A long way to go up the Mountain of Power

My judgment as a kid wasn’t very good. You can tell that by fact I decided to use my spare time to follow two organisations. These been Stoke City and the Conservative Party. Thus it seems I dedicated my life to one of misery and constant letdowns. The failings of the Potters are ones to talk about another day. The failure of the Conservative Party is far more important considering the missed opportunities and neglect of the last ten years.

In my opinion for any main opposition party to return to power they need three things. Firstly the current government needs to be discredited in one of two ways. This is either that it has put its people through active hardship due to bad policy or because they are seen as completely out of touch. In the last 30 years the governing party has only changed twice and it was exactly for the two reasons shown above. In 1979 with the Winter of Discontent, all the strikes and the general feeling that the country was not progressing, Labour was booted out and in 1997 the Conservative government had long gone past its sell by date and was heavily disabled by the numerous incidents of sleaze. The problem now the Conservative Party faces is a national feeling that with the new prime minister neither of those reasons is occurring to any level that would justify the Labour party to be a government in crisis. It was going that way if Blair had stayed on, but with Brown in charge this has obviously acted like adding a new set of batteries. Yet to get back into power the Conservatives can’t obviously sit around waiting for mistakes to happen. Not only does this appear idle but it increases the chances of them making mistakes.

The second part is a vision. Often something radical that the majority can feel comfortable supporting needs to be offered by the opposition. That requires policy. One of my main bones to pick on this is that somehow the party must choose between the policies of the centre ground and ones of the right. In my eyes, it’s never been the socialist policy or the conservative policy but the correct policy. In short its possible to offer a mixture of both. The best way of doing this is to consult the widest base of people possible and that’s why it’s good to see agendas like the “Stand Up, Speak Out” website been setup so anyone can give their opinions on policy. Policy must not be reactionary at all guaranteeing that we aren’t jumping on every passing bandwagon. A party needs a plan and to then stick to that plan. Chopping and changing leader or approach every five minutes won’t work.

The third ingredient is to relate that message successfully to the people. Labour didn’t just lose elections pre 1997 because they had bad policies but their public relations were appalling that you would have thought the Trotter brothers were in charge. Anyone remember Michael Foot’s car breaking down on television as well the more commonly remembered premature celebrations in Sheffield by Neil Kinnock? Cameron obviously has cleaned up on presentation to make sure this doesn’t happen but the party is still putting in own goals. The selection of Tony Lit is an example of this. On the surface this seemed a good choice as a candidate but surely that now infamous photo with Blair must have been cited as a problem at an earlier stage and someone somewhere in the Conservative Party must have realised that any Labour Party researcher with half a brain cell would have exploited it to as full extent as possible. If a party is making these mistakes with a relatively simple task of selecting a candidate how can they be trusted, some may ask, to run a country with all the dangers this one faces?


Beyond this the party has many deep rooted problems that would hamper its own success no matter who was the leader. The first is that it is seeking a huge surge of support from the most downbeat and uninspired electorate of modern times in the current political parties who I think can be split into the following sections. The first are those who simply do not understand the system of voting. I have many friends in this section. Haven’t got a clue what politics is about and don’t understand the meaning of the words like economy and taxes. These aren’t kids but people over 18 who just don’t get it. The second section are people who can understand the system but simply aren’t interested and see all politicians as the same. The next group are those on either the left or right of the centre ground who feel that their party be it Labour on the left or Conservative on the right no longer relate to them. The fourth group are party political and have made their minds up to align themselves with a particular party. That leaves only a final fifth of the electorate floating around with votes to be had by political parties. The point is to suggest that the party has massive problems attracting support from the electorate before they even think of drawing up policy because this country is so fragmented with the way it views politics.

The second is that the Labour/Conservative seesaw is still based around the country on divides that are not as relevant as they use to be. This is an economic one that can be casually referred to as the workers versus the bosses. But since all the main three parties accept free market capitalism and government spending from GDP at around 40% this is a done argument. The more relevant arguments now are open/restricted immigration, europhile/eurospectic, punishment/rehabilitation on crime and britishness/multiculturism. They are so many working class people who would ideologically back the right wing arguments on those four issues but because of old battles over areas like the Minor’s strike drift towards groups like the BNP and simply won’t vote Tory.

Another problem is that the two fastest growing groups in the electorate have special interests in the Labour Party. The first is immigrants who are more likely to back Labour than vote for the Conservatives. 2.5 million workers have come to the UK over the last five years. When your main opponent is importing voters, you have a big problem. Also when Labour can put voters on the payroll by employing them in a growing public sector, they do have a vested interest in voting for the party that believes in the largest amount of public spending in believe that this will mean more job security for themselves.

Overall, perhaps the best way of summing up the huge problem the Tories face is to take a look at the one fact on my facebook profile that best sums up modern Britain. Not my drunken pictures or lousy jokes but the fact that of the over 300 friends listed, a massive 50% have not listed a political belief. Not even when they have bland descriptions like “other” to choose from. People are disillusioned. They need a new hero who can inspire and motivate them. Whether that is David Cameron remains to be seen.