It's time for Dave to hug-a-striver

Stephan Shakespeare has recently called them the floating non-voters.  Australia's John Howard calls them battlers.  In America they were the Reagan Democrats.  For Mrs Thatcher they became known as Essex Man.  The ConservativeHome dictionary calls them strivers.

Battlers, Reagan Democrats and strivers etc do not encompass exactly the same political constituency but each definition and phrase is pointing to the importance to modern-day conservative parties of lower income, hard-working families.  With many wealthier people drifting leftwards the Conservative Party needs to attract lower income strivers if it is to have any chance of building a winning coalition.

Strivers have been hardest hit by Labour's failures - by stealth taxes, the marriage penalty, crime, rising journey-to-work times, long hospital waiting lists and Gordon Brown’s means-testing maze.  In today's Sunday Telegraph Iain Martin is worried that Project Cameron is failing to talk to the strivers.  The party, he warns, is in thrall to 'Letwinism' and its talk of a more beautiful, socialable Britain - all very well but not likely to butter many parnsips.  Gordon Brown's people, he writes, have noticed this and may have finally alighted upon a strategy to overcome Cameronism:

"After initially painting him as a Right-wing chameleon, the Number 11 team are preparing a more coherent assault on the Conservative leader. The Tories' repositioning, they believe, leaves them talking to a metropolitan, liberal audience that will not decide the result of the next election.  Instead, Mr Brown's focus will be on Britons who strive for a better life for their families on salaries that are on the lowish to middling side.  These, Thatcher's children grown up, are puzzled by what they see of the new Tories: a nice, attractive leader but beyond that a lot of hot air when it comes to the hard realities of improving their lot in life.  That Gordon Brown's policies have trapped some of them in the web of tax credits is immaterial; he will be shameless in appealing to their instincts."

The Tory leadership does not need to abandon its outreach to higher income values voters.  The environmental and social justice messages are essential to unseat LibDem MPs but the party also needs to twin these 'breadth' messages with action on affordable housing, relief from Britain's record tax burden, more action on anti-social behaviour and control of immigration.  It's called the 'politics of and'!

Related link: Cameron woos 'Curtisland'

Comments

[Derek]

The problem is we cannot be all things to all people. Sooner or later we will have to make the difficult choices about what we are for, and what we are against. In doing so we must accept that we are going to upset some voters, and they will not vote for us.

I accept that we cannot lay out a detailed manifesto at this point in time, but we can still outline some definite positions. The longer we delay doing so, the less likely we will be taken seriously by the swing voters, including the strivers.

We may be a broad church, but at least we should know what religion we are!

[Cllr Nicholas Bennett]

A very perceptive analysis.

Blair attracted the strivers (Worcester women, Mondeo man) in 1997. They were deeply disgusted with the incompetence of the Major government, the sleaze allegations, the increases in taxation etc. Sounds familiar in 2006. There is no reason why we should not adopt a policy which not only attracts these key voters as well as the yummy mummies.

Voters know that billions of pounds of their money is being wasted and that a programme of economy & efficiency throughout the public services could bring increased effectiveness at lower cost and create money for targeted tax cuts.

This combined with a renewed privatisation programme and tough anti-trust laws could produce a sensible and attractive solution to enable us to get the country out of the mess it is in.

[TomTom]

The Conservatives are based on the London Media/PR/Advertising set or else the professional self-employed such as Accountants, Barristers, and the upper reaches of the Service-Sector Salariat.

This image is even more pronounced now and the A-List propensity to find lawyers and bankers suggest it is coded-DNA in this political party.

All the political parties are increasingly remote from what used be called the Man on the Clapham Omnibus, and the elites running these parties look down with condescension on the voter herding them into blocs for the martketing men to categorise and deluge with tailored mail-shots as if they are being marked for a dodgy timeshare scam.

Cameron has wasted much of his time since the last Conference and may be in deep water after this next one. My local MP is spending 25 days on patrol with the local police to learn the problems they face - that strikes me as a very worthwhile exercise and so far my local Conservative MP has not put a foot wrong.

[Prodicus]

Bang on. And if it's a bit early for detailed policies, let's at least get the attention of the people to whom the policies will be addressed. They've gone off Blair, but that's only the start, and Brown is electorally smart. (Smarter than Dave and Francis Maude?) Start talking the talk now, before you have to walk the walk.

[Denis Cooper]

Once again, privatisation is put forward as an answer to the country's problems. Well, in certain cases it may be the best answer, but it's not a panacea and in some instances it's definitely counter-productive. The problems in the NHS have been compounded by expensive PFI schemes.

[Andy Peterkin]

Thats true to an extent, Denis, but I'd argue that the problems with the NHS go back to 1948, and the appalling bungle that is PFI has only been a minor exacerbant.

[Richard]

The point about privatisation is that it allows people to decide how to spend their own money.

[Denis Cooper]

Not necessarily. I used to pay money to our local council so that their employees could come round and empty the dustbins. Now I pay money to the local council so that the employees of the council's contractor can come round and empty the dustbins. I suppose we could go further and say that every householder should be individually responsible for paying a contractor to send people round to empty his dustbin, or for taking his rubbish for disposal himself. But as some householders wouldn't do that - they'd decide NOT to spend their money on getting their waste taken away and disposed of in an appropriate way - we'd have infestations of rats, and rubbish fly-tipped by the roadside, and we'd end up having to pay the council to arrange for it to be removed. And having householders taking rubbish wherever in their cars must be more expensive and environmentally damaging than having a truck making a round of the houses. So I'm inclined to think that we've already exhausted the potential benefits of privatising that particular local service, if there were any real benefits in the first place.

[Graeme Archer]

False dichotomy (in the original article). Those of us not blessed with trust fund incomes do actually want more from life than the reassurance that the council waste collection has been put out to the lowest tender. Reduction to economics fails because people do not life lives of rational economic decision-making - thank god. I don't know the guy who wrote today's telegraph thing but there will be articles like this one every week for the rest of our lives, demanding that we deviate from the agenda of change, that every time we talk about something un-core we're being chi-chi or metropolitan or some other sneer code word for effete (which is what they mean). Whatever.

[David Belchamber]

"Voters know that billions of pounds of their money is being wasted and that a programme of economy & efficiency throughout the public services could bring increased effectiveness at lower cost and create money for targeted tax cuts."

I agree very much with Nicholas Bennett at 11.58 and I have tried to stimulate debate on this point a number of times but it is one that contributors have so far ignored.
Many people seem to agree that we cannot reveal our hand yet in detailed manifesto commitments because Nulab will just pinch the good ideas as they have done in the past.
I argue that we have to convince the electorate that we will be much more
competent in the management of the public services than Nulab, which will result in savings - without cutting back on those services at all.
As managerial competence is clearly something Nulab cannot possibly emulate, I suggest the sooner we start getting this message across the better.
PS Nicholas, are you the Nicholas Bennett who was formerly MP in Pembrokeshire?

[Richard]

"But as some householders wouldn't do that - they'd decide NOT to spend their money on getting their waste taken away and disposed of in an appropriate way - we'd have infestations of rats, and rubbish fly-tipped by the roadside, and we'd end up having to pay the council to arrange for it to be removed"

Or you could just sue them for creating a private nuisance. Although in terms of convenience I can see your point. Admittedly I was thinking of examples such as public libraries

[Richard]

"Those of us not blessed with trust fund incomes do actually want more from life than the reassurance that the council waste collection has been put out to the lowest tender."

Agreed. Many of all we would like the government to leave us alone to get on with our lives. Fat chance.

[TomTom]

Or you could just sue them for creating a private nuisance. Although in terms of convenience I can see your point. Admittedly I was thinking of examples such as public libraries

Sue ? Have you used this cruddy Court Service ? It would be better to deregulate firearms - the Courts are a joke, especially the County Courts.

Public Libraries? What are they for ? My local metropolitan district now allows you to borrow 12 books to boost its lending figures - i cannot find 2 books to borrow - I buy more from Amazon than I ever borrow from the library - in fact I doubt the public library has any books I want to borrow in the 5th or 6th largest metropolitan district in England

[Matt Wright]

Iain Martins article is spot on (If I read it right he's not rubbishing DC but saying he likes his approach but wants practical change focused on where it matters). Many of us fully support DC and an agenda for change BUT its now time to recognise some vital points about that change:
* We have to add more gravitas and depth and be wary of spin which the publc have wised up to (the disconnected London elite that TomTom warns about)
* We have to explain in fundamental terms what modern Conservatism stands for
* We have to reach out to the strivers if we are to have any chance outside the comfort zone of the South East

Matt Wright

[Matt Davis]

The main benefit of privatising refuse collection was, and still remains, the fact that it takes responsibility for the employment and management of most Council's most obstreperous and militant employees, the bin men, away from the craven politicians and council officers and gives it, in theory, to hard nosed negotiators and managers from the private sector.Sometimes it works, sometimes spectacularly well, and sometimes it doesn't!

[Cllr Nicholas Bennett]

In answer to David Belchamber yes I am one and the same ex MP.

Denis Cooper is sceptical about privatisation. Local authorities like mine (Bromley) have put waste disposal and other services out to tender. The advantages are that you get a company that specialises in that service to undertake the work rather than council officers. You get the true cost of the service rather than a cost estimated by officers and you can get rid of the provider and transfer the contract if they are not up to scratch.

The reality is that most councils have found that tendering out the service has increased efficiency and reduced costs.

Competition in the market place is always preferable to monopoly provision.

[Denis Cooper]

Yes, Nicholas, but that's already being done - it's not the "renewed privatisation programme" you called for as a major policy plank yesterday.

And it doesn't satisfy Richard's desire to allow people to spend their own money as they choose, except to the limited extent that their council tax will be that bit lower, which could have equally well been achieved within the public sector if the managers had been up to the mark.

Which raises the question of how a local council or government department can ensure that its managers are up to the mark, given that there are some functions which even the most enthusiastic privatisers agree must remain within the public sector and so we can't simply resign ourselves to public sector inefficiency.

Personally I think Blair had it more or less right, and he was more or less in tune with mainstream public opinion, when he said that "what matters is what works".

Of course it's turned out that he and his colleagues are so incompetent that they can't get anything to work, but that general principle is correct, while the idea that privatisation is always the solution is incorrect.

[Denis Cooper]

As on the previous railways topic, I'm uneasy about both the language and the underlying attitude. Tom Tom is right to ask "Public Libraries? What are they for?" but he would be wrong if he concluded that because he has little use for his local library it would be better to it shut down and save taxpayers' money.

Perhaps it would better if we talked less about "public sector" and talked more about "public services", a public service being a service available to the public, provided entirely or partly at the expense of the public, including those members of the public who do not use that particular service.