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What a tragedy the positive discrimination selecting MP's to the A List has been used to push forward Ab Fab women and ethnic candidates. The BNP have jumped on this immediately to colour us in as it were.

What we should have done if we were going to do positive discrimination should have been in favour of solid working calss regional accents - the likes of Prescott but without the hand up the skirt.

Or alternatively thrown open the selection procedure to Primaries, and allowed the sea of humanity access to our ranks. That would put right any previous bias we may have suffered from.

As usual any attempt to control the flow of humanity according to a selection process is less effective than allowing the quality to rise to the top under its own steam.

I would draw the line from Bristol to the Wash to define where we need to make inroads. This report is what I've said all along. We need regional lists with local candidates. I live in a marginal where there is in many parts, a deep mistrust of what some might term 'outsiders'. If we put up a candidate from London or the Home Counties with a non local accent, we could lose key votes which could tip over the seat. This is what CCHQ is failing to understand and will cost us vital seats.

Well it wouldn't surprise me if Cameron and Maude proposed a fixed number of southern whippet and pigeon owners to resolve this issue.

Perhaps rename it the 'Haway' List? ;-)

How many of the candidates on the A List are northern?

Slightly tangential but at least people in the North are asked if they would vote Tory, etc! YouGov and Daily Telegraph seem to assume we are all happy to vote for parochial parties in Northern Ireland. For what its worth I have written to the Editor to complain!

Yes the Conservatives do need to shift resource (cash) from its very safe seats to the marginals it needs to win.

One change in the battle with the Lib Dems is that becuase at GE2005 Conservatives stopped losing seats to the Lib Dems (and gained 39 councillors in local elections on May 4) we are in a better position to focus on gaining rather than defending seats in the South. Many Lib Dem MPs in the South have now become marginals and the South could return to the Conservatives with 10 Lib Dem losses.

What we have to do is get on with candidate selections and focus on local campaign support.

Tim. Worth noting that the YouGov figures for London are NOT for Greater London - they are for the London ITV television region, hence they include bits of Surrey, Essex, Kent and so on and normally show a whopping great Tory lead.

I am afraid that, whichever way you package him, oop North 'ere, the Boy King comes over as a big girls blouse (or padded bra). He might go down well with you metropolitan clever-dicks, until you find something else to get excited about, but, as leader of a party that seems to get nose-bleeds when it comes this far north, he ain't going to hack it here.

The great weakness in our party has been the refusal to support potential candidates with a public sector background. It is an enduring blindspot. Apart from the question of being representative, too many leading Conservatives don't know what they are talking about (literally) when addressing schools and health issues.

A second failing is the refusal to turf out the seat blockers in safe seats to make way for new blood. The target seats cannot carry the load.

Thanks for the clarification Anthony.

Richard, in my experience Cameron isn't a great deal less popular up north than down south - but the party's focus/message remains out of touch with many northeners.

Councillor Lankester's comments are very true. The bed blocker problem will only be solved when a few constituencies rise in revolt and deselect their sitting MP. The Tory Party has been in opposition for so long that it has no powers of patronage to move useless incumbents sideways so they fight tooth and nail to hold onto their perks and privileges.

I think lessons can be learned from some of the victories that took place in the local elections. Not wanting to get into a debate about how Northern a place is - but Bassetlaw as a constituency and also local authority in my book could be regarded as Northern. It is in the former Nottinghamshire coal fields and spreads nearly all the way up to Doncaster.

The main town Worksop has had serious drugs issues - yet what happened in the last local elections - The Tories took control and with 28 seats have double that of Labour on 14.

I am very passionate about this issue - and the party really does need to get the right candidates in the right seats. We can't afford to neglect these type of seats - as without the North and indeed Midlands we will never form a Government.


If you look at the results across North and South London suburbia, you'll see that we're now about as strong as we were 20 years ago (in addition to making inroads into Inner London over that period).

Look at some of the individual ward results: Queensbury, 2,000 votes, Harrow on the Hill 1,500 votes, Kenton West 1,500 votes, Hale 2,300 votes and so on. These are areas of historic Conservative strength, which swung away from us massively from 1992 to 2001. By the mid nineties, many of these wards were returning Labour councillors, and contributing to Labour Parliamentary majorities.

They began switching back in the 2002 local elections and that process has gathered pace. But what has done it, IMO, is huge dissatisfaction with ever higher levels of taxation, while getting mediocre public services in return - it's not down to concern about the environment or social liberalism vs social conservatism.

"Richard, in my experience Cameron isn't a great deal less popular up north than down south - but the party's focus/message remains out of touch with many northeners.

Posted by: Deputy Editor"

Rather depends who you talk to.

Admittedly "my experience" was just with people in Liverpool, Manchester and the Yorkshire Dales - short of commissioning a full-blown survey on the matter in whatever is agreed to be 'the north', that is the best I can offer!

Based on the excellent advice given here, it would be interesting if conHome could contact the a-listers and ask them these three questions?

* What class do you define yourself as (upper, middle or working class)?
* Do you work in the public sector?
* Do you consider yourself a northerner or a southerner?

I'd love to see the real figures.

Id be interested to hear any suggestions of what readers think may work better in Northern towns and citie sin terms of campaigning

"Id be interested to hear any suggestions of what readers think may work better in Northern towns and citie sin terms of campaigning"

Not being a northener I can't really shed a light on northern concerns. If it is true that northeners are keener on core issues such as crime and immigration then there should perhaps be more emphasis on those. Maybe the best idea is to initiate some surveys to see what issues concern northeners the most and then campaign on those issues. Or just get some canvassers to find out.

It's the payroll vote. So many public sector employees, so many whose jobs depend indirectly on increased public spending, so many people dependent on benefits. The North East's economy would disappear if you took away the state, paid for by southern tax payers, which only reinforces the lack of investment in the region. Conservative hatred has become a religion up here, and all the problems of this generation of young adults eg crime, drugs, a stagnant economy have been blamed on their being "Thatchers Children" Point is, there's a lot of history and misinformation here. Socialism failed the north, not us.

I'm not for one second saying that there isn't a problem with the party's slower recovery north of Watford, but we should be careful when analysing the problem by reference to the local election results. The London seats were last fought in 2002 whilst the provincial metropolitan seats were last contested in 2004. 2004 was a much better year for us than 2002 and, clearly, there was a larger harvest of Labour seats to be brought in in London.

Having said that, my politics were London based until 2004 and are now Birmingham based, and I have no doubt that our revival has much further to go here than in the metropolis. I'm unsure, as yet, as to why that is the case, but have some ideas fermenting.

Henry - its interesting you say that. I know the drugs problem is certain areas where I campaigned was put down to "Thatcher closing the pits" - yet at the same time the MP claimed full employment in his constituency. Hardly a coherent argument - but that never stopped New Labour.

Maybe our only hope is to win an election backed by the South and the Midlands, shrink the size of the state in the North and hope the ensuing economic growth causes them to vote Tory. Far-fetched I know but I'm procrastinating from revision at the moment.

Richard - I prefer going out there in these so called Tory no go areas and take our message to the electorate. With the right message and right candidates we can win back support.

You only have to look at what Thatcher did with what was called the "New Working class". They didnt vote Tory because they saw themselves as Tory. They saw issues that resonated with their aspirations - and voted for us in spite of their background. It was one of the reasons I joined the party. What we need to do is re-engage in many areas of the country who have probably never met a Conservative, never had a leaflet, never had their door knocked on by our party.

Whilst I agree that Labour have overseen an unprecedented expansion of a 'client-electorate' of state employees and that this is particularly felt in the north and midlands, I think we also need to be honest about some of the other reasons Labour support is so solid in those regions.

When I moved to B'ham, after 11 years in London, I was struck by the very strong sense of regional and city pride. This is closely connected to a sense of optimism about how the city is improving. B'ham, Manchester, Leeds and so many other provoncial cities, have enjoyed the most extraordinary renaissance since the mid-1990's and, unfortunately, Labour have taken a lot of the credit for those changes. These cities just look and feel a lot more prosperous than, in very recent times, they did. Our years in power, particularly the early 1980's and early 1990's, on the other hand, are associated with the years of decline.

I suppose what I'm driving at, is that the '90's economic boom was especially kind to the provincial cities and, as long as Labour take the credit for the boom they will take the credit for the improvement in these cities.

Re London:
"They began switching back in the 2002 local elections and that process has gathered pace. But what has done it, IMO, is huge dissatisfaction with ever higher levels of taxation, while getting mediocre public services in return - it's not down to concern about the environment or social liberalism vs social conservatism."

That was my experience canvassing in Tooting (Wandsworth) and in Merton. People are sick of ever higher taxes and ever poorer services from the government and in (what were) Labour councils like Merton.

Nationally the payroll vote issue is a real one; massive amounts of money are transferred from the south-east to the north , and the perception is that Labour transfers more than the Tories would; so this wins Tory votes in the south and loses them in the north. From my experience, in the north the NHS functions reasonably well, while in the south it's a disaster - because a nationally-set nurse's salary is a decent income in Sheffield (or Belfast) but not in Brent or Tooting. This may partly explain why the Midlands is more promising territory than the north - even though the cost of living in Coventry more resembles the north, funds transfer does not; poor parts of the Midlands seem largely ignored by the government and get far less public money than does the north.


I'm sure there's a lot of truth in that Gareth. What's curious is that the economic renaissance of some Northern cities certainly predates the nineties. Leeds, for example, boomed during the eighties, and that's continued ever since. Even Newcastle was in much better shape economically by 1997 than it had been in 1979. Both cities benefitted from a very big growth in professional and financial services.

Yet in neither case, were the Conservatives given any credit for it.

Well, I'm northern and I work in the public sector, although that is a fairly recent development.

The problem as far as I see it is that many people do not see the Conservative party as being people like them. As long as we parachute candidates in to seats that will persist.

re: Thatcher closing the pits

When ever i'm campaigning and they throw "Thatcher did this..." at me, I just tell them I'm 20 and I really dont remember. "But I do know that TODAY'S conservatives will...."

It is effective, shuts them up.

Yes - the fact that I was four when Mrs Thatcher came to power and that actually my Grandad ran the local Miners welfare did seem to open a few eyes when chatting with a few people who were initially quite hostile to the party.

The problem is that they belive in the stereotypical Tory - silver spoon, pin stripe suit - but when you turn up on the doorstep and tell them you were brought up in single parent family, you know about the public sector as thats where the majority of your career so far has been spent - then they are suddenly prepapred to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I agree Sean, although I think that, actually, we got some credit for the start of regeneration in the '87 and '92 elections.

The seats we have lost and, depressingly, seem further away from winning than ever are suburban seats in the major cities that, if they were in London would either have been won back or almost won back. I'm thinking of seats like Hazel Grove, the 2 Bury seats and Cheadle in Manchester. Sheffield Hallam. The North Leeds seats. B'ham Hall Green, B'ham Yardley and B'ham Northfield.

In some of these seats, our vote is actually lower now than it was in 1997! It goes without saying that these are the sort of seats we need to win back if we are ever to have a majority. By and large, if these seats were in London, we'd still be well in contention in them.

the problem with our chances in the midlands and the north is that we don't stand enough southern lawyers.

Better a southern lawyer than someone who can't spell 'rigor mortis'.

It didn't help when IDS turned up in Washington and said how pleased he was to be in Newcastle.

Symptomatic that much of the north is a foreign country to the hierarchy.

You just don't get it. The very fact that you have not yet apologised for everything that went on in the 1980s is the very reason why people in the "North" is why they will not vote for you. Like a latter-day Khushchev you need to renounce Thatcher and all she did. But of course you never will so stop trying to win Northern seats.

By the way, calling it "the North" does not help, it is not a unified entity and it makes it sound like you see us as a foreign country. Equally, whippet jokes just get on our nerves, no matter how tongue in cheek they are. Look back at some of these posts and they read like patronising tosh that shows no insight. One person says "I don't know what people in the North want" - try good schools, hospitals, safe streets and low interest rates!

Paul,

Mrs Thatcher was elected 3 times and carried out the platform on which she was elected. She won unprecedentedly high numbers of seats in the north of England in 1983 and 1987 in particular.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in referring to the north as 'the north'. I say that as a northerner.

This is a tory blog. I'm sure you'll find www.tedioushistoryrewriter.com more to your taste.

The suggestion that the Conservative Party may be piling up votes mostly in safe seats while failing to make gains in support in Wales, Northern England and in Scotland doesn't surprise me in the least, I rather suspected that might be happening - it tallies a bit with the Local Election Results.

Surely as a means around it might be to make it so that if a candidate wins 2/3 of the vote in a seat then they get 2 votes and if they win every vote (implausible but for consistency it would have to be there) then they would get 3 votes in the House of Commons, or even go the whole Hog and just make it so that any candidate with a third of the vote or more gets elected with a vote in parliament and for every additional third they get an additional third (The Liberal Democrats might be interested in such a system) and a candidate even coming first with less than a third of the vote would get to speak but not vote in the House of Commons and maybe would get a reduced salary. However this is rather what is referred to as a chicken and egg situation, so it could only be implimented after an election.


If the local election results had been repeated nationally, then the Tories would have won an overall majority - albeit a rather odd looking majority.

There are a stack of marginal seats that have to be won in London, the South and Midlands, as well as in the North.

>>>>She won unprecedentedly high numbers of seats in the north of England in 1983 and 1987 in particular.<<<<
Are you sure you don't mean 1979 and 1983, in fact 1987 was when people actually started talking about a Labour North compared to a Conservative South and in fact in 1992 in Scotland anyway the Conservatives actually revived very slightly.

This idea that 'outsiders' are unable to win certain seats???

Teddy Taylor lost his Glasgow seat in 1979, the last working class Scottish seat held by the Tories. He was parachuted into a Southend seat at a byelection. After a very hard fought campaign won it by a small margin. Held it for the Tories till his recent retirement. Why because he was a very hard working MP! Sometimes people look for excuses for failure.

Lets also look a the payroll vote. There are thousand of people in this country whose votes are bought with taxpayers money, some of them are very well off indeed, many of them live in the south, they are called farmers!

Let's show the people of the north and elsewhere, that the Tory party is through with socialism for the rich.Lets stop all subsidies/grants etc, give the money saved, in tax cuts, about 3p in the standard rate. Return the countryside to the free market, let Adam Smith's 'invisible hand of the market place' have its way.

The farmers' are once again moaning that their 'bung' is late, STOP GIVING THEM THEIR BRIBES

To emphasise again on the 47%:

The DT today reports as our 'London' figures that are, in fact, figures for the wider 'London TV region'. As Anthony Wells on PollingReport.co.uk says,

"Alas, for any excited Conservatives out there, it isn’t quite accurate. On YouGov’s detailed tables, the regions listed aren’t the government regions, they are ITV television regions. In practice that means that London covers not just London, but big chunks of the home counties, which tend to vote Conservative. With bits of Surrey, Essex and Sussex thrown in the London TV region is far more Tory than Greater London, and that 25% lead suddenly isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds."

The DT accidentally mistook our tables.

"The seats we have lost and, depressingly, seem further away from winning than ever are suburban seats in the major cities that, if they were in London would either have been won back or almost won back. I'm thinking of seats like Hazel Grove, the 2 Bury seats and Cheadle in Manchester. Sheffield Hallam. The North Leeds seats. B'ham Hall Green, B'ham Yardley and B'ham Northfield."

Absolutely.

When we were in power we held 4 Leeds seats plus a number of others dotted about West Yorkshire. At the local elections the other week we had 5 or 6 target wards and won none of them, which shows we're not making that much impact up here yet.

I'd hope though that once the Policy Groups report and we have some serious ideas about schools,hospitals, crime etc we might get somewhere. I also think we need to seriously think about local candidates rather than taking them all of the "A-list".


J.W.Tozer, You could also cite Norman Lamont in Harrogate which has lost that seat for quite a while now.

There are certain seats where parachuting won't affect the result, but then there are other seats (Cornwall for instance) where a local candidate is key due to the feeling of local identity and pride.

In fact, the 1979 election showed precisely the north/south divide that may be emerging now. Mrs T failed to pick up a clutch of northern seats that, on the basis of the national swing, ought to have fallen her way but won seats in the south on swings way above average. The accepted wisdom at the time was that the winter of discontent had been disproportionately severe in the south, but who knows?

In 1987, the tories held on to both Bury seats, both Bolton seats, Hazel Grove, Pendle, Rossendale and Darwen, Batley and Spen, both Blackpool seats, Crosby, Stockport, Lancashire West, Langbaurgh etc. etc. Other than Bolton West, we're miles away from winning any of these seats at the moment.

IIRC, the only north west seat we lost in 1987 was Manchester Withington (where the demographics were moving dramatically against us). That's from memory though so I could be wrong.


That should be "from the A-list", and target wards refers to just Leeds, not the whole county.

"You just don't get it. The very fact that you have not yet apologised for everything that went on in the 1980s is the very reason why people in the "North" is why they will not vote for you..."

Sorry to labour a point Paul but:

1983 Election
(results from North West, North East and Yorkshire Regions)
Con 3,007,000
Lab 2,835,000

1987 Election:
Con 2,914,000
Lab 2,898,000

Given Mrs Thatcher won a majority of the votes in "the north" what exactly are you asking us to apologise for ?

By the way - before you attack me for patronising you - I was born in Wakefield and lived in Merseyside until I was 20.


Ah, I hadn't spotted Paul's comments. I'm not sure what there is to apologise for. Bringing 40 or so years of relative economic decline to an end is something to be proud of, rather than ashamed of.

Well done Andrew! Game, set and match I think. What a shame 'Paul' seems to have disappeared before his 'argument' received the comprehensive demolition job it so richly deserved.

The farmers' are once again moaning that their 'bung' is late, STOP GIVING THEM THEIR BRIBES

Okay - as long as farmers are allowed to compete freely in world markets and are not limited to growing corn by EU quotas.

Our climate is not suited to growing corn most years - too wet - it is far more suited to grass, and yet corn is the only crop not quota'd.

Farmers are prevented from producing milk, even when cheese factories are short of it. They can produce as much corn as they like.

Get rid of the market manipulation that forces farmers to be uneconomic, and you would not need to subsidise the industry to the same extent.

But French farmers and cheese makers need to be protected under the deal done by Edward Heath way back when.

We are paying a far higher price for EU membership than is realised.

Farming is a bigger industry relative to population in the North than the South, I would imagine. Maybe there's some votes in it.

William,

Please go and derail some other thread with your EU obsession. This one has been maintaining an unusually high level of interesting exchange of ideas and theories, heretofore.

"Well, I'm northern and I work in the public sector, although that is a fairly recent development."

I think we have to differentiate between proper public sector jobs (doctors, nurses etc) and non-jobs (smoking cessation officers, outreach workers etc).

"One person says "I don't know what people in the North want""

I actually said I couldn't shed a light on northern concerns i.e. which issues they prioritise above others. For example it is often suggested that southeners are more concerned about the environment. Obviously we all WANT good schools and hospitals etc. The question is, which areas do we emphasise in different parts of the country?

"Please go and derail some other thread with your EU obsession."

I agree, but I think he did make a relevant point in reply to JW Tozer's post about farm subsidies i.e. they're implemented at a European level. That only needed a sentence though.

I'd started to write down a few things in response to this topic and associated comments, but my scribbling quickly accelerated past several paragraphs into a small article. I'll continue to scribble and I hope Tim or Sam would be kind enough to add it to the Platform once I've edited it for coherence. :)

I think it is too easy to slip into lazy generalisations about "northerners", and some people have fallen into that trap here. One thing I would say is that our organisation in many northern seats, even marginals, is a long way short of optimum. I don't think I'm exaggerating to suggest that some (not all, probably not a majority) northern marginals had less people working across the entire constituency on election day than some southern seats had working each ward...

If all else fails the South East could just declare independence ;)

At the last GE across the North (including the North West, North East, Yorkshire and the Humberside) the Tories averaged just under 26% of the vote. Therefore another more optimistic way of looking at this poll is to suggest that the Tories are now 4% better off than last time round.

Some of this analysis is just plain wrong. We have made in-roads in the North where we have built up a base with good local people. CCHQ needs to interact more with those people and listen to them. Where we put up candidates for local govt and stick at it we do well. That actually starts at the lowest council level first such as town and community councils. Once they are in power "Northern" people quickly apreciate that they care and we get county and assembly people elected on the back of it. I am including Wales and Scotland in my analysis of the "north". That sort of base does not exist in the big cities (eg Manchester) yet but is happening in northern suburbs and mixed rural/urban constituncies. I do agree that we need to take into account regional differences and involve local people and candidates,

Matt

I'm from a Durham mining family and would never vote Labour, and see the results first hand of socialist dogma and failure.

It is they that have let down the working man, who by the way is "Right-Wing" in nearly all they say and do in these parts - only they vote Labour!

If you happen to check the statistics for the Bishop Auckland Constituency part of County Durham for the last county council election, the Conservatives had an overall increase in votes of 13.5%.

Sure, we only won two seats, but we made a real effort in other likely areas of support and it worked.

We don't have the manpower or money of safe Tory seats, but we work hard for what we achieve.

Labour's record in the North is dreadful, and no more more evident than Sedgefield, home of one Tony Blair!

I was the Constituency Chairman of Ryedale, North Yorkshire, at the General Election. We had the second best result against the Liberal Democrats in the UK, not I regret repeated by those constituencies around us. We ran a very clear precise, to the point, a spade is a spade campaign, with special emphasis on a clear EU position. We knew what our electorate wanted, UKIP from the European elections had a strong base, and the Liberal Democrats are really Old Liberals who don't like the EU.
As a Constituency we went to see Michael Howard's team February 2005 to outline our elections plans. Sadly, all was ignored, while we more than doubled our MP's majority, and have pushed the Liberal Democrats out of sight, and we were about the 26th. Lib-Dem target seat! Northern people want to know where one stands, not in grey and foggy lands.

I really do think that "The North" is viewed a strange, foreign country by quite a lot of people on here.

Case in point - there is no such place as "Humberside", yet practically no-one in the south appears to realise this. "Humberside", which was never recognised by anyone here anyway, refers to East Yorkshire (where I live) and North Lincolnshire, two entirely different counties separated by a bloody great river. It was finally abolished TEN YEARS ago.

It's like lumping Essex and Kent together, and while I appreciating what a maddening piece of geographical pedantry this sounds like, it's just symptomatic of just how little the southern media knows or cares about anything outside their little London bubble.

Rant over.

Who knows where the East Riding is?

Re Norman Lamont, I Think the reason that Lamont failed, was due to his association with the ERM disaster/Major government, not because he was parachuted in

On my other point, that the Tories will start to convince people of their sincerity in working to improve the average citizens' standard of living, when they reject much of their past association with power elites. In particular the land owning classes, farmers being included.

If you look for the solution in free markets (as I do) then the free market must be for everyone, no one should live outside it! I even include another Tory sacred cow in that: the monarchy.

To try and put the blame on the EU re subsidies is ludicrous, we have been subsidising farmers for years before we entered the EU.

I refer you to an article written in the Daily Telegraph, 'This must be the biggest bung in the history of the universe,' by Adam Nicolson 17/05/05, who is himself a farmer. The Duke of Westminster is amongst those who will receive taxpayers money for his farming interests, I'm sure he needs it. Sean Rickard, once the NFU's chief economist has described the subsidy system thus, 'The greatest criminal conspiracy to defraud the British taxpayer ever devised', read Rickards solutions to the 'farming problem'. It is time that the Tory party threw of its sentimental and silly relationship with an 'industry' which controls 67% of the UK's land and is responsible for 1.7% of its GNP.

The monarchy, if ever an institution was ripe for privitisation it is the monarchy.
They would be formed into a PLC. Royals-Are-Us. Shares would be available to the public.

A full audit of all royal lands and possessions, including all art and antiques that are sitting unseen in attics and cellars. Those that can be displayed would be, those that can't, auctioned off. Ditto grace and favour homes, or realistic rents charged. Money raised would be given back to the people in tax rebates. After all its the only thing that will stop the staff pilfering them!

Ending of the civil list, the monarchy would earn its money by selling its services. There would be charges for, opening hospitals, bridges etc. The Windsor name would be patented, sponsorships etc.
Can you imagine how much Japanese/US tourists would pay for personal guided tours of Buckingham Palace etc.

The internet could even play its part. For instance a web site in which you could bid for the Royals services. Work days would be displayed, If for instance Tesco's wanted Prince Charles to open a store for them on the 1st of June 2007, they could bid for that day, if Sainsburys also wanted PC to open a store for them, they could bid. A bidding day would open at 0800hrs and close at 1800hrs, any one could bid in. The monarchy could become a major industry earning money for its shareholders and the taxpayer.

It's time for the Tory party to be bold, to throw of its past, to embrace the free market, for everyone.

"North Lincolnshire"

Where's that? Cornwall?

J.W.Tozer, after reading your ideas, it's the first time I've been glad that Oliver Letwin is in charge of Policy Co Ordination.

Annoyed Northern Tory at 19:53 it's the East Riding not East Yorkshire. I unfortunately was brought up there when the Peter Walker monstrosity of Humberside still held sway.

John Ashworth from Ryedale has it about right. We just want our politics straight and clear in northern England. In West Lancashire we have now extended our majority on the council to 10 by making clear promises and keeping them; by cutting council tax in real terms for the past 3 years; for going against the crowd in our county and against our officers when we knew it mattered to our residents.

There really is no mystique, but I do fear that the A list will not provide candidates with a natural feel for the area. Andrew Woodman in one of the first posts of the day is right - in the area of candidate selection, regional lists have a lot of merit.

JW Tozer, the Monarchy could easily make a profit out of the Crown lands.

I do not really buy this North South divide story. Hackney in the South- Penrith in the North....OK...be more fair...Tynemouth in the North, Bristol in the South. We have Bassetlaw council; we do not have Richmond on Thames. Halifax is a Tory target, Cambridge is not. One of the largest swings to us was in the Borders of Scotland in 2005, and picked up a seat, and we failed in Hove.

We need to work hard in the North and South and when it comes to government in waiting policies, have something solid to offer the secondary industrial sector and those that have lost out in the growth of the UK economy since Thatcher saved it.

Hard work and policies.....that will eliminate the 'divide' that some notice.

The monarchy, if ever an institution was ripe for privitisation it is the monarchy.
They would be formed into a PLC. Royals-Are-Us. Shares would be available to the public.
I seem to recall the Guardian producing a spoof prospectus although rather than selling the Royals their proposal was to sell the Crown which perhaps would rather more interest people, rich US idiots might quite like to buy titles without any power, I'm sure Richard Branson would love to be able to call himself King Branson.

Gareth

I have not disappeared - I was working!

"This is a Tory Blog" - tranlated - we don't want outsiders here and we don't respect your opinions.

You miss the point about the apology - what a shock. You may feel that there is no need for an apology, and maybe I agree. But you want to win seats in the North and the whole thread of this debate is why the Tories cannot win at the moment. As someone who grew up in the industrial North I was trying to explain why, unlike me, many people will not vote Tory. You need to move on. Stanley Baldwin was a great Tory Prime Minsiter, but few people use him in their campaign literature - why because he is a thing of the past. Mrs Thatcher should now be a thing of the past and when you finally realise this and accept that (for better or for worse) the 1980s were a painful time in parts of the North, then you will START to make progress.

Equally, another post asked what issues "Northerners" wanted to be loooked at. Again I put forward a positive suggestion - but the knee-jerk reaction was to attack me.

Mock having a sense of history as well if you want - but this will doom you to fail as well.

I am not a Tory party member, but I have voted Tory. Time's up for Labour, now I want a party I can vote for next time, so I join in debates like this one.

J.W.Tozer-if you knew anything about the history of the Tory Party, you'd realise why your "suggestion" for the monarchy is beyond the absurd. Being a Conservative is about more than auctioning everything that moves on the LSE.

Let's face it: people from the South simply don't "get" Northerners, and vice versa. It'll take decades to change that.

One of the reasons why I as a believer in the Adam Smith concept of the free market could never be a Tory is I know that Tories are hypocrites.

They say they believe in the free market, they do not. What Tories believe in is Socialism for the rich, That certain individuals/organisations/institutions are above the free market. That the free market is only there for the working class or for those outside the charmed circle of 'birthright'

To me the monarchy is the epitome of state socialism, its an unsackable monopoly. Its no mistake that like Marxism its a German import.

I see the British ethos as being formed on the duck boards of a trench in WW1, when the whistle blew, the dustman and the Duke went over the top together. The machine bullet did not differentiate. The market economy should replicate that. All should share in its benefits, all should suffer its consequences, birth should not protect you.

Rupert Murdoch the worlds leading entrepreneur is a republican, I am not advocating that: yet. But it is a fact that all of the countries of western Europe that have retained their monarchies have developed into similar societies, socialistic, high taxation/public spending. Could it be that the monarchial system, with its desire for 'balance' has been a major contributary factor in this. After all who actually gave the Labour party its credibility as a party of government George v. Who asked Ramsey Macdonald to form the national government George v.

If the Tory party wishes to become a party of the radical economic right, then it must rethink its relationship with many of the institutions that it has supported in the past. Or does it wish to continue in the same tired old way?

JW Tozer, we are not a Libertarian Part, although I find there is much in libertarianism to commend it.

"But it is a fact that all of the countries of western Europe that have retained their monarchies have developed into similar societies, socialistic, high taxation/public spending"

I strongly suggest you check out "Democracy: the God that Failed" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (who's free market views will be much to your liking(. He points out that the rise of the overmighty state coincided with the end of the age of monarchy and the rise of democracy. The reason being was that people voted for free health, education etc and politicians only had short-term goals. Monarchs took a more long-term view and were less keen on large state sectors (which isn't to say some weren't politically repressive).

http://www.mises.org/store/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-P240C1.aspx

In addition to my last post, republican France and Germany have a larger state sector than we do.

Again I put forward a positive suggestion - but the knee-jerk reaction was to attack me.

Probably because the manner of your first post was somewhat provocative. That said your second post was much more interesting and constructive. However, I'm not aware of the GE2005 election campaign harking back to Thatcher. Could you elaborate?

Read" Tories chance as Northern ice thaws"
Barry White.
Yorkshire Post of 15/5/06. page 11
www.yorkshireposttoday.co.uk
You will find an article relevant to the North/South divide argument.

I started posting about the need for local people to be candidates, so that people could idnetify with them, about two weeks ago. And I said at that time that it seemed to me that often people in 'the North' were deeply suspicious of someone with an obvious Southern accent. I am glad everyone is agreeing now.

It would be interesting to know what it is exactly that fuels the distrust, and often dislike of the Southerner by the Northerner, after all, we are supposed to 'enjoy', 'like', hopefully understand, the endless parade of accents from Liverpool, Newcastle (pet), and Scotland each day on the media. If we are friendly, we can be dispised, if we keep ourselves to ourselves, we are 'stuck-up'!

Every Southerner can't be held responsible for the conditions that Northerners find themselves in. There are deprived areas in the South as well.

I think people from the South often have fixed ideas, and people from the North are often narrow-minded.

That should help to mix things up a bit!

I don't get this. If a southern person said they wouldn't have someone with a northern accent as their candidate they'd be stoned in the local square. I'm at uni with northerners who only chose to go to Durham Uni because they absolutely refused to go to a southern uni, but if I'd refused to consider Durham just because it was northern I'd have met with the wrath of my mother (a Yorkie) for being so biased. I'm sure Greg Dyke would never say that Durham was "hideously northern" ect ect

There are significant differences in the approach to things in the North and South, its not just about accents.

Matt

"I'm at uni with northerners who only chose to go to Durham Uni because they absolutely refused to go to a southern uni"

Don't they get sick of all those southern Oxfbridge rejects?

Richard have not heard the Essex accent and many others from the South?

There is a big north-south difference in England; much of it dates back to when the north was heavily settled by Viking invaders while the south remained Anglo-Saxon. Having grown up in Northern Ireland I found the north with its bluntness and plain-speaking more comfortable and familiar than the diffidence and reserve of the south. I think the north distrusts the south because they (we) have great trouble understanding southerners, and there is a bit of jealousy that the south mostly is much more economically successful. Plus the capital is in the south. Scottish dislike of England in general seems an exagerrated form of the same phenomenon. The obvious solution is talented local northern candidates in northern seats, but the problem with that is it risks wasting talent when they don't get elected - I'd much rather have Justine Greening as sitting MP for Putney than failing to win a northern seat.

HMMMMMMMM lets see now the United States of America is the worlds leading capitalist nation, and I seem to remember its always been a democracy and a republic!!!!

Now I am not advocating a republic, only that the monarchy joins the free market system. If it fails to respond, or is unable to change its ways, then obviously the British people should be asked if they wish it to continue in its present form.

At the heart of this discussion should be how does the Tory party respond to changes in our society, to ensure it is able to make electoral advantage from those changes. Or even to sponsor and encourage those changes.

Everything now is going the Tory party way, in so much as the present PM is losing his grip. The Labour party is beset with self doubt, the feeling for change is in the air.

If the Tory party is not a libertarian party then what is it?

I know what it is its the West Ham party, it will go on feeling it will win by exploting the other sides mistakes, right upto the minute that Gerrard (Gordon Brown) bangs in a last minute goal, then wins on penalties.

"If the Tory party is not a libertarian party then what is it?"

When has the Tory Party ever been a libertarian party?

Libertarianism is a doctrine that is attractive to only a very small number of people.

JWT,

"To me the monarchy is the epitome of state socialism, its an unsackable monopoly. Its no mistake that like Marxism its a German import."

Not only is this a-historical nonsense, it also has stuff all to do with the topic. Can we stick to the subject please?

Does anyone have any theories as to why we made up so much ground (surprisingly, I thought) against Liberals in southern suburban seats (Sutton, Carshalton etc.) but failed to make any progress in their demographic counterparts in the north (Hazel Grove, Cheadle, Sheffield Hallam etc.)?

"Does anyone have any theories as to why we made up so much ground (surprisingly, I thought) against Liberals in southern suburban seats (Sutton, Carshalton etc.) but failed to make any progress in their demographic counterparts in the north (Hazel Grove, Cheadle, Sheffield Hallam etc.)"

One off the cuff theory is that many of the ex-LibDem voters in the south were disaffected Tories who are now returning to the fold, whereas in the north that isn't necessarily the case.

They were tory seats in the north though, some of them (like Cheadle) very strongly so.

When I was helping out at Cheadle, several of the locals told me that if we had gone for a fresh candidate, we may well have regained the seat. not knowing the history, I am only reporting, so dont shoot the messenger please!!

When I was helping out in Cheadle I felt like I was intruding on a private party of CCO staffers.

Simon Newman @ 10.38.

I think your description of the possible/probably historical reasons for the North South divide are pretty convincing.

I always wondered whether the possible reason for the strength and difference of the Newcastle accent (apart from some obvious influence from Scotland) was due to the fact (I think) that the Newcastle area was one of the main entry points for the Vikings. It might be interesting to do some research as to number of redheaded/carrots haired people there are that are native to Newcastle!

Libertarianism only appeals to a small number of people.
I'm also a libertarian, I was converted to it by reading a book, called 'Saturn's Children' hardback not the watered down version. It was written by someone called Alan Duncan MP any one know what happened to him??

>>>>I always wondered whether the possible reason for the strength and difference of the Newcastle accent (apart from some obvious influence from Scotland) was due to the fact (I think) that the Newcastle area was one of the main entry points for the Vikings. It might be interesting to do some research as to number of redheaded/carrots haired people there are that are native to Newcastle!<<<<
Some on the west coast of Norway are dark haired as are many down the West of Scotland and in the Highlands and Western Isles and around Penrith who have a fair amount of Norse ancestry also in the Wirral apparently, right up the East Coast of England and even into South East Scotland there were landings of Danes and Saxons accounting for the large numbers of blonds there, Danish and Norse influences on town names in many parts of Eastern England, the Wirral and in parts of Scotland have been long noted by historians and linguists and also in some of the language used generally, in fact the South East of England is as Viking in origin as the North East - I don't think anyway that the Vikings have much bearing on the 2009 General Election.

What has the A-list got to do with the majority of northern seats? Mostly they are not on the target seat list so th A-list wont apply to them.

Off topic - Alan Duncan's book has much more in common with a virtue ethics approach like that of "After Virtue" by McIntyre than it does with anything "Libertarian" which is itself a rather wooly idea. Conservatives generally prefer this approach, since they recognise the need for a strong civil society which isn't really in keeping with atomistic Libertarian ideals. Burke and (for the more philosophically minded) Gadamer are also good conservative philosophers.

"Conservatives generally prefer this approach, since they recognise the need for a strong civil society which isn't really in keeping with atomistic Libertarian ideals."

Libertarian policies would actually strengthen civil society by freeing it of state control. Many libertarians are social conservatives who believe that libertarianism is an effective way of sustaining a conservative society. One only has to look at the growth of Friendly Societies and the strength of the Church in the Victorian period to see an example of thos.

On Vikings - I didn't see many redheads when I was in Norway a couple years ago, I'd say most people were blond. I found that Norwegian culture is incredibly not-dissimilar to British culture BTW, it totally lacked that element of exoticness one expects to find in foreign climes! Made for a slightly boring holiday, despite the fjords...

On Libertarianism - I'm broadly libertarian, I'd say it was a strong strand within modern Conservatism, exemplified by Margaret Thatcher, but clearly not the only one; it's one of the pillars, not the whole edifice. I think it tends to come to prominence within Conservatism the more anti-liberty forces otherwise dominate society; as in the 1970s and now again today.

"What has the A-list got to do with the majority of northern seats? Mostly they are not on the target seat list so th A-list wont apply to them."

Firstly, a quick scan back up the thread failed to reveal much talk of the A-list, plenty of stuff about Vikings, but not much A-list

Secondly, the A-List concept is important for those important northern seats where we do stand a very real chance of winning, because those seats MUST be free to choose a candidate they feel can win that seat. The reassurances we have been given that target seats will be free to interview local candidates must be made clear and CCO must realise that their 'metropolitain' notion of an outstanding candidate is not necessarily the best person to send to stand in a former mill town/coal mining area or a rural community of sheep farms and little villages.

Shame we can't edit comments...

A more studied re-reading of the thread does of course reveal plenty of talk of the A-list! Ah well, post in haste, look silly at lesiure!

You can have the best candidates with the finest policies on the glossiest leaflets but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the membership has dwindled away to nothing and the association is struggling to survive.

There is no substitute for members who raise money and knock on doors. Until the party wakes up to this and decides to do something about membership outside of the South-East it will continue to do poorly in the North.

Yet another anon, I am a geordie,(exiled to west yorks now) and I was a redhead before I went white, as old gits are bound to do. Agree with the posts about northern constituencies. I attended the funeral of one of our oldest members this morning. 90 he was. Our excellent agent has been promoted to a post in scotland, we couldnt afford her any more, and yes, we do have trouble getting a full candidates list for the locals, as well as enough people to go out leafletting and canvassing come the general. Most of us have had our bus pass for some time! In 2005, the local hunts were real stars. They canvassed for our prohunt candidate, Maggie T. So we do need, CCO or no, a prohunt, EU sceptic, modernising, locally connected, even if work has taken them away in recent years, PPC. Its a big ask, but its the one which could deseat Kali Mountford.They could be black white or khaki as well, I daresay. Probably female,as lib and nulab are both female, level playing field, and all that. And if they had hordes of friends, that would be good as well! Cant wait for July, to see what CCHQ has cooked up for us.

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