Cameron’s new model army

The Conservatives are planning to chip away at the lower middle-class voter and release his inner Tory

Two inconvenient truths will put the dampeners on what could have been a celebratory Conservative party conference in Birmingham next week. First, there is a champagne ban for the third year running. There are to be no pictures of Tories with bubbly. Next, there is no real victory to toast. David Cameron failed to win a majority against Gordon Brown, which is something of a sore point among his advisers. Visitors to No. 10 are told that this is ‘not a helpful subject’ to bring up. There is a ‘don’t mention the campaign’ policy running in Cameron Towers.

But beneath this defensiveness lies an understanding of what went wrong. The campaign failed because the party stood for everybody and nobody: David Cameron had no ‘people’ in the way that Margaret Thatcher did. In Birmingham, Mr Cameron and George Osborne will start to address this. From now until the next election, the focus of their government policies will be on the lower middle-class voters who have delivered Conservative election victories in the past. From tax policy to language and values, the government intends to focus on these people — and release the hidden Tory inside. Like political Michelangelos, they intend to chip away with their policy chisels and set this Tory free.

The phrase ‘Cameron’s people’ may well conjure up visions of Notting Hillbillies with OKA kitchens and sea-grass carpets. But by the time of the next election, it should apply to voters paid between £25,000 and £40,000 a year, who use public services and can’t afford to go private. They may be anxious about their local crime rate or choice of schools, but they cannot afford to move to a better area. Their only hope is that public services reform improves their lives and the fiscal pain they suffer as the national books are balanced is minimised.