David Skelton: The midlands and northern challenge - where we hold only 16 of 124 urban seats

David Skelton is a former Deputy Director of Policy Exchange. He is now establishing a campaign group aimed at broadening Conservative appeal, which will launch in July. Follow David on Twitter.

Take a look at the electoral map for the big Tory landslides since 1945 – whether it be Eden’s in 1955, Macmillan’s in 1959 or Thatcher’s in 1983. One thing becomes abundantly clear – a major contribution to big-post war election victories was winning seats in Scotland, the North and the Midlands. These leaders were winning seats in cities that have now become an electoral  wasteland for the Conservatives.

If the Conservatives cannot make significant headway in the urban centres in the North and Midlands, as well as making some kind of recovery in Scotland and picking up seats in the South West, it will be much more difficult for them to govern with an overall majority again. Being shut out from great swathes of the nation means that the party is starting each election campaign at a disadvantage. That’s why it’s so crucial that the Conservatives make a focused and determined effort to regain lost ground outside of its South Eastern heartland.

The scale of the problem is illustrated by the fact that the Tories hold less than a third of the seats in the North of England and only a single seat in Scotland. They hold only 20 of the 124 urban seats in the North and Midlands (that’s a mere 16 per cent). In cities where there was once a strong Tory presence, such as Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool, conservatism has become very much a minority interest – there isn’t a single Tory Councillor in any of these cities and in most Council wards the party isn’t even in a challenging position.

In Liverpool, once a bastion of working class Toryism, the Party came a miserable seventh in last year’s election to be Mayor of the city – with just over four per cent of the vote, compared to the winning candidate’s 59 per cent. There isn’t much evidence that the situation has improved since then either. This morning’s YouGov poll, which gives Labour a nine point lead nationally, gives them an 11 per cent lead in the Midlands and Wales and a whopping 36 per cent lead in the North.

Cameron should take up Alok Sharma's call for listed companies to disclose their ethnic balance

By Paul Goodman
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There are three keys to winning a bigger proportion of the ethnic minority vote in 2015 - important for the election itself and essential to our long-term future.

The first is polling.  Since not all ethnic and religious minorities are the same, it follows that our prospects are likely to be brighter with some than with others.  I've pointed out before that research suggests that our prospects are relatively bright among Hindus and Sikhs. Knowledge is essential, and that means polling.

Peter Kellner of YouGov describes how Cameron can win next time with a single-figure majority

By Paul Goodman
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In last weekend's Sunday Telegraph, the foundation of my article arguing that David Cameron won't win an overall majority in 2015 was a estimate made by Peter Kellner of YouGov.

He has previously set out why Mr Cameron needs a seven point lead over Labour to gain one - which, I believe, the Prime Minister can't achieve: I quoted the figure.

Today, Kellner has published an ingenious piece explaining how the Conservative leader can win with a majority of (by my count)...five.

But in Kellner's imaginary scenario, the poll lead Mr Cameron achieves in 2015 is one of only four points.  So how does the Prime Minister do it?

According to Mr Kellner, by picking up 24 seats from the Liberal Democrats and losing none to Labour.  It is exactly the kind of 1992 campaign that Mr Cameron will surely aim to fight.

Kellner's vote shares are: Conservative 39%, Labour 35%, the Lib Dems 13%, UKIP 4%, others 9%.  It is very clever, but I don't quite buy it.  What do you think?

Tim Montgomerie's response to my piece, arguing that victory isn't impossible, can be read here.

Tory HQ aims to lovebomb twenty Lib Dem MPs out of office

By Tim Montgomerie
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The tone of the Tory campaign in Lib/Con seats will largely be positive but its aim is clear - to kill off the Lib Dem parliamentary party in large parts of the country.

The Spectator's James Forsyth posted a significant story yesterday - revealing that 20 of the Conservatives' top 40 target seats are held by the Liberal Democrats. 10 of the 40 seats in the 40/40 strategy have been named so far and only two of them were LD-held. That means 18 of the next 30 seats to be named will be for blue-on-yellow battles.

ConHome warmly welcomes this decision. We feared that for reasons of Coalition management the party might hold back from taking this decision. When the battleground strategy was first drafted - only six months ago - only 28% of fifty target seats were to be LD held. Now it's 50% of forty target seats. Perhaps Nick Clegg's decision to veto boundary reform communicated that he intended to act in his party's self-interest and the Conservative Party has also now decided to play hardball?

Although individual Lib Dem MPs will do better than the national polls suggest - because of incumbency effects and perhaps because of targeting of LD resources - we've long argued that the next election represents our party's best opportunity in a generation to reverse the third party's incursions into the Tory heartland, began in 1997 and continued since. A YouGov poll earlier this week underlined the decline in trust in the Lib Dems since the last election. They are at a maximum moment of vulnerability that we must exploit.

Conservative HQ briefs Tory members on its battleground strategy

By Tim Montgomerie
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The Birmingham Post's Jonathan Walker posted a report yesterday on the Conservative Party's 40/40 strategy to win the next election. Jonathan's report stems from a members-only briefing that was given at Party Conference by Stephen Gilbert, the PM's Political Secretary. Here's what I know about that briefing:

• At the heart of the 40/40 campaign is an ambition to hold forty seats and win another forty. This will be enough to win a majority but not a large one. Conservative sources are keen to point out, however, that winning forty seats is not necessarily the limit of their ambition. Resources will be devoted to these target seats and the effects will be monitored. If Con HQ feels that these seats are safely heading into the blue column extra target seats will be added. My source told me that the number of target seats should increase to about seventy before the general election. The original plan had more ambitiously been to immediately target fifty seats (36 from Labour and 14 from the LibDems and when there was only due to be 600 seats in total) and hold another fifty.
• The Conservative Party now feels it has a better ground operation than Labour. It points to the fact that it won 23 more seats at the last election than it should have done if the national swing towards the Tories had been evenly spread across the whole country. The net 23 figure includes 32 seats that we won because of effective targeting but also nine that we failed to win and should have done (a good number of these being in London). Tory strategists say one of the reasons for this success has been its approach to clustering - its targeting of messages on special types of seats, eg new towns/ seaside towns.
• The Tories are determined to take advantage of their double incumbency advantage. Double incumbency benefit involves a first-term Tory MP for a former Labour seat, for example, developing his or her own personal following because of constituency profile and facing an opponent who has yet to build up a personal vote of their own.
• Eighty new campaign managers are being recruited to ensure that efforts in the 40/40 seats are perfectly executed and to Con HQ rather than local instructions. The party will be building additional infrastructure for leaflet delivery. Most Tory MPs who won their seats at the last election found that they could not rely upon local Associations and had to build alternative networks through friends, churches, country sports groups and so on.
• Mr Gilbert presented polling evidence which suggests that the party still has an underlying strength in five fundamental areas -
  • Cameron as preferred PM;
  • Overall economic trustworthiness;
  • People still thinking cuts are unavoidable;
  • Public supporting the Tory rather than Labour definition of fairness, especially in terms of ending the something-for-nothing culture;
  • Sense that Labour hadn't really changed or learnt its lessons from failures in office. This explains the "Labour isn't learning" attack.
• Activists were promised that the Liberal Democrats would be heavily targeted but the targeting would continue to be via "lovebombing" rather than the heavily negative campaigning of old. I was told during the week that the ground operation in Eastleigh was already "at top speed".
• The NHYes campaign is being relaunched to restore public trust among what Con HQ calls the "in-play centre". The NHS, green credentials at a local level* and, above all else, action on the cost of living are seen to be central to winning over this group. Last week's announcement on freezing council tax and capping rail fares were the latest acknowledgments of this.

* People want local conservation - there is little faith or hunger for bold action on the international stage re climate change.

"Yesterday, the Conservative Party suffered its worst single electoral setback since Black Wednesday". Discuss.

By Tim Montgomerie
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On last night's World Tonight I claimed that the loss of boundary reviews was the single worst political event to hit the Tories since 1992 and Black Wednesday*. Was I exaggerating?

When the Parliamentary and Voting Constituencies Bill was passed I celebrated the moment, noting that the introduction of fair-sized seats of equal population could boost the number of Tory MPs at the next election by up to twenty. That was certainly Conservative HQ's view. This morning the hope of boundaries fairness** is close to death, if not dead. After having explicitly said there that there was no connection between Lords reform and equal-sized seats Nick Clegg has u-turned and claimed there needs to be a connection.

Mountain to climb but not Mission Impossible --- Seven reasons why the Tories CAN win the next election

By Tim Montgomerie
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A few months ago when I started arguing that the next election might be difficult to win it was an unpopular argument. Many in the party thought that Ed Miliband was easily beatable. Things have moved on since then with dark clouds descending across the party. My view hasn't changed and it's not recent events that are uppermost in my mind but various structural factors. No sitting PM, for example, has increased their vote share since 1974. Labour has been hugely strengthened by the mass defection of left-leaning Lib Dem voters to the red corner. UKIP is biting chunks out of our own core vote. As yesterday's YouGov polling on the Right/Left brands proved, detoxification has failed. With only 20% of the cuts made we are also busy (some would say unavoidably) retoxifying ourselves.

But enough of this pessimism or, depending on your outlook, realism.

Here's the key question: Can Cameron complete mission impossible and overcome these trends?

David Cameron's five-point plan to win the next election

By Paul Goodman
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Senior CCHQ sources tell me that plans for fighting the next election are already being mapped out.  These have less to do with policies or even delivery (which are presumably covered elsewhere) than with "values" - presumably on the ground that if uncommitted voters don't like or at least respect you, they won't vote for you.

Indeed, "values" is the foundation on which the five points to which I refer above are built.  In this context, the word seems to mean convincing floating voters that David Cameron is "on the side of people who work hard, want to get on and play by the rules", as his post-local elections Daily Telegraph article earlier this month put it.  The other main parts of the plan are:

• Addressing the "wrong track" issues.  This is the sense that Britain's economy and society are getting worse rather than better.  CCHQ recognises that success at the next election is inextricably linked to reversing it.

• Winning support on the NHS.  Never forget the stress that Mr Cameron put in opposition, second only to restoring the party's reputation for economic competence, on trying to establish that the NHS would be "safe in his hands".

• Closing the gender gap.  Traditionally, the Conservatives were propelled into office by women's votes.  New Labour reversed this position; Mr Cameron began to restore it - but has run into problems since the 2010 election.

• Winning non-white support.  The number one driver of not voting Conservative is not being white.  Tim Montgomerie and I have explored the problem here and (for example) here.  So has Lord Ashcroft in a major report.

• Organisation in marginals.  The bottom line ambition is to win roughly 35 Labour seats and 15 Liberal Democrat ones.  This relatively modest ambition seems to be a reflection both of psephological realities and the difficulty of winning seats when in power.

"For the rich. Selfish. Rubbish." Lord Ashcroft's new study shows what ethnic and religious minorities think of the Conservative Party. (But it's not all bad news, especially among Hindus and Sikhs...)

By Paul Goodman
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The dismal illustration above is taken from the biggest-ever study of the attitude of ethnic and religious minorities to the Conservative Party - Degrees of separation, commissioned by Lord Ashcroft and published today.

It is a word cloud of associations the party's brand provoked when tested on those who took part in this study.  I read the report yesterday both to read it for itself and to test it against my view on these matters, as previously set out on this site.  My fourfold take is:

• The ethnic minority vote threatens the Conservatives with demographic decline.  Only 16 per cent of all ethnic minority voters supported the party in 2010.  They are more resistant to voting Tory than the white majority.   Ethnic minority votes made up under one in ten of the population in 2001.  By 2050 ethnic minorities will make up a fifth of the population.

• The party leadership has traditionally reacted to the challenge with tokenism and ignorance.  It has assumed that this resistance can be broken down by a few appointments near the top.  By getting policy right.  By assuming that all ethnic and religious groups are essentially the same - and that what may work for one may work for all.

• There is no substitute for hard work from the bottom up.  By all means work on policy, and appoint more ethnic minority members to the top table - if like others they have the capability.  But there is no substitute for a party presence on the ground, in the cities and suburbs where such voters are most likely to be found.

• Target the groups that are most receptive to the Conservative message.  The party has a moral responsibility to take its message to all Britons.  But making a special pitch to those more likely to be won over applies as much here as elsewhere.  For example, Britons of Indian origin are more likely to vote Tory than those of Pakistani origin.

The Tory masterplan to win 36 seats from Labour and 14 from the Liberal Democrats

By Tim Montgomerie
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Just over a week ago Tory MPs gathered in Westminster for a half-day of presentations and briefings. One of the briefings was given jointly by Andrew Cooper, Cameron's pollster and strategy adviser, and Stephen Gilbert, the PM's Political Secretary and mastermind of the party's campaign operations. Over the last week I've been speaking to MPs that were present and piecing together what they were told and also their reactions to it. In speaking to other members of the Tory inner circle I've also learnt about some of the party's other general election plans.

There are ten things you most need to know:

1. Uphill struggle: The Tory leadership know that the next election is going to be a steep challenge. They insist they are working for victory but another hung parliament is "very likely" according to one senior Cabinet minister.
2. Battle for values: The Conservative Party and David Cameron are seen as strong but not enough voters see the party as "fair". In the next three years - off the back of welfare reforms, in particular, the Conservative party must present itself, as the party of true fairness and therefore win the values battle. This began with Cameron's speech on Saturday.
3. Reassurance not radicalism: The party will scare target voters with too much radical messaging. The emphasis must be on "grip and competence", not "frightening talk of transformation".
4. 100 target seats: The party is targeting 100 seats in total - fifty it already holds and fifty it hopes to win. The aim is to win 36 from Labour and 14 from the Liberal Democrats.
5. No expectation of Scottish recovery: Nearly all of the winnable seats are in England - mainly the South West, North West and Midlands. There is a possibility of one or two pickups in Wales but the party is not counting on any gains in Scotland. "Anything in Scotland will be a bonus," said one Conservative aide, "but we need to be able to build a UK majority without any Scottish MP."
6. Urban focus: 34 of the 36 Labour-held seats are largely or entirely urban. They have large public sector and often ethnic minority populations.
7. Neutralising negatives: Poor showings among women, ethnic minorities and NHS patients are biggest threats to a Tory majority and must be avoided by careful and strategic interventions.
8. The 10% most reachable: It's very early but the new voters most open to voting Conservative in target seats are disproportionately under 35, unmarried, above-average-income and from a BME background.
9. Major recruitment exercise: In April ConHQ will be looking to recruit eighty new graduates as campaign managers and, after intensive training, these will spearhead the Tory effort in a two-and-a-half year push from early next year. 
10. Beyond the presentation: In speaking to other senior Tory aides I've learnt about some of the other campaign ploys. They include fairer funding of the trade union movement; staggered timing of the election debates; and, most interestingly, the holding of a referendum on general election day to mobilise the maximum possible Tory vote.

Taking each of these ten points in turn...

(1) Uphill struggle: The Tory leadership know that the next election is going to be hard. They insist they are working for victory but another hung parliament is "very likely" according to one senior Cabinet minister.

The result of the last election is still the unmentionable topic in Number 10. Hushed tones descend whenever anyone dares to mention the topic in Cameron's presence. One source told me it's like mentioning Heather Mills to Paul McCartney. Certain issues are still tiptoed around, therefore, and there is a reluctance to conduct a root-and-branch reassessment of election strategy. The strategy that the Conservatives have, therefore, is one that is most noticeable for its continuity rather than its differences. Radicalism is eschewed. There is more emphasis on chasing the votes of the metropolitan rather than the striving class. Many 'Court of Dave' members still can't believe that Britain didn't vote for Mr Cameron last time and they don't know that much more can be done next time to persuade them that he's the ideal Prime Minister. There is a strong expectation amongst some courtiers that the party will therefore fall short again. A clear instruction has been issued to do nothing that would fatally jeopardise co-operation with the Lib Dems after another hung parliament. "If we don't quite win but the battlefield is covered in blood and gore the biggest casualty of an all-out election campaign might be us," said one aide.