Why the Tories didn’t win

Bloody Bill Brock

I have mentioned UK polling report before. I used to be a regular contributor. It has now in the main been taken over as a Labour talk shop. It was clear from the comments and indeed rantings, that many of them had actually started to believe their own propaganda regarding The Baroness. The poor dying in the streets, the heart attack victims left for days on super market trolleys. Nurses fixing broken down ambulances in the grimy Sheffield snow. Kids with northern accents refused work or benefits. The Labour party made a major effort to sell this vision to the people and it worked.

Woody

If they believed Labour's evil scaremongering that the electorate are more stupid and self-centred than I thought.

JR

Example 1
Person A, I appreciate that we need cuts because we, as a country, are in severe debt.

Tory spokes person, there will need to be cuts in the future because of the state of the public finances, we need to get this done asap to prevent greek style chaos.

Person A responds, Tory cuts, i'm not voting for them.

Example 2
Person A, I appreciate there needs to be cuts because we are in debt.

Tory, due to the tough financial situation, not everybody will be able to receive benefits.

Person A, not my benefit, cut someone else.

Example 3,

Tory, we are lifting the the tax threshold to 10K, to prevent th epoorest from paying tax

Person A, the tories will cut the poorest first.

How are you supposed to win, when people dont face up to it.

Verity

JR - No. The problem with the Tories, in the perception of the natural Tory voter, is, there are no Tories at the top of the party.

David Cameron is a self-serving, opportunistic sneak in the Tony Blair mode, but without Blair's quickness of wit and charmm (in the eyes of the gullible).

He promised a referendum on the EUSSR, but the voters had already sussed him out as false and didn't believe he'd stick to his promise, and they were right. He hasn't. He won't.

The fact is, the electorate rejected Cameron and the Tories for the same reason they rejected Labour. The Tories, despite the vile, sneering, snivelling, bullying of the socialists, didn't win. To repeat, David Cameron failed to lead his party to a victory against Gordon Brown ... probably the most reviled, despised political leader in British history.

And Cameron couldn't win against him.

He is not in office by the will of the British people.

David Ossitt

It was the three leader debates that lost it, it was an unnecessary gamble, Nick Clegg had nothing to lose, Gordon Brown was irrelevant as his people would vote for him no matter what but it was so very wrong for David Cameron, he could not control the outcome and so he should not have taken the risk.

TGF UKIP

The usual over-sophisticated London bollocks.

All the decontamination myth did was to emphasize in Joe Voter's mind the Cameron PR background and image that Labour was seeking to implant. "Tories", as I must unceasingly point out, do not consist of just Dave and his clique. "Tories" are much more the people that voters live with, work with and socialize with and they are normally a million miles from the green, ultra pc, asylum seeker welcoming, hoodie hugging, fey bunch that Dave tried to sell them as being. All "decontamination" did was to heighten the mistrust and PR man image of of Dave and his leadership.

The Tories failed to win the election because they failed to convince the electorate not only of their own fitness to govern credentials, but also of Labour's culpability for the economic mess the country was in. The evidence for this was most starkly set out on p16 of the Speccie of 25th Sept with a Populus poll indicating that voters believed bankers, the BoE and global recession were more blameworthy for the deficit than Brown/Darling who they held only marginally more culpable than Cameron/Osborne. This was the massive opposition political failure of Cameron/Osborne/Hilton.

It is further evidenced by all the polls over the twelve months leading up to the election which showed Cameron/Osborne to be no better than neck and neck and frequently behind Brown/Darling in the economic competence stakes.

David Blackburn gets close to the reality of the problem but predictably shrinks from categorizing what it really was - the sheer pusillanimity of Cameron and co in ever making or confronting an argument. Not only ducking facing up to Brown and Labour but frequently opting to adopt their language and attempting to shift onto their ground. Exactly the same as the "progressive" and "fair" agenda they seek to accrue for themselves today.

Is it any wonder the British electorate found them unconvincing even for an election that was so ripe for the classic narrative "Tories exist to clear up Labour's ecomic mess."

TrevorsDen

The balance of the report is true and as usual Verity totally de-constructs what being a tory is or has ever been. In so doing she perpetuates Labours myth.

Was McMillan not a Tory or Rab Butler? Were these people to the right of Cameron.

The Tory party has never been what the likes of Verity suggest. The present cabinet is probably more right wing than Thatchers first cabinet. Traditional Foreign Office weakness prompted the Falklands and that is Thatchers defining moment.
The right wing perception of her first government was merely a reflection of a total capitulation by Labour to left wing unionism. Once it became more right wing ie Poll Tax it lost its way.

The Tories still won virtually more seats than ever recorded and labour lost as many. The contamination of politics by 'expenses' and the bias in seat distribution did not help the Tories cause. The credit crunch was a disaster but it gave Labour a smokescreen of scaremongering to blow in the faces of the electorate.

They are still at it. Total denial is their only policy.

Tiberius

Those are all valid points, but there are others such as the general psephology, and specifically the Labour client state.

Essentially, after 1997, the Tories were faced with the equivalent of trying to solve the Rubik's cube in their head.

JR is right about the electorate. As for the myth about the leaders' debates, well the LibDems ended up losing seats from 2005.

anxiouswarrior

the tories didnt win because the british people dont believe or trust them,this will prove to be their downfall in the coming years as they try to brainwash people with their free market garbage and defence of the 350 bilion bail out to the real thieves the square mile

Andy H

The real reason that the Tory's did not win is clearly down to the unfair bias in the electoral system, the 13 years of creating a client state with the public sector and the benefit addicts.
Why is the fact that the Torys had to win significantly more votes then Labour to gain a majority not been factored in?
If the system is rigged against you then it is no surprising that they didn't win. The real task now is to equalise the system and then try again.

Ruby Duck

The simplest explanation of why the Tories didn't win a majority is that Tories don't understand the postal vote and the need to peak twice in a campaign.

Most postal votes are returned immediately. Most postal voters did not take account of Gillian Duffy, or the 3rd leader debate.

Andrew Kennard

As a conservative supporter it was disappointing that the Tories did not manage to get a majority and in fact did not get more than 36% of the vote however I do not blame David Cameron. I cannot really see how he could have done things differently. Off course he could have emphasised as his predecessors had done immigration and anti EU sentiment but the real reason he did not win was a frighten of change vote in times of extreme financial crisis.

gordon-bennett

The reason why Conservatives were unconvincing was because the beeb rubbished them day in and day out and never once explained the culpability of nulav.

The main reasons for the deficit are nulav profligacy and their damaging reorganisation of bank regulation.

The beeb protected nulav by never explaining this plain truth. They never pointed out nulav's poor economic management and continually blamed the bankers rather than the faulty regulation regime which allowed the bankers to go wild.

When you've got the beeb against you 24/7 AND the electoral system is heavily weighted against you, it's a wonder that the Conservatives ever win an election.

Without the malign effect of the beeb I contend that any Conservative administration lasts at least 1 parliament less than it should and a nulav administration lasts at least 1 parliament longer.

That is the extent of the damage that the beeb does to the UK.

Dimoto

Tim Bale's 'analysis', when boiled down, is that Labour succeeded in subborning a sufficient proportion of the electorate with their own money, to prevent a clear Conservative victory.
Given another 5-10 years of the same, no doubt they will manage to build a permanent majority.

The British electorate is eminently biddable.

Major Plonquer 1

So Labour manufactured the Economic Crisis so they could be good at something? But Gordon? Gordon saved the world, didn't he?

This article seems to miss the point that Labour were - and still are - a shower of jumped up, workshy morons with delusions of adequacy.

John David Barnett

Macmillan. Not McMillan.

Sir Graphus

What this analysis shows is that the country is stuffed; voters will not accept public spending reduced to within our means.

Simon Stephenson

I agree with Verity that the electorate rejected the Tories for the same reason they rejected Labour, but this was not because they were not Tory enough. The reason, I suggest, is that large swathes of the electorate have been pampered over the last 20 years into believing that national politics is capable of achieving far more than it can actually achieve, in a far more straightforward way than is actually possible. In short, the mainstream has been allowed to project onto national politics its own self-reinforcing view of the world as a place where simplicities and self-evident "certainties" are the building-blocks of sound social decision-making. In reality, the cemented opinions of the majority are only a part of the input to quality decision-making, which for excellence needs to be blended with the thinking of those who deal more in probabilities than certainties.

Not until we recognise that this aspect of the democratic process is a weakness, not a strength, will we be able to reconfigure the system into something more effective.

normanc

One of the American founding fathers said (and I am paraphrasing as I can't remember the exact quote) 'If people can vote themselves money from the Treasury then democracy is finished'.

Still, there's always the EU waiting to step in and fill the void as our politicians lurch every further into uselessness.

The future's bleak for those of us who prefer liberty to tyranny.

Bloody Bill Brock

I am no bleeding heart liberal. Anyone who has ever read a post of mine can very quickly see that. If I cut myself, I bleed BLUE. However all this "no Tories at the top" rubbish and UKPI anti Dave claptrap is boring beyond words. Trevors Den was right to mention a list of One Nation "wet" Tories. Now seen as some of the best PMs we have ever had. If anyone on this board thinks that some right wing hang um and flog um merchant, would be PM today, had the Tories made that mistake, then you are very very wrong. The price of your wrongness, is MORE LABOUR.

denis cooper

I'll add my twopennorth, which really only requires me to find a previous comment like this one I made in June 2009:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3694608/browns-cuts.thtml

"The Tories have got themselves into a very weak position here.

Firstly there's the folk memory of Tory cuts under Thatcher and Major. It may be a false memory, but it's still a powerful memory.

Secondly there's the failure over twelve years to debunk Brown's misrepresentation of all public spending as being "investment".

Thirdly there's the failure to impress upon the British public the sheer magnitude of the government borrowing which is now needed to sustain public spending.

On Question Time this week Caroline Spelman did quite well, but she left it to Huhne to point out that the government is having to borrow five hundred million pounds each day.

The best approximate answer to my question yesterday seems to be that every fourth pound spent by the government is now a borrowed pound.

That needs to be emphasised and put into terms that anybody can readily understand, for example that if your income in £15,000 a year you cannot carry on spending £20,000 a year.

Fourthly, there's the Tories' inability or reluctance to recognise and emphasise that the government can only borrow on this unprecedented scale because the Bank of England is printing money to buy off its lenders, the international gilts investors, and that too can't carry on forever.

Yesterday somebody referred to a criticism made in an IMF report, that "quantitative easing should include commercial as well as government debt, as it was supposed to", and of course that's the whole point.

Hardly any of the newly created money is being used for its stated purpose; instead about 99% of it is being used to prop up the gilts market so that the government can carry on borrowing and spending.

With some "green shoots" now appearing in the economy, it seems to me that Brown has a fighting chance of winning the general election next spring."

Minnie Ovens

Simple.
Two reasons why Cameron lost a most winnable election.
Immigration.
Housing...making native born citizens have priority, at long last, over immigrants.
Personally I think Cameron is all pragmatism and little principle and very like Blair.

Dave Bradley

Why the Tories didn’t win
I think after the expenses row a lot of people didn't trust politicians
and voted in traditional ways
as the saying goes "better the devil you know"