Tories down to 37 percent in ICM poll, two-hour long shadow Cabinet meeting called for tomorrow

adea

Perhaps they better invite Nick Clegg to the meeting.

Pot Head

Kinnock had about a 9pt lead going into the election..

TrevorsDen

Good grief! Cameron has actually called a Shadow Cabinet meeting!!

And its going to last TWO hours? !!!

John David Barnett

The attempt to reach out to centrist voters has driven too many right wing Tories away.

I see no future for the party if Left and Right remain so irreconcilably opposed. We used to be a broad church and now we are retreating into being a sterile sect.

This blindness on the part of the loony right will ensure that we have five more years of Brown. In fact I see Labour being in power indefinitely at this rate.

teledu

And not a backbone or pair of gonads amongst the lot of them.

In2minds

Will Ken Clarke be there or is he still in Brussels telling Barroso Dave is a pushover?

strapworld

Pot Head that must be very reassuring!!!

Perhaps Cameron is going to do the decent thing and resign? or is he going to sack his shadow cabinet and bring in the heavy hitters?

Cameron, as I wrote weeks ago, is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Civil war will break out and we will get a true blue conservative party with a good leader who will win the second general election this year. I hope!

AAE

As an example of showing that there is no reward for failure, and of how to cut wasteful spending, particularly those in non-productive jobs where the salary is greater than that of the Prime Minister, Steve Hilton should be sacked in the first minute of the Shadow Cabinet's meeting. If he hasn't failed by the terms of his contract, than that contract was drafted by an amateur. (The poor drafting of government contracts has led to the loss of tens of billions and it would be nice to have a party in government who understood this vital tool of the trade.) And if Cameron still needs his hand held, dear oh dear oh dear.

TrevorsDen

Pot Head - opinion polls at the time were grossly overestimating the labour vote. Methodologies have changes since.

Its funny how things affect the electorate. I can remember a bad set of trade figures scuppering Wilson in 1970, and a dash of hubris allegedly dumping Kinnock.

What will it be this time? Will the electorate like the idea of Brown as a bully?

Personally I reckon his inability to listen to reason is at the heart of all our economic and social problems (ie selling gold and taxing pensions, not to mention running increasing deficits ). As the Fink said on Newsnight, his rows with Blair scuppered the chance for public service reform.

So this issue ought to be central to Browns defeat - yet here on our very own Coffee House we see Mr Blackburn swooning like a regency lady with the vapours at the sight of Mandelson's vintage lying and spinning.

So I say to you and the likes of Strapworld that to whinge on about Cameron and the Conservatives, when Tory press go out of their way to big up Labour, is very wide of the mark.

TrevorsDen

PS -

If I remember correctly (and of course I am only some bloke sat on a couch, not a well paid cutting edge journalist) - was it not Labours policy to paint Cameron as a bully?? An Eton bully for good measure.

Now we are told being a 'bully' (transmogrified now into being determined and strong willed of course) is a fine character quality.

There you go - heaven spare us from a journalist, any journalist never mind a conservative one, from pointing that out.

TomTom

Competence is what the public have missed these past 2 decades, and now they get a choice between a Proven Incompetent and A Lightweight of Unproven Competence.

Jeff Randall could not get Cameron to explain "Other" in the Treasury statement even though at £72 billion it almost equals the Education budget. Why is he so lazy and uninterested that he fails to know every number and have the facts to hand ? Thatcher would have known every line item and been forthright; Cameron is breezily cruising for a bruising and lacks the focus and hard edge for this kind of fight

Leo McKinstry

I think Pothead may be exaggerating the extent of Kinnock's lead in 1992. I was working for Harriet Harman then, both in her Peckham constituency and on the campaign trail around the country, and my memory is that Labour's lead was never more than 2-4 percentage points in the weeks before the election. The only time it rose above that was the fateful night of the Sheffield Rally, when it reached 7 points, but it was all downhill after that. At the time, as a Labour campaign aide, I never expected more than a hung Parliament at best. My gut feeling today is the prospects are slightly better for the Tories, partly because Cameron does not attract the same derision as Kinnock did in 1992. I have believed for at least a year that the Tories will gain about 80-90 seats, and will form the largest party but will have significantly less than an overall majority. They have too big a mountain to climb, especially against the vast client state created by Labour through mass immigration, welfarism and the expansion of the public sector

Richard

perhaps Boy George can run him through the financial figures. After his performance on Jeff Randall he will need to improve before the "Live" debates.
Old slugger Brown has a few scores to settle and I think I know just where he intends to leave the biggest bruise.

perdix

Two hour Shad Cab Meeting probably includes preps for the Spring Conference this weekend.

Vulture

Good grief! It's early in the morning, but before I rub the sleep from my eyes I think I just read one of this site's leading Camerloons, Mr Barnett, finally acknowledging that Dave's shifting to the Left 'has driven too many right-wing Tories away' and that furthermore, that the party is in danger of becoming a narrow sect.

Well, Glory be! The sound of pennies dropping is quite deafening. So what, at this late stage in proceedings, can daffy Dave do to rescue matters?

Well, adopting a few Conservative policies and jettisoning some of Boy George's dafter wheezes ( along with their author) would be a start.

strapworld

Vulture. Spot on! ll it take for Trevors Den to wake up and see Cameron for what he is. An empty vessel.

Frankly it could not have got worse than last evening on Sky News with Jeff Randall. Utterly lost on that question what is this £72 Billion OTHER ? His face told it all. Brown will eat him alive on this at PMQ's

But all is not lost. He could bring in John Redwood, David Davis, Michael Howard, Malcolm Raffkind even dear old Nick Soames. People who can hit the ball FAR!

What has Trevors Den (Pickles) got to shout about? Lansley who scores more own goals for Labour! Maude who, on his houses and expenses issue, should have been sacked, Gove who, on the expenses issue, should have been sacked and, oh, Cameron who should have sacked himself over expenses.

Whoever came up with the airbrushed poster should be sacked. Whoever came up with the idea that certain subjects, including immigration, should not be mentioned, should be sacked.

I do agree with Trevors Den and others for the need for this disgraceful administration to be ejected from public life BUT I cannot subscribe to just supporting this washed out poor imitation of Tony Blair with his leightweight shadow cabinet running around making cock up after cock up on a daily basis.

Jeff Randall by the way is a distinguished economist. One would have thought that Cameron would have expected a question, or three on the economy. STUPID or what?

DangerDave

I have to agree with a number of posters on here that DC was terrible when discussing 'other 70-odd billon' with Jeff Randall last night.

He really should have done his prep on this and it otherwise ruined a fairly sensible interview.

Discussing this and other matters relating to the forthcoming with fellow traditional tory voters, I just cannot see how DC and his mob cannot manage to put the boot into such a discredited, tired and shambolic government on a regular basis.

DC needs to pull his socks up and pretty sharpish. I realise that he cannot reveal the big policy announcements before the for fear of them being shot down or stolen but these guys are going to have to do something or we are in for a very real economic shock if Brown gets in again (but perhaps we do DC an injustice, perhaps he wishes for Brown to reap what he sows, with a view to getting power once the receivers are called in).

There is plenty of incentive for certain sectors of society to vote NL and they will be out to vote come what may to ensure the continuation of their standard of living. Unless DC and the Tories get their act together in fairly short order, the prospect of them winning anything against the finest media spin machine there ever was.

Mic

Thank goodness I got out of the UK years ago but like other expats I still follow events. So I do not have the vote and am grateful for that as, after watching last night's disaster on the Jeff Randall show I would be on the verge of changing my opinion - and when in UK I always voted Conservative.
I am left with the feeling that Cameron is simply not up to the job. He was left looking not so much stupid as completely inadequate. If the party cannot win the election after Labour's thirteen years of wrecking then why bother. Let's see some policies, some leadership. There are still good, sensible people in the Party so let's hear them, people with experience.

anne allan

This Hilton chap is costing us £250,00 a year. That's an awful lot of fundraising. Do we believe we are getting value for money?
Why are we not using the real, experienced big hitters? The only one brought back is Ken Clark who has, apparently, been given William Hague's job via the back door because he can cosy up to Barroso more convincingly.
This country has the worst, most treacherous, vicious government in Britain's history, and we appear to have a bunch of ill-informed dilettantes running the Conservative campaign. By contrast, Tamsin Lightwater seems politically astute.
How the hell do we, the ordinary Conservative activists, get anything through the thick skulls of the arrogant twerps in CCHQ?

Bloody Bill Brock

At this rate the Shadow Cabinet will stay the Shadow Cabinet

strapworld

Bloody Bill Brock, The one light at the end of this tunnel is that in the event of Cameron losing the election he and his shadow cabinet, with one or two honourable exceptions, will be sacked.