John Major, William Hague, Michael Howard, David Cameron – all promised to win over new converts, all ended up preaching to the choir. And still no sign of the promised land: an outright majority.
Your party is doing increasingly badly out of first past the post. And I don’t think that some golden binary age of the Blue/Red duopoly will return.
On a range of key issues, Conservative policies are individually popular; yet, taken together, these relentlessly hardline stances give off a whiff of uncaring harshness.
That’s right: a majority of currently declared Conservative voters who would consider voting Lib Dem are broadly pro-EU.
Cameron could immediately make an offer to the Lib Dems to join him once again in what would “this time, be a liberal Conservative government, a One Nation Coalition”.
Stephen Tall is the Co-Editor of LibDem Voice. Follow Stephen on Twitter. The first time I wrote for ConservativeHome, in March 2012, I asked the simple question, “Why don’t people like me vote Conservative?” "I dislike big government, and support a low-tax, free enterprise economy. I believe competition is a key driver of public service reform, […]
Stephen Tall is the Co-Editor of LibDem Voice. Follow Stephen on Twitter. British politics used to be pretty clear-cut. 'Every boy and every gal / That's born into the world alive / Is either a little Labour/ Or else a little Conservative!', to update WS Gilbert's famous ditty for the post-war era. In 1951, in the last great […]
Stephen Tall is the Co-Editor of LibDem Voice. Follow Stephen on Twitter. I'm a card-carrying party member. Are you? If so, then welcome to the club, along with our fellow freakish oddballs. The credit card-sized bit of laminated yellow card which I pointlessly keep in my wallet at all times marks me out as a member […]
Stephen Tall is the Co-Editor of LibDem Voice. Follow Stephen on Twitter. The night the Coalition was formed I was sat in a hot, airless BBC studio in Oxford taking part in a live Radio 4 discussion about what it all meant. I was on my own, with the presenter and other guests at Westminster, […]
Stephen Tall is the Co-Editor of LibDem Voice. Follow Stephen on Twitter. What's the Coalition's most popular policy? No, it's not the £26,000 benefits cap. That's popular, it's true – almost three-quarters of the public support it in principle, despite the lack of evidence that an out-of-work family is ever better off than an in-work […]