James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the Tories can break on through

Northern Rock has not fatally wounded this government and Gordon Brown is slowly getting back on the front foot. The government, it appears, will not lose the next election all by itself. So how should the Tories should try and win it? Here, the divide is between the tortoises and the hares—or, the infantry and the light horse as I would put it.

Today, Iain Martin and Tim Montgomerie, the two most eloquent hares, make the case for boldness. Iain makes the crucial point that the election will likely be decided by returning voters drawn to the polls by the fact ‘their vote will matter’ for the first time in a while: turnout in 1992—the  last election where the result was in doubt on polling day—was 77.7 percent, in 2005 it was 61.4 percent. These people are clearly casual participants in politics and the Tories have yet to give them a compelling, one sentence reason to turn out and support them at the next election.

One thing that the public’s reaction to the Northern Rock crisis—with support for Labour’s economic management rising both at the time of the initial run on the bank and when the government finally decided to nationalise it—shows is that Labour really are the natural party of government now: in a crisis the electorate instinctively turns to them. This suggests that voters are unlikely to rally behind the Tories on technocratic grounds: another reason why the Tories should be bold and offer some eye-catching policies.

Many in Project Cameron worry that voters now hold politicians in such low esteem that big promises are no longer believed.

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