophy but it should never have been put at the heart of the Tory election campaign (71% of candidates agreed);
- The Conservatives stopped losing on the economy but they didn't develop a strong or consistent economic message (70% of candidates agreed);
- The Conservatives never developed an overall strategic message for the General Election (62% agreed).
ConHome's inside story of the election campaign points to lack of clear decision-making (which meant no clear theme was ever decided upon); a poor use of polling (which meant the Big Society was never market tested); and a failure to weaponise or retail-ise policies (with the exception of the last minute pledge on cancer drugs, the hugely expensive NHS pledge, for example, was not turned into doorstep policies) until the Contract was unveiled.
The other issue was trustworthiness. Cameron's ratings started falling on trust immediately after the Lisbon policy decision. Not because of the Europe issue, necessarily, but because voters - led by newspapers like the Mail, accused Cameron of being like other politicians. This reputation was reinforced by a lack of directness on issues like the deficit.
Another red herring regularly proposed in this debate is the idea that Cameron's swing was comparable to Thatcher's in 1979. 1979, to state the obvious, was 31 years ago. In those years electorates have become much more volatile. Every week we read of politicians (and people from all walks of life) enjoying the highest or lowest ratings ever. It is much easier to achieve large swings than in the past.
I'm determined to keep making these arguments until Downing Street faces up to what happened in the election campaign. Until it does we cannot be confident that the next election will produce a better performance.
> Come to the ConHome Review of the Election fringe meeting at Party Conference. Speakers: Lord Ashcroft, James Forsyth, Iain Martin, Tim Montgomerie and Fraser Nelson.
