The Tories’ problems have more to do with branding

Yam Yam

"The Tories' problem is that timidity has made them shy away from providing a bold and credible alternative."

And every time a Conservative endeavours to be 'bold' and 'credible' some 'bien pensants' in Notting Hill shoots them down in flames. Witness Daniel Hannan telling the truth about that great sclerotic dinosaur called the NHS last year.

Topsy-turvy

"The Duke of Wellington was adamant that the best form of attack was defence." You have this the wring way round.

The public is not impressed by a rapidly balding man speaking without notes - they can get that in any theatre on any night. They want policies and beliefs.

Vulture

The problem is that Dave has not realised that politics is more than a PR campaign.

He's got the slickness and the smooth sales patter OK. The wrapping is magic.
It's just when you've unwrapped it there's nothing inside.

People hate Bruin and loathe Liebour. But they see nothing there to replace them with.

The Emperor's got no clothes.

John Adlington

Unfortunately politics is completely PR driven as the masses are and have been encouraged to become politically illiterate. The MSM are utterly complicit in this. Only on the fringes do people care about the detail of policy. Hardly anyone knows that to continue with Labour is to continue into a future of irrelevance, authoritarianism and penury because their PR is so good.

Bert

They also need balanced reporting from monopoly state broadcaster.

Richard

The Conservatives problems are
LACK of: Credibility, honesty, transparency, leardership, policy, vision, back bone, clarity, Intellect, the ability to listen, understanding, empathy etc

Over abundance of: Opportunism, Self dellusion, Wibbly wobblyiness, PR stunts, Navel gazing, infighting, arrogance, vanity..... and the list goes on.
Somehow the need for substance has been lost to the idea of presentation and personality.
Lets just say the time has passed when we are in for cosmetic surgery we are now into which surgeon can save the patients life.
Dr Botox has now been kicked aside by Dr by-pass and only the vain care much for who is, where from or even how handsome he may be. If I needed a kidney transplant I wouldn't even ask if the donor was a good christian so why should personality matter in this election any more.
Trouble the Tory election plan was decided two years ago, but the times have moved on and thay haven't.

Dean

Finkelstein's analysis is flawed and based on wishful thinking. The Tories have carried out a rebranding exercise, but have not abandoned the key ideological positions that caused them to become unpopular in the 1990s. Put simply, Tories have an excessive faith in free markets, which causes them to downplay the inequalities produced by the free market and under-estimate the need for markets to be managed pro-actively by central banks, regulators, and international organisations.

Moreover, it is patently false to state, as Finkelstein does, that Osborne's pronouncements on the economy exemplify the rebranding exercise at its best. Osborne's initiative on IHT was a success, but in other areas he has come across (for better or worse) as a conventional Thatcherite, and it is precisely the dominance of a Thatcherite message on the economy that is deterring floating voters, many of whom work in public services.

The rebranding exercise carried out by Blair in the 1990s involved a fundamental reappraisal of failed socialist beliefs. Cameron's modernisation project has been much more superficial. Most Tory activists still hold the views they held in the 1980s and 1990s, when the party was last in power.

Doppelganger

Vulture

Actually, I don't think he is slick nor do I think he has a smooth sales patter. I can see through it a mile off. He reminds me of a posh estate agent.

Informed Giant

2007 Conference Speech- Cameron at his best, Cameron strong in attack, bold and crash or crash through, not limited by the threat if electoral loss.

"We will fight, Britain will win".

God knows we need you to fight even harder. Just fight harder. Attack Labour's bad record. You still have a real chance now to really cut through. You've cone this far. Just be yourself and people will follow you. Lead us.

Chris lancashire

I'm afraid Vulture has fallen prey to some excellent Labour politicking. They can't run a country but they sure as hell can run a campaign.
The Tories have actually presented more detailed policies than most political parties pre-election (and certainly more than New Labour). Yet Vulture and others accept that "there's nothing inside" or "the Tories have no policies".
Labour's campaign is masterful - look on Politics Home this morning and the top six stories are about Cameron/Tories. The ONLY story ought to be the apalling mess New Labour has made of the economy.

Alex Thompson

Don't agree. The brand Cameron is selling is already out of date - it was designed for a world that didn't have a credit crunch. When the propaganda on the news kept the house prices ticking over people were willing to overlook the bread and butter issues - crime, social breakup, immigration and hope for a better day.
But the New Labour economy was a distortion, a figment of the imagination of a few opinion formers who inspired a collective group think that the world has never seen before. The man on the street has woken up now to the dysopia which has been created. He wants real conservative values to be emphasised: marriage, tough on crime, balanced budgets, zero immigration and a sense of national identity. He wants to feel proud of his country again but he knows you can't feel proud when you're led by self-hating apologists. If only Cameron had kept to Conservative values whilst 'de-cleansing' the brand. The two need not have been mutually exclusive. At the same time that the electorate has woken up and realised it is conservative, the Conservatives are pretending that they aren't.

Ed B

It never ceases to amaze me how these UKIP folks relentlessly parrot Brown's attach lines on Cameron. The "slickness and smooth sales patter" line upthread is a good example.

Wake up chaps. We are less than two months from a general election. If you loathe Cameron so much that you are willing to see another 5 years of Brown in Number 10 then fine, go right ahead and vote UKIP, BNP, Green, Lib Dem, Monster Raving Loony, or whatever floats your boat. If on the other hand you want Brown and NuLab out, then hold your nose and vote Tory. It really is a very simple choice.

Publius

Dean writes:
"The rebranding exercise carried out by Blair in the 1990s involved a fundamental reappraisal of failed socialist beliefs.

-- And we ended up with the fantasy of "an end to boom and bust" and the grim truth of the Stasi state.

Clever sleight of hand, Dean, and clearly more intelligent than your buddy Richard. But it doesn't wash.

JohnW

Yup, brand is all they have, as the difference between their policies and Labours are paper thin. Obviously, more spin is what's needed.

Alex Jacob

People like Vulture are Labour's useful idiots. I am an EU-sceptic, but if UKIP delivers Labour a fourth term, I would laugh at Vulture and co weeping as we join the euro because it would be all their fault.

Dean

Publius - I agree with everything you say. Labour have been a disaster in many areas of social policy and the erosion of freedoms needs to be reversed. But Labour did abandon Clause 4 and no longer believe in central planning. That was a major shift. I can't think of any significant policy position taken by the John Major government which has been reversed or abandoned by Cameron, with the single exception of gay rights. The public sense that the hard work of re-thinking policy has not been done, and that is why the Tories are now faltering in the polls (although I still believe, and hope, they will win). It isn't enough to conduct a clever marketing exercise to re-invent your brand. All that does is paper over the cracks which then start to re-appear as soon as the party is put under pressure.

I don't rate Finkelstein because he was an adviser to the John Major government and is therefore not well placed to understand the reasons why that government became deeply unpopular.

Robert Gregory

Surely Wellington said "the best form of defence is attack" ?

No wonder Dave always appears a picture of confusion.

denis cooper

Thanks for explaining that, Ed B.

I think that the Labour party is crap and providing crap government.

Therefore of course I will do as you say and vote for another crap party which has the best chance of getting Labour out, so we can have a different crap government.

"Simples", as they say.

moorlandhunter

So according to Labour, any comments by soldiers that deride the Labour Government over its appalling lack of care, the lack of equipment, lack of helicopters, lack of body armour is all down to the fact our soldiers are Tories?
It is a major mistake by Labour and made even worse by Brown for not smacking down the politically stupid comment from the left wing element of his tribe.
As for Foot being a patriot, I had to laugh. A major player in CND, with the Labour front benchers all part of the movement. It shows just how hypocritical Labour is.

Brian

Perhaps the Tories could rebrand themselves as "Conservatives"

Publius

@Dean
You say:
"But Labour did abandon Clause 4 and no longer believe in central planning."

-- And you will know that, in truth, these were never policy.

You are employing the same sleight of hand as before. You highlight an irrelevance, and treat it as decisive.

I find the slick, brazen dishonestly of intelligent people one of the most sickening aspects of the way New Labour has poisoned the well of public discourse.

paulg

The Conservatives problems are
LACK of: Credibility, honesty, transparency, leardership, policy, vision, back bone, clarity, Intellect, the ability to listen, understanding, empathy etc

Over abundance of: Opportunism, Self dellusion, Wibbly wobblyiness, PR stunts, Navel gazing, infighting, arrogance, vanity..... and the list goes on.

It appears you have access to Mr Browns psychiatric assessment and, have just inserted the conservatives on the top of it.

Unfortunately, for you Richard is that when you tell lies you can some times end up believing them yourself, its called dillusion.

Its nice to see Mr Brown distance himself from the public by shouting Ashcroft to all matters of state, society and conflict. Lets hope he keeps it up!

Charlie

Labour have recruited hundreds of thousands of administrators since 1997, in addition to teachers, doctors nurses. Many of these administrators know they have no future under the Tories. Vast parts of the education system know they are threatened by the Gove reforms. In addition many aspiring voters have moved from the cities to the suburbs and country. Consequently it often takes more votes for a Tory MP to win than many Labour MPs. Many UKIP voters may not agree with Cameron but a Labour Government under far Brown would be far worse. The reality is that since when Tony Blair took over Labour, they have been far more astute at manipulating the middle class political structure of the country to their needs than the Tory Party. Mill was right , The Tory Party is the stupid party. Too many Tory MPs since the mid 90s have been too slow and too lazy to understand and counter act the the Labour Party. In the televisual age, too many Tory MPs come across as pompous, overweight and divorced from the average voter ( salary £25,000/yr). In the televisual people assess whether they intend to listern to someone in a few seconds. If that person is turn off on TV, it does not matter what the message contains, people will not listen.

John Bracewell

Denis Cooper
I see a flaw in your argument:
Anyone can see that the Labour government is/has been crap.
It is only an opinion, yours and some others, that a Cameron government will be crap. You cannot be sure until that scenario has happened because you cannot say a Cameron government will be crap because a Major or a Thatcher government was crap.
So, you are comparing a known with an opinion (which may be wrong), and are opting for known continued crap Labour government without giving Cameron a chance to be crap or not. You are therefore backing a certainty (Labour crap) versus a possibility that Cameron may be crap.

John Lea

How depressing to be discussing once great political parties in terms of their 'brand'. Is nothing exempt from those bloody awful people who work in marketing?!! How long before the Pope starts talking about 're-branding' Jesus, or the bible?

djw2009

>>The Tories have abandoned their obsolete politics. I agree with Tim Montgomery and Danny Finkelstein that they must continue to stress the novelty of their brand because it is that which made them electable.

This can only mean one thing - that having junked Toryism, the Conservative Party stands for something else, something new - I would argue that that is a version of managerial state politics. But whatever it is, it is something new.

As this party now stands for something new, it looks and feels as alien to conservaties as Labour and the Liberal Democrats do. David Blackburn and I - instead of both being Tories - are clearly members of opposing political parties - he believed in the "new-style" Conservative Party; I believe in the "obsolete politics". What else does this mean but that old-style Tories should not vote for David Cameron's conservatives and indeed that the Conservative Party should split - if it now contains two opposing political factions, whose politics are not differences of emphases, but really things that are quite different to each other - then the party should not continue to represent them all.

Verity

Doppelganger writes, re Cameron: "Actually, I don't think he is slick nor do I think he has a smooth sales patter. I can see through it a mile off. He reminds me of a posh estate agent."

I've said from Day One that he reminds me of a Jaguar salesman in, say, Beverly Hills, oozing OE charm.

Publius

The trouble with "obsolete" things is that you thrown them away and then discover that you still need them.

Wasn't long ago that boom and bust was obsolete, eh?

Paddy

I don't give a damn whether Dave has two heads so long as we get rid of Brown.

I'm sick of looking at him. Fancy waking up in the morning next to that.

Verity

Agree with Alex Thompson. The brand Cameron's selling is already out of date, and I would add that he's a one-trick pony. We are now in a post-Neathergate age and Cameron has shied away from it nervously. This is partly because, in his heart of hearts, he's a One Worlder and believes in unfettered immigration and probably thinks islam is a continuation of the Ibramhic tradition (a clever piece of taqqya and kitman, that), so it's really practically Christianity with a few tweaks.

Verity

John Lea says it's disheartening to see Conservatism referred to as a brand, rather than a system of firm and generous beliefs. Dave has managed to trivialise a great political party by referring to it as something you might pop into Tesco's for.

Marcher Baron

I am saddened by those who say "hold your nose and vote for Dave because Brown is worse". It's as bad as Polly Toynbee's appeals to hold one's nose and vote for Labour so the Tories don't get in. Surely it is one's duty to vote for the POLICIES one thinks will be best for the country. Abandonment of principles is Labour's legacy.

cmp

John Bracewell - quite correct; it's why I shall hold my nose and vote Cameron

Robert Gregory

Well said Verity !

I have just been across to Finkelstein's 'Blog' - the most unadulterated rubbish you could imagine. The poor fellow used to advise John Major, for Goodness sake ! No wonder he is clueless.

Brown should be dead meat hanging - as Major was this time in 1997. In one sense it's to Cameron's credit that he is not the snake oil Salesman Blair was. Or at least he's not as convincing at it.

But his complete inability to connect to any policy beyond "doing the right thing and not the wrong thing" - as Melanie Philips ridicules him for, just recently - says it all.

THis coming choice between Brown and Cameron makes one YEARN for Harold Wilson. Yes it really is that bad !!

Herbert Thornton

"Branding" is all very well. The contents of the container are what matters.

It sounds rather like a tin can label that says "Imported".

E.g. - "Contents - Lisbon Treaty - imported from Europe." or "Product of Pakistan - may contain traces of Islam."

Read the fine print, eh? Caveat emptor.

denis cooper

John Bracewell, it's only my opinion in both cases, based on what I observe; but then I'll vote according to my opinion, not the opinions of others.

logdon

Geert Wilders, against all odds, and I mean real all odds where life and death is involved, has breached the dike of complacency in the Netherlands.

Despite an organised campaign of vilification co-ordinated by an alliance of Islamists and Government which has managed the feat of putting him on trial for telling the truth, he is now running second and is touted as the next PM.

Maybe it was the arrogance of the Dutch establishment, ‘we are not interested in truth, we are interested only in the law’, wot dun it, but to use the parlance of politics, he’s certainly gained the traction which leads to electoral success. And on one issue!

It’s the same story building and growing across Scandinavia where Muslim over reach has resulted in a Newtonian counter push. Basically they are saying, we’ve had enough.

We are at the same stage of dhimmidom, much of it officially imposed, yet Cameron acts as if we were still living in a pre Twin Tower age of relative torpitude.

So scared of his own dark shadow of the nasty party image, he runs from what voters are demanding in their droves.

Neather and subsequent revelations told their own grim, shape shifting tale of social manipulation for political gain which in astute political hands would have dynamited Labour out of the water, but no, not one mention.

Too grubby for these new men right at a point when the public is crying out for an old style politician with old style gonads to lead the charge.

Missing such an open goal has irked our public, groaning for someone, anyone to take the reins of policy involvement which would stem the flow yet Dave floats above it all in his Notting Hill cocoon of fake and fluffy inclusivity. That is what pisses people off and that is why Brown’s accusations of toffy disconnect take hold in regional constituencies.

OK, it’s not the only issue, the economy counts also, but anyone notice Browns not so subtle sudden change of tack?

Public worker pay freezes and mass redundancies in local councils are indicative of the hard starboard shift of Labour’s ship of state and cuts versus investment is now dropped like a hot coal.

This is the work of a savvy and shameless Mandelson in his drive to return to 1997. It worked then and it looks like it’s working yet again.

The blitzkrieg of Labour tanks on the Tory lawns drowning out all else but their own ear shattering message.

You’d think that Cameron and co would have learned by now. Obviously not.

logdon

Herbert Thornton

"Product of Pakistan - may contain traces of Islam."

Or "Made in a factory which also produces Islamic nuts?"

logdon

Herbert Thornton

"Product of Pakistan - may contain traces of Islam."

Or Made in a factory which also produces Islamic nuts?

Herbert Thornton

Logdon - plus a warning label - "Do not agitate. Contents liable to explode without warning"?

John Bracewell

Denis Cooper
Thanks for sharing your opinions with us.
Like you, I will not be swayed by the opinions of others, especially those who will vote to possibly allow the worst kind of government and PM to continue in office.