For the Tories to have any hope of winning a majority, they have to face up to reclaiming seats in the North, but can they do so under Cameron? David Skelton from Policy Exchange suggests not in an interview with the Northern Echo today, where he outlines the ‘Cameron problem’:
‘You can’t get away from the fact that the Tory party looks pretty public school, pretty Southern and quite gilded. The fact is that the Tories can’t win an election if they can’t appeal to aspirational working-class voters in the North and the Midlands…If the Tories can’t find a way to get across the fact that voting Tory has become countercultural in the North then it will be very difficult to win a majority.’
His view chimes with what James has written about the slowly segregating
political landscape. Most of the recent Tory gains have been concentrated in traditional Tory areas, something that is not much use for winning majorities. Their failure to win in 2010 underlines the need to make gains in areas that are outside of their comfort zone.
But the major barrier the Tories are faced with is historical, and not confined to Cameron. Skelton, a Northerner, explains why tackling the area’s Thatcher problem is crucial:
‘It’s a generational thing. My parents’ generation are more wedded to the idea that being from the North-East means you have to vote Labour than people I went to school with.’
As a native of the region for twenty-one years, I believe David is right. The lady’s name is still taken in vain, often as proxy for the mass deindustrialisation and lack of long-term regeneration in the region. In the desolate pit villages surrounding the County Durham seat where Skelton once stood as an MP, there is little hope or possibility for a new lease of economic life. When their core sources of employment became unsustainable and disappeared, old jobs were replaced by a welfare dependency. And as the Tories focus on tough love welfare reform in 2013, their
popularity in the region is unlikely to improve as a result.
What the North East needs is an inspirational leader — in the mould of T. Dan Smith — to remould the region. Before his great fall, the man known as ‘Mr Newcastle’ cleared slum housing and stimulated projects to improve people’s lives through town planning. It is no coincidence Newcastle saw its most dramatic regeneration whilst being led by one of the most decisive men ever seen in regional politics. But sadly, Newcastle rejected elected Mayors and the area is left to flail in the stagnation and red tape of local government.
There is no quick fix for the region’s problems, but this doesn’t mean Cameron should accept the status quo. To bring our friends the north back, the Tories can begin by figuring out how to grant greater autonomy — imagine if Newcastle could follow in the steps of Newham to carve out its own resurgence — while pushing ahead with regional public sector pay to improve the region’s competitiveness when it needs it the most.
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