Voters in the North love Tory policies but hate the Tories. That’s the headline from some new YouGov polling on what voters in different parts of the country feel about the political parties and their policies.
An overwhelming majority of voters in the North support cutting net immigration, same-sex marriage, the benefits cap, Help to Buy and raising the income tax allowance — all policies enacted by Conservatives in government. But, when asked which party they would consider voting for, 39 per cent of respondents in the North said that they would never consider voting Tory:
Why do some many people in the North detest the Tories? Apparently, the Conservatives don’t understand people in that party of the country:
What can the party do to overcome this rather perplexing problem? I understand that a press officer has been hired to work exclusively on the northern audience, to push the message that the Tories support ‘hardworking families’. But it will take more than spin to change perceptions. As Neil O’Brien explained in the Spectator last year, too much of our national politics is focused on London and the South East, and that fact reinforces the pathological hatred of the Tories (which I’ve witnessed) north of the Watford Gap. Luckily for Tories, O’Brien is now working closely with George Osborne on crafting the next manifesto.
Another crumb of comfort for the Tories is that the numbers in this polling suggest that no party has mass appeal anymore. In the South, a third of respondents said that they wouldn’t vote for Labour, while 38 per cent of voters in the North rule out the Liberal Democrats. Of course, nothing is set in stone this far away from a general election. But these polls should disappoint all of those who dream of majority government after 2015.
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