Today’s YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph gives the Conservative Party a 2% lead over Labour – confirming YouGov’s weekend poll for The Sunday Times. A 5% gain for the Conservatives since May’s General Election has entirely been at the Liberal Democrats’ expense.
The YouGov poll finds more bad news for Charles Kennedy. Only 11% now think that he would make the best Prime Minister. That’s down from 18% in May. Mr Cameron is level-pegging with Mr Blair. Each has the support of 30% of voters as the best PM.
Charles Kennedy received some support from Ming Campbell on this morning’s Today programme. Mr Kennedy’s Deputy said that the Liberal Democrats were at their best when Mr Kennedy was in full flight. He did imply that Mr Kennedy had not been firing on many cylinders recently, however. Sir Ming said that he would certainly consider standing for the LibDem leadership if a vacancy emerged. LibDem Home Affairs spokesman Mark Oaten used an interview in The Telegraph to say that he wanted to be leader but that he would not challenge Mr Kennedy.
Mr Cameron will speak in Hereford later today. He will invite Liberal Democrats to join his modern compassionate Conservative Party and its new emphasis on social justice and environmentalism. ConservativeHome will digest the speech later.
The Telegraph’s YouGov poll shows that Mr Cameron’s honeymoon is much more modest than that enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1994. Mr Blair enjoyed a 70% over 10% advantage on “caring”, for example. Mr Cameron’s advantage is only 32% over 12% because of a much greater number of ‘don’t knows’. Mr Blair was regarded as decisive by a margin of 60% over 15%. Mr Cameron’s advantage is only 36% over 10%. Unlike previous Tory leaders, however, Mr Cameron’s ratings are consistently positive.
Compromised Cameron
A credible ‘liberal conservative’ has to be conservative as well as liberal
The past few days have been a strange experience for Charles Kennedy. As first highlighted in The Times, his attempts to quash rumours about his leadership merely increased the speculation. By yesterday he had to endure senior colleagues such as Sir Menzies Campbell, Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten appearing on various media outlets to offer highly qualified endorsements of him, coupled with a shameless willingness to seek his position in the event of a vacancy. With friends like these, Mr Kennedy might ask, who needs enemies in politics?
David Cameron has decided that this is the moment to persuade Liberal Democrats that he is now their friend and not their enemy. In an address in Hereford he made a pitch for supporters of Mr Kennedy’s party to switch to him and implied that a Conservative-Lib Dem pact was not implausible. He insisted that he was a “liberal conservative” and that “today we have a Conservative Party that believes passionately in green politics, that is committed to decentralisation and localism, that supports open markets and that is prepared to stand up for civil liberties and the rule of law, and wants Britain to be a positive participant in the EU as a champion of liberal values”.
It may not only be the left-leaning in the Liberal Democrats scratching their heads at this initiative. It would be understandable if Mr Cameron were to target the modernising or “Orange Book” tendency among Mr Kennedy’s MPs by contending that he too stood for market liberalism with a serious social conscience. This would be shrewd politics. His call yesterday, however, went much farther. It was aimed at a strain of Liberal Democrat sentiment which, on the whole, remains left-of-centre in inclination. Such people will be bemused and confused by the notion that a new Conservative Party intends to be a branch of Friends of the Earth.
This might all be entertaining in the short term but it makes for a strange longer-term strategy. The green pressure groups (and Liberal Democrats) whose approval the Tories appear to crave are not just looking for a commitment from the Leader of the Opposition to bicycle each day to work in Westminster. They want a dogmatic rejection of nuclear power. A sensible politician of the Centre or Centre Right should support that source of energy. The localism which other lobbies favour is of a scale that would make it impossible for Conservatives to introduce substantial market-orientated reforms of the public services.
Political opportunism is not without its price. It could allow a government led by Gordon Brown to present itself as a sober administration, prepared to make hard choices, pitted against an opposition that preferred inoffensive soft options. The Tories risk moving from being the “nasty party” to the “nothing party” — which is not much better. Mr Cameron probably is a “liberal conservative”, so there is no harm in him employing that language. He should not, though, leave the impression of being more liberal than conservative; he certainly does seem to be something of a political tart.
Posted by: The Times editorialises against Cameron | December 17, 2005 at 00:09