The Tories- Stuck Between Stools

Well, David Cameron's honeymoon period is over.
It has to be said, he's frittered away a fair amount of favourable public opinion.
How he has acheived this, is a mystery.

Or is it?

I don't think it's so much the fact that Gordon is popular, as that less people feel inclined to answer these polls. When Cameron got in as leader, people felt that here maybe was the chance for the sort of opposition they wanted.

It wasn't.
They didn't want Old Tories.
They didn't want Blue Labour.

Up until the last election, the Tories had shown themselves experts at selling their message.
To Tory voters.
But not to many other people. This was a bad habit they picked up during the Thatcher years, when Labour hadn't much sensible to say, but became disastrous during the Major years.
None of us who voted for the first time in 1997 actually remembered rubbish in the streets or 'Labour isn't working' any more than we remembered Dunkirk.

But Cameron forgets what Gordon hasn't.
Most 'One nation' Tories are dieing off. They form the bulk of party membership, and are seen within the party as its moderate wing.
It's moderate in that it doesn't want to privatise everything.
It doesn't realise that what it sees as the extremists, have already won that argument.
Even Labour buys that argument now.



There is a large group of people, in their twenties and thirties, that favour radical, minimalist, economic policy.
Thatcher's Children.
But many of them are uncomfortable supporting the Tories.

To this electorate, who is sick of state interference, but doesn't want to vote for the Hang em and Flog em lobby, won't vote for policies that seem to have a xenophobic tinge to them, Cameron offers nothing.

In fact he doesn't even offer the key points that are attractive about the old Tory way.
He hasn't stood up to the government over its plans to turn this country into a police state, he has defended the burgeoning public sector, he refused to stand up to the bullying of Catholic adoption agencies and he has refused to oppose the smoking ban.
Some defence of liberty.

All this in the name of 'moving to the centre.'

But on everything else they remain very conservative with a small 'c'.

So basically, the only reason to vote for him, is if you think he's more competent to run the country than Gordon.
And he doesn't really carry that clout, does he?
We hate Blair now, but didn't he so much look the leader in 1994?



It's the old patrician Tories that put Thatcher's Children off from voting for the party.
What Cameron has done is make the wrong moves, change the wrong policies.
He has given ground that few wanted to see given, but not moved to sieze the fertile ground unrepresented by the current narrow spectrum of opinion.

Until the Tory party can stand firm as a truly liberal party (the Liberal Democrats are sometimes neither), in the original sense of the word, they will get nowhere.
Maybe they can't. Maybe Thatcher's children will get fed up first.

As it is, a whole generation finds neither side gives it what it wants.

Minimalist state, liberal social policies.

For that is what the country is crying out for.
Policies that are truly liberal.