The Conservative Party’s disastrous performance in yesterday’s by elections has been discussed all over the place, so I won’t say much about it.
Just a few things.
The Conservative Party was never going to win in either Ealing Southall or Sedgefield, but surely a respectable second place should have been possible to achieve.
So why didn’t that happen?
I have just read the laughable excuses put forward by the Party. It would have been much better for them to have come out and said ‘we are very sorry we didn’t do well. We remain committed to serving you and will work hard to convince you of this, so that you give us a chance next time around’.
That would have been a refreshingly honest and effective way to draw the line under this and start again.
But no, instead we have all sorts of waffle from the party. According to Grant Shapps, the election co-ordinator, all is not lost because, during the course of the by election, five local councillors defected to the Conservative party. No disrespect to the five councillors involved, but big deal.
Ever since he became leader, David Cameron has spent his time ditching long-standing Conservative principles. Many decent and principled Conservatives have watched with unease, but held their peace. The reasoning from Cameron’s supporters was that all this was necessary to regain the trust of the public. As a result, many with misgivings kept their opinions to themselves and let Cameron get on with the task. For one thing, as long as the Conservatives were ahead in the opinion polls, it looked as though David Cameron and his supporters knew what they were doing.
However, it soon became clear that they did not. The ridiculous attack on grammar schools was one step too far for many, including myself. What was the point of being ahead in the opinion polls if the Party represented nothing approaching conservative principles, and actually did not even seem to know where it was going? I resigned from the Party at that point, with no intention of returning until sanity was restored. I would much rather the Conservative Party stayed in opposition and remained true to its beliefs, than attained office at the cost of apostasy.
This may be a controversial point, but I do not think that the reason Labour is currently ahead in the opinion polls is solely down to the so-called ‘Brown bounce’. And if I am right, that should scare the hell out of David Cameron and his cohorts. Yes, they should worry. Perhaps it is not just the ‘Brown bounce’; perhaps people are looking deeper and saying to themselves that ‘the Conservative party under David Cameron does not seem to stand for anything at all’. Just a thought.
While the Conservative Party was ahead in the opinion polls, it was (relatively) easy for loyal grassroots supporters to turn a blind eye to David Cameron’s apparent lack of party principle. However, now that the Party has not only fallen behind in the polls, but was beaten into third place in yesterday’s by elections by the feeble LibDems, perhaps it is time for the members to ask themselves whether it is worth sticking with David Cameron.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Hi Bel. I was going to hug you, but I think instead that I’ll add you to my blogroll.
(adds)
July 20th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Hi Tim,
thank you.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
I would much rather the Conservative Party stayed in opposition and remained true to its beliefs, than attained office at the cost of apostasy.
This is exactly right. It’s called having principles. A concept now entirely foreign to the shadow cabinet.
I’m amused by the side-show that is Clare Short who sacrified her socialist principles to gain power with Labour. Then realising too late that she’d become the very thing she entered politics to fight, her halting stop-go quitting/sacking was comedy, and her subsequent scramble for credibility is embarrassing.
I wonder who will be the last conservative to leave the Conservative party and become a laughing stock.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Hi Bel: The way it is looking Her Majesty’s Opposition appears not to be the Tory Party but instead the LibDem Party.
With the Cameron’s Conservatives and the rest of the Tory Party in the same boat but rowing in different directions is it any wonder that they are going nowhere fast?
July 20th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Bel, don’t fall for the trap of taling baout opposition but with principle.
Where did that get Kinnock? And Thatcher was first elected on a very moderate set of policy pronouncements.
I don’t disagree that at the moment all the wind is in Brown’s sails and Cameron can’t do anything right. My life goes through these patches too.
But to settle for 10 or even 5 more years of a growing state sector, higher taxes for all, reduciotns in personal freedoms and the rest is too much.
we can all protest, but the ‘my enemies enemy principle’ is not in fact principled.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
But to settle for 10 or even 5 more years of a growing state sector, higher taxes for all, reduciotns in personal freedoms and the rest is too much.
But is Cameron offering any different? I have yet to see anything from him to convince me that he would give us something different. Where he differs from Brown is in terms of scale, eg high public spending, but not as high as Brown. Lower taxes than Brown, but not necessarily ‘low’ taxes.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:48 pm
It was almost impossible to expect second place for the Tories.
The by election uplift for any party, generally, is inversely proprtional to their strength in parliament.
Put this way, there are only three occurences since the war of a government winning a by election from the opposition, and one of those was due to the Labour MP fighting the seat for the SDP.
On only one occasion since the war has a minor party lost a seat to a larger party in a by election.
For the Lib Dems to have lost second place would only be conceivable if we expected a 1997 type landslide, plus the annihilation of the Lib Dems.