More than half of the members who voted for David Davis regret their 2005 vote

In the most recent ConservativeHome survey we asked readers to revisit their vote in the 2005 Conservative leadership result. It was a somewhat complicated exercise as we went back to the email addresses we captured at the time to ensure there was no distortion of the outcome. The scale of the results are stark.

It would be wrong to assume that the scale of regret among David Davis voters has translated into general negativity towards the former Shadow Home Secretary.  (It is probably more of an acknowledgment of David Cameron's success.)  During last week's survey - answered by 1,587 members - we also asked for respondents' general view of David Davis now.  More than two-thirds of members feel positively towards Mr Davis; 42% said they had a very "positive view" of him and 29% said a "slightly positive" view.  20% had a "slightly negative" view and 9% a "very negative" view.

Comments

[Cameroon from the start]

It may be a stark result but hardly surprising. We are 20pc ahead in all polls. Cameron was obviously the right choice. The other 45pc of Davis supporters will come round in the end!

[Saxred]

It is true that "we" are 20% ahead in the polls, but are "we" just the blue brand of Ultra PC, Pro EU, Nu Labour? If so, what's their to be happy about that?

[David_at_Home]

The economy is in freefall and yet the Conservative leadership has no policy on this at all other than sharing the (non existent!) proceeds of growth.

Our energy supplies are at great risk and our reserves of electrical generating capacity are at an all time low and falling.

After the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect the true government of the UK will be the EU Commission in Brussels.

DC is a PR man, full of sound bites but with no substance. He is truly the "Heir to Blair". I fear that many more will be regretting that they voted for Mr Cameron some few years hence.

Alas, our poor country!

[Mark Fulford]

Saxred, "no".

[Peter]

While I did take part in this Tim what really was the point except for you to create headlines that could or couldn't have given problems to the leadership. More important would have been which person in South Ossetia, Dimitry Sanakoyev or Eduard Kokoity has the most support and who should we support?

[john parkes]

David-at-Home might perhaps, after a little thought, bring himself to remember that there is a political aspect to the present Conservative reticence in bringing into the open those economic and financial policies that will be the basis of the election manifesto. Wide publication now, perhaps 2 years in advance of polling day, will cause an immediate concentration on them by all the other political Parties as well as by the media. Where is the advantage in taking the heat off continuing close scrutiny of Labour, thus diverting the media by offering up our own hostages to fortune at such an early stage? Also there is no doubt that any policy that looks half-way viable will be grabbed by a desperate Labour administration and used to try to bail themselves out of their current dire straits. There really is no need at all for the Conservative Party to unveil at this early stage the plans they have, at the moment, for tackling the problems we know they will face; and how unwise to do so when those problems may well have worsened when the time comes, needing even stronger action to resolve them. And remember, all this must be placed alongside the need to be elected in the first place, before anything can be done at all. Patience, old cock!

[Alan S]

Bill Brinsmead last week: "Transparent line of questions aimed at resurrecting David Davis and promoting authoritarian viewpoints – all intended at securing a spot for Tim Montgomerie on the Today programme."

Me: "I bet you are wrong BB. I bet it shows Tories deserting their vote for DD."

:)

PS I don't regret voting for DD.

[Richard Weatherill]

I voted for David Davis and, whilst I'm delighted at being apparently proved wrong by David Cameron's success, I don't regret voting for DD based on what I knew at the time.

[Doreen]

Well, how come I don't know even one person who thinks the Tories wouldn't be better off with David Davis as leader? Everyone I know absolutely hates Cameron and will only vote Tory to get Labour out! I thought the membership contained lost of eurosceptics, so how on earth can they support Cameron?

[Jake]

This thread sails rather close to the point of being a demolition job on DD and a adulation job on DC. I do hope it is not merely intra party personality aggro. Leave that sort of thing to Labour.

It would have been better had it not been published at all.

[David_at_Home]

"I thought the membership contained lost of eurosceptics, so how on earth can they support Cameron?

Lost eurosceptics or lots of eurosceptics? Maybe both!

Anyway, it is a good question. Your eurosceptic friends would, of course, find a congenial home in UKIP.

If they are not quite ready to take that plunge yet, they could at least vote for UKIP in the EU Parliament elections in Spring 2009. A large vote for UKIP would push DC in the right direction.

[Mark Fulford]

Well, how come I don't know even one person who thinks the Tories wouldn't be better off with David Davis as leader?

It's a self-selecting set.

[Tom FD]

Although I wasn't eligible to vote in the leadership contest I was distinctly unimpressed with Davis at the time, and very much impressed with Cameron. Time has proven me right about Cameron but wrong about Davis, he's been a brilliant SHS and I hope his return to frontline politics is not too far off.

[Paul Johnston]

I agree with Richard Weatherill. I see no problem with having voted for David Davis while now supporting David Cameron as Leader of the Party and having become, since last October, a great deal less Cameron-sceptic than I was formerly. DD represents a strand of thinking within the party that will be vital to success, not only in gaining power, but in using it intelligently once gained. I believe DC recognises this too.

[Iron fist]

This result proves that Cameron need not fear David Davis.
If Davis starts to cause trouble from the backbenches he must be destroyed.

[Miranda]

If I regretted voting for DD, why would I regret it? The 55% figure is both pointless without explanation, and rather odd. Presumably the DD voters wished they had voted for DC, but as DC got the leadership anyway what is there to regret?

I personally think the Conservatives would have done better under DD. Cameron is winning because Labour are losing; he is not yet winning because of his leadership. But people like IDC (broken society), and DD (freedom)are what will turn this around. We could do with someone tackling education, population, macro-economics, and Europe as well.

[David_at_Home]

"If Davis starts to cause trouble from the backbenches he must be destroyed."

That sounds a bit like the Stalinist Communist Party of the USSR or the Ba’th Party of Saddam’s Iraq. Most alarming!

I am most relieved I do not belong to the modern Conservative Party.

[James Sproule]

I voted for Cameroon, but have always liked (and continue to like) DD.

What I find depressing is statements that seem far keener on finding divisions within our party than in crafting effective policies. Talk of destroying any dissent is frankly insane. Mature politics are going to have differences of opinion, and both the media and party activists are going to have to realise that is how the great British public see politics. Yes, there is an ideological core which makes us Conservatives, but expecting fealty to every utterance of a single leader is Orwellian. I doubt Cameroon would even want such sycophancy (although Brown undoubtedly would and does demand unquestioning loyalty, but look where it has left him)

[London Tory]

I began the 2005 leadership campaign intending to support David Davis, only to switch to David Cameron after a relatively minor incident. Trailed through his old council estate one day by a BBC TV crew, Davis was stopped by a little kid on a bike, who asked him if he was Tony Blair.

Davis botched his response, gruffly rebuking the kid in front of the media with 'No, I am not".

Some may admire him for the unspun nature of his response, but compared to how Cameron or even John Major would have handled it, it suggested to me that Davis lacked the subtle change-of-gear required to be a political leader.

And his recent resignation was an unmitigated, horrendous error of judgement.

[M Dowding]

Pointless exercise. I voted for DD and definitely do not regret it. I also came round to DC after last year's conference speech and remain fully committed to the cause, as I'm sure does DD.
However DC's PR label is a handicap as are the comparisons to Blair. McKay 's article in today's Mail aptly shows where the Snotgobbler's friends are going to go in their endless and pathetic party political games and fiddling while The UK burns, with this arsonist Government's pyrotechnical games of the last 10 plus years.
DC looks every inch the next PM and the sooner the better, with DD as Home Secretary.

[Peter]

This piece of statistics sounds wrong. Unless it shows that many of those who voted for Davis are visiting CH at most occasionally (like I). A lot of Davis fans have also left the party.

[John Leonard]

It would be interesting if such a question had been asked a year ago. It wasn't, so we have no comparison. As such it is not clear whether a vote for DC here is purely because the Conservatives are riding high in the polls or because their incomplete and in my view patchy policy announcements are actually resonating.

I have no regrets about voting for David Davis but at the same time I am happy to admit over the last year David Cameron has generally impressed me. I now think he is growing into Prime Ministerial material and will serve the country well, given the chance. I have no desire that the result in 2005 was different.

If there is something that disturbs me it is the petty nature of questions like this in the poll. It only causes negative feedback and as such causes division. All it achieves is the predictable defence of David Davis and the tired old Labour mantra that DC is a PR man.

Furthermore, it is an irrelevant question as the leadership battle is over and there is no possibility of a challenge. One can only conclude that Conhome is stirring things up for no good reason (it is silly season after all). It is unfortunate that Conhome seems to be against David Davis and civil liberties. Space fillers like this provide no positive value.

Personally, I hope that DC becomes PM and proves himself to be more than the heir to Margaret Thatcher and David Davis continues to serve the party as well as he has in the past and continues to act as the party's conscience on matters of civil liberty (as IDS has done to his immense credit on Social Breakdown). It seems the case that there are others in the Shadow Cabinet whose ambivalence to civil liberties suggests they need to be reminded of its importance and that Labour's unjustifiable attacks on it need to be reversed.

[john parkes]

For much of the time, except perhaps for the latter period of Mrs Thatcher`s and then John Major`s terms in office, the make-up of the Conservative Party in government has usually dictated that it would be a coaltion of interests. How they might act after the next election will depend very much on the situation facing them; the size of their working majority, the state of the economy, the determination of the electorate to support the measures necessary to return the country to a humane and balanced society and to an effective form of cabinet government. There is likely to be little room for any parade of egos or division among those who need to unite to get the job done. Any diversion that displays a rather juvenile lack of focus, allied to prima donna performances, pro-Cameron or anti-Davis, is guaranteed to make the task even harder to carry out. Small-minded carping is unlikely to help so perhaps a period of constructive criticism might be more fruitful

[Graeme Archer]

In next month's poll: If you *did* vote for DC in 2005, how much more (or less) (un)likely would you to be to vote for DD, were you able to go back in time and vote again? (Please note, the results may be slightly skewed (in what sense?), as we have no control baseline for our arbitrary question). And if you did *not* vote for Ken Clarke in 2001, having intended to do so, how much *more* likely are you to be *less* dissatisfied with DC *now*, compared to (a) then and (b) those who did (or did not) intend to vote for (against) Clarke in 2005? C'est combien, des artichokes? And if you did *not* vote for DC in 2005, having intended to write "none of the above" on your ballot paper, but neglected to do so because you were away on holiday and forgot, please complete the following tie-breaker, using no additional words: "I love the ConHome surveys for their elegant simplicity".

[Sue Doughty]

Why do these sites always have someone saying DC is a PR man? Is this the latest Labour mantra?
Why do they think he is PR? He is simply presenting an image people would like to associate with - his own Conservative values are the same as those of most Brits. No PR tactics required. And anyway, PR doesn't work on us any more, we been there, done that, bought the teeshirt, now.
David Davis is a good man but not the one we chose as leader, and I think history proved us right.

[Dave]

Nothing wrong with a politician being a PR man, Sue !

[Alan Carcas]

David Davis is clever politician and was a brilliant Chairman of his Select Committee, but, in my opinion, he just cannot make a well constructed, totally coherent, speech. He always sounds as if he is waffling, and thinking it all off the top of his head. That was fatal, I am sure, in the leadership contested. Doesn't make him any less of a good, honest, hard-working, erudite, Conservative. We have amny like that, and, God willing we always will have. You can, of course, be too smooth in politics. And oratorical brilliance doesn't always win you the prize, as William Hague knows full well. Ask the electors!

[Londoner]

Probably the most important group were those who voted for DC reluctantly, without much confidence that we had done the right thing. I think that there were rather a lot of us. This was partly because at the start of the process we would have voted for DD and still agreed with most of his policies more than DC's; but also because we became convinced that DC had the star quality that might actually change our fortunes but were very conscious that he was little known and that it was a gamble.

I should think that most of us in that group are now very pleased that we voted as we did, even if, bearing in mind where we started, most of us will have niggles with one aspect or another of his approach. We are pleased not just (or even principally) because of the opinion polls but because DC has shown himself a leader (particularly when he was on the ropes last summer actually). And although we thought DD was an excellent Shadow Home Sec, his recent impetuous and irrational gesture made us deeply relieved that the whole party did not depend on his calm judgement.

Unlike those who stuck with DD, or even the early arch modernisers who were for DC from the start, we were the ones wot won it for DC. And when he has served a long and successful term as PM, we will tell our children and grandchildren that we made a difference.

[Libertarian]

Take a look at the agenda for the party conference - now available for download from conservatives.com. There is no mention of tax or the Lisbon Treaty.

The fringe guide, also available for download, is dominated by left-wing charities and pressure groups and quangos that should be abolished by an incoming Conservative government. Most of the fringe meeting topics are more suited to a Labour or Trade Union conference. It is a clear indication of how far to the left the Conservative Party has moved under David Cameron's leadership.

I am one of the 2% voted who for David Cameron and now regret it. The Conservative Party used to be the party that stood for less government and lower taxes. It is now the party of big government, the nanny state, political correctness, enviro-fascism and surrender to the EU Leviathan.

What's the point of getting rid of Brown if his replacement is just a clone of Tony Blair?

Blue Labour Blue Danger!!

[Paul Marks]

The title should read "55% of those who replied to our computer question said....."

However, I do not really disbelieve the poll - at least as concering many of the people likely to be involved round here.

Conservative party members (at least the young ones) tend to be conformist and careerist. They do not tend to have very strong beliefs or principles.

Now "do not get me wrong" (as the saying goes) not having beliefs or principles is vastly better than having EVIL beliefs or principles (for example being a socialist). But it does mean that you are likely to be very different sort of person to an old Edmund Burke reader like me.

"And quite right to - you reactionary types make a mess of your own lives and are useless in understanding modern Britain".

There is a lot of truth in such a retort, but the truth remains that people who still support David Davis (now he has no power) are likely to be a very different sort of person from the people who are mostly involved here.

[Andrew Lilico]

This question has a problem, of course, because it does not distinguish between

"I regret having voted for David Davis, having seen how he did/acted subsequently"

and

"I regret not having voted for David Cameron, having seen how he did subsequently"

Answers of "Yes" to the first would be a comment upon David Davis, whilst answers of "Yes" to th second would be a comment upon David Cameron.

[Rod Sellers]

What a stupid and pointless question to ask.It remains the case that I know what DD believes in - and I have no idea what DC wants to do.