Is Cameron’s success being built on women?
January 31st, 2006-
But why are men still unconvinced?
One of the main reasons why Tony Blair came to power in 1997 and was returned in 2001 and 2005 was his success with the female vote.
From a situation where 
women were traditionally more Conservative than men the political gender balance was completely changed. But might that all be going back?
-
For from the latest detailed polling data there are signs that the Tory recovery is coming from a huge change in female support - men are still relatively unmoved.
Looking at the gender split of Tory support in ICM Guardian polls since the week of the General Election there’s been a big turnaround. These are the numbers:-
ICM Tory shares - Gender split
May 05: MALE 37% FEMALE 28% (General Election poll)
JUN 05: MALE 32% FEMALE 31%
JUL 05: MALE 31% FEMALE 31%
AUG 05: MALE 34% FEMALE 27%
SEP 05: MALE 29% FEMALE 32%
OCT 05: MALE 28% FEMALE 36% (Post Tory conference)
NOV 05: MALE 34% FEMALE 33%
DEC 05: MALE 38% FEMALE 36%
JAN 06: MALE 36% FEMALE 41%
We have to be careful, of course, taking a sub-set of data in a poll and we need further survey results to see if this trend is there.
But it is not just ICM that is showing Cameron’s Conservatives are well ahead with the female vote - data from the YouGov survey last Friday has Female:Male support for the Tories at 41-36 - the same as ICM.
What this means for the future is hard to predict but if Cameron wants to win the next General Election his party needs to be making headway amongst men as well.
This might be being driven by Cameron’s personal appeal to women as well as the policy agenda he has sought to impose on his party. We need to track this closely in the coming months as well examining the gender split on views on Gordon Brown.
Labour, meanwhile, continue to be 0.9/1 betting favourite to win most seats at the nexr General Election.
Mike Smithson
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The old cliche is that had only women had the vote then we would have had continious tory rule from universal sufferage in 1928 till 1997 (save 1945). wether this is true or not it is true that the polls showed tory support falling disproportionatly among women in the last 3 elections. The 3 worst election results for the tories since 1832.
Maybe on the figures mike has quoted that cameroon is having more of a “below the radar” effect than we had hoped and prayed?
Is it not the case that Women tend to worry more about soft issues than men (health, education, welfare). If so, could this be evidence that Cameron is starting to neutralise the bad image that the Conservative Party has had in these areas?
Cameron appears cosy, but remains shallow in the policy dept. His looks will have more more appeal to women in the short term.
More worrying should be the minor tremors which could herold bigger problems ahead for Cameron.
‘One right-wing MP said: “There is a lot of concern. Our public silence should not be misinterpreted. He is still in his honeymoon phase and it’s not the right time to speak out. But if he thinks we are going to lie down and take it, he is very wrong.” ‘ Independent
‘David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has triggered his first internal revolt by trying to impose a lifetime gagging order on all the party’s employees.’ The Times.
It is only a matter of time before frustrated right wingers become more outspoken and look towards supporting other fring parties. Time will tell wether this is offset by the growth at the centre. I aggree with Tebitt that Cameron is make a strategic error by distancing himself from his grass roots support.
I don’t see the numbers you have posted supporting your gender gap theory at all. In May by a margin of 37-28 more women supported Blair but in September by 29-32 they preferred the gorgeous pouting Michael Howard. Unless Mr Howard had a makeover between May and September, I would suggest that the figures above are random and tell us nothing.
Roger 4. I would suggest that you are wrong.
Polls differ each month that is why I have listed the gender splits in all of them.
By June, of course, Michael Howard had announced that he was going and we were well into the Tory leadership race.
Let’s see if this trend continues.
4 - Mike is right - by September CAmeron was beginning to be known and a change was obviously going to happen. There is a huge shift in Oct and from then on it is roughly evens or ahead amongst women. Is this the first definite Cameron effect?!
just shows women don’t understand politics and vote on silly issues like who has the nicer face
Piginthepoke. He does appear shallow in the policy department but that really doesn’t matter. Single handedly he’s made the Tories a serious party again. As a leader I don’t think he can be criticised so far. Remember the Tories were unsalvageable. The brand was shot. It’s still too early to talk about the long term but if I was their ad agency and I was judging the results of my first two months work I’d be opening the champagne.
7 - So why did so many women vote for Maggie then? I know Michael Foot and Kinnock weren’t exactly lookers but even then!
I’m not sure, I think we should still wait before drawing conclusions. The numbers seem to go up and down (level pegging in the summer, then Lab ahead in August, then the tories ahead, the Lab again and now the tories again.
9 - good point - just shows what capricious and irrational creatures these women are
Both men and women vote on feel, and why not. Maybe women own up to it? Maybe they are quicker at sensing who is yesterday’s news?
Should we reconsider giving women the vote? Clearly they need to get back to cross-stitch and the mangle and leave the serious business for men to discuss over port.
A wonderful collection of sexist comments, although I daresay you’ll all claim you’re all post-modern ironists. It’s a good thing women aren’t a religion, or we’d all be clapped in irons
And I do sympathise with [13] - I remember back in the 1980s asking a feminist colleague (she always wore green and purple on International Women’s day, mainly to wind up the other women in the office): “and exactly how do women benefit from the fact that men can vote and own property?”
I think the limited evidence in thiese polls that women are going back to the Conservatives added to them becoming more appealing to younger voters can be described as encouraging for Cameron - too early and too far from the election to get excited. I dont see that he has distanced hi,self from his grass roots or core conservative beliefs, he has just woken up the Party to the real world. Much as Cons might dislike Blair he has won 3 elections, we need to accept that. Just as Blair recognised that whilst the Labour Praty hated Margaret Thatcher she too won 3 elections - there had to be a reason.
I think, to some extent, DC needs a fight with the right of the party in order to prove his centre ground bona fides.
Mike, where is this “success” that you have in your headline? A few “good” poll ratings, sure - but no tangible electoral improvements. Plus, on the down side, intense rumblings from the right of his party and an embaressing showdown with his MEPs in the offing.
Cameron’s “success” is as much a of a media creation/illusion as Lib Dem “meltdown”.
And the right-wing will blithely walk into Cameron’s right-hander, proving his centrism. Where is Howard Flight ?
Women not only eliminated the traditional gender gap in 1997, but showed a greater tendency, in the last election, to switch from Blair to the LDs, because women were also more turned off by the Iraq war. The swing to Cameron, as a result, could not just reflect his Blair-like appeal, but a fall in LD support.
This information comes as no surprise to me although it’s a credit to Mike that he has picked up what could be a defining indicator.
When we are out convassing you really notice just how important what I call the ‘home-makers’ vote really is. I have always preferred to go out on my own during the day when you meet a much higher proportion of housewives without their husbands (in so many cases when hubby is home, he answers the door and gives you HIS opinion as if he automatically speaks for them all…oh how wrong he is!!)
I have always felt that these people are the forgotten voices because they quietly get on with raising their kids and looking after their homes without often taking a visible interest in politics; but they do care - and they do vote.
They care about the NHS, education, crime and street criminals, the environment and are generally right wing on law and order and fairly anti-Europe, and quite left wing on tax and economics (don’t mind paying a bit more tax if it means better public services, don’t like seeing factories closing etc, etc.)
And they loved Tony Blair; with the exception of the Iraq war which cost him some votes this time it is Blair and Blair alone who has kept millions of these voters ticking the box with the Red Rose in it.
MORI polls suggest that the gender gap had largely gone by the time of the 1987 general election. Since then, mens’ and womens’ voting intentions haven’t differed by very much.
Cameron’s “success” is as much a of a media creation/illusion as Lib Dem “meltdown”.
I’m not sure what the difference between an ‘illusion’ and a ‘reality’ is in this context. If you mean it will all count for nothing at the next election then you may be right. But as a snapshot at this point in the electoral cycle “success” seems to fit. The Tories have gone from laughing stock to recognised in just two months. As for the Lib Dems….. they were the “cool” party which they need to be to keep students etc on board and at the moment they are the least ‘cool’ party. And unless they can think of something to reverse this then they have real problems
I see we have hit the grim centuary of british troops dead in iraq. And exactly when the news broke Blair was radio sound more deranged as ever about the deployment to afghanistan. “Liberal imperialism” without the moral compass. The only real question left is wether the labour party will act sooner rather than later in the interests of self preservation.
Kirsty Wark interviewed Pat Hewitt over the NHS reforms last night. Depressing or what? Soft questions missing the point—’But this is further even than Mrs Thatcher wanted to go’. ‘I’m not too interested in an able polician from another era. What patients are telling us is…’
This govt hasn’t a clue what to do with the NHS. They keep changing minds about the structure. They have two consistent approaches only. Throw money at it, and look for headlines/soundbites.
A golden opportunity for DC? Really, a new tory govt could hardly get worse value for money. His aims/philosophy towards the NHS? He seems to be saying that he’ll continue this muddled thinking, but do it better…
The NHS has never been a vote winner for the tories, but even so, shouldn’t DC be doing better than that?
17 Steve, It’s being so cheerful wot keeps you going (on and on and on…)about this rather amusing self deception, isn’t it?
24 David. Labour will probably always be more trusted on the NHS than the Tories. Cameroon’s objective will be to limit the damage to the Tories, so the strategy will be to ape Nu Labour in funding and reform whilst saying Nu Labour is wasting money and you get better value from the Tories. Politically astute but hardly ground breaking.
25 John O Silver Stick. Not an unfair analysis from Tabman. Presently it’s only poll ratings …… more substance from Cameroon desired ……. if I may use that phrase.
[26] So the NHS will continue to be very ordinary.
Lovely.
Jack @ 26. :P: But I kind of beat you to it last night on the earlier thread after you retired to the boudoir.
“…You clearly believe that DC wouldn’t let 30 pieces of silver stick in the way of a shameless ascent to power…”
OK. I’ll stick to the day job
But poll ratings are currently really the only credible mechanisms of assessing public opinion (Council by-elections are not that reliable in determining a national picture)and ALL agree that the Tories are now polling around 5-7% higher than in May 2005.
I readily accept this year’s local elections will be a very important test of whether real progress is being made.
17 Tend to agree. Is the (topical) question: why has Cameron not had a honeymoon with male voters?
27 david. I think there’s little doubt that in many areas the NHS has improved under Nu Lab. However the capacity of the NHS to swallow cash is pretty much unlimited. This together with the voters expectation that the NHS can/will cure all ills immediately leaves politicains in a quandry. Throw into the equation rampant levels of obesity in the young and I have to say that thinking outside the box is required. However it will be a politician of outstanding courage/stupidity that takes on the NHS sacred cows ……. step forward Cameroon ….. not likely.
It’s all the New Year’s resolution dieting women that agreed with him about the chocolate oranges. And once they get down to a size 12, for his next trick DC will be round to take them shopping for new clothes, and advising on new hairstyles.
28 John O. Yes I read your little diity this morning.
Agreed on opinion polls. So is the Cameroon bounce reality or a burst bubble in the making. Mays locals the first real test. My own impression is that decent progress has been made but Labour seems damn stubborn in the polls and the Lib Dems will probably recover too. It’s all mighty tight with much to play for.
If possible perhaps one of our non partisan local government gurus might provde an idiots guide to what might be considered decent/bad results for each party.
25 - John: self-delusion?
Take these Indy quotes:
No doubt you’ll tell me that’s not the impression you get form party members, the right will shut up once the votes roll in, etc etc … so does that make you self-delusional?
Similarly, on my part I see no “meltdown” - just a bunch of party members and activists who recognise Kennedy had to go, and want to debate the direction of the party (which, inter alia, all three candidates want to take broadly in the same direction - no left/right splits here).
What the media giveth, the media taketh away …
On the nail Jack. For anyone who thinks the NHS hasn’t improved I suggest they look at France. Before the money started pouring into the NHS France was always held up as a model. I think there will be few who use the French service who wont think our NHS now compares reasonably well.
32 - Jack, a fair amount depends on what the background position is, ie were the parties doign well four years ago or badly? I suspect the Tories did badly four years ago, will make respectable gains as a result but spin it like mad as a massive success
Slightly peripheral — I remember reading about a previous instance of strong female vote for a right wing party — the ‘32 elections in germany leading to Hitlers rise. The split was enormous in Bavaria, which had happened to keep detailed rules showing male/female split.
The historian I read attributed it then to nearly all the voting age women being uneducated — not exactly easy to draw a parallel. Peripheral but a curiousity…
I note that Queen Glenda has joined Lynne Jones in finding UK theme on BBC Radio 4 is extremely irritating:
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29909&SESSION=875
Another point is that who is more likely to turn out and vote?
Women and the Elderly. All good news for the Conservatives.
Oh.. and there are more women than men too so even better news for the Conservatives.
33 Tabman. You’ve morphed into “Black Stick in Waiting” with that post.
34 roger. My Mother, the Dowager Lady Jack W, despite BUPA coverage, has had excellent service from the NHS over the past eighteen months, as indeed have several other family members. Where Nu Labour has gone wrong is the central planning and admin wallers skewing clinical priorities. Power should be devolved to hospitals ……. getting rid of Community Health Councils was a bad error.
38 - only if they vote for you.
40 - “black stick in waiting” - you’ve lost me there …
35 Tabman. Political parties spin results …… surely not !!
That why I made a (sensible) suggestion (for me) that we have a spin proof results heads up prior to May !!
It’s difficult for a non Tory to judge their revival. Hearing Cameron ditch all the policies people like me found ugly is very heartening…..but then I hear Rik saying he wants to bring back the death penalty and it reminds you of why you could never vote for them whoever the leader. It’s the Rik’s and the Gypsy bashers and the fox hunters and the Martin supporters who are the real ‘heart’ of the Tory Party but it’s nice that they have a leader who can make you forget this once in a while
41 Tabman. Left wing
of your post @ 33 !!
42 - well, Jack, given (according to the assembled wisdom of the Fourth Estate and John O) the Lib Dems are in “meltdown”, clearly if we get any votes or seats at all we will be massively successful!
44 -
45. Tabman, you could always count on the massive swing from rentboys. I heard that the central office would like to open the ALDRB
45 Tabman.
46 Tabman. The rather large black line !!
41- Tabman. Well it don’t look like they are voting for you does it!!!
43 But Cameron is still pro-hunting (just like me).
Tabman, you are hardly going to be the voice of credibility when the overall gist of your view on contemporary politics is that the Tories are in crisis while the Liberals are not.
48 - Jack, I’ll have to enlighten you to the mysteries of “blockquote”.
49 - DC, but I’m not standing for election old boy.
43 Roger - Are you saying that every Labour MP is against the death penalty ?
Re. 3, John O’Sullivan (the reputed ghostwriter of Thatcher’s memoirs) has already said that, while Cameron seems to think that core supporters have nowhere else to go, they could in fact stay at home, vote UKIP or for the flag-friendly Gordon Brown.
50 Peter. But with his new found cuddly women voters in hand will Cameroon pledge to repeal the Hunting Act …. not likely.
51 Anatole. There goes a window in your glass house Anatole.
52.”DC, but I’m not standing for election old boy. ”
because you hadn’t meet the requirement to have a “interesting” sexual life to be a LD candidate?
51 - Anatole old bean - nice try.
The point you have failed to see is that if we’re in crisis, you’re in crisis too. And yours is a more fundamental crisis because it cuts to the very heart of what it means to be a Conservative.
Your leader is either (i) trying to pull you in a leftwards direction away from your core vote, membership and activists (and a substantial porportion of your MPs) in a direction which is fundamentally opposed to Conservatism as we know it, or (ii) just pretending to do (i) in order to get elected (we’re not sure which, it depends upon who you talk to, and often when you talk to them).
So - either you alienate great sections of your party by abandoning its core principles, or you risk being exposed as duplicitous and face the electoral consequences.
“Crisis - what crisis?”
53. Tory Boy. I don’t know for certain but I would think so. I should also think every Lib Dem.
55. Er, not really. I don’t think any neutrals would agree with your “overview”, whereas most of them would agree with the exact opposite.
56 - Andrea, I was pointing out to DC that if I’m not standing in an election, then self-evidently they won’t be voting for me
57. Even better try on your part. If our “recovery” is a figment of the media’s imagination, it is at least the mainstream media’s view. Your perception of crisis in the Tories exists in practically no-one’s mind except your own.
Try a rather more apt version:
“And yours is a more fundamental crisis because it cuts to the very heart of what it means to be a Liberal Democrat.
Your leader will either (i) trying to pull you in a leftwards direction away from your core vote, membership and activists (and a substantial porportion of your MPs) in a direction which is fundamentally opposed to Liberalism as we know it, or (ii) just pretending to do (i) in order to get elected (we’re not sure which, it depends upon who you talk to, and often when you talk to them).
So - either you alienate great sections of your party by abandoning its core principles, or you risk being exposed as duplicitous and face the electoral consequences.”
61 - you should go into commedy
“Wait, I’m hearing voices in my head … Simon Heffer … Norman Tebbit …. what’s going on???”
[Hint: read the link at my post at 33.]
60. Tabman, but all your followers will write your name on the ballott papers anyway. I’m planning to do it next April too. I will just write in capitol letters: TABMAN!
Ah yes, all those mainstream Conservative commentators like Norman Tebbit and the Independent editorial! How silly of me …
62. I think you’re wrong there. The point is that the Conservatives are currently heading in the direction of greater internal division; the Lib Dems have much more internal unity.
62 - Anatole:
(i) the media keep trying to spin us as a left-wing party. if you’re going to rewrite my quote, at least do it properly and substitute “right-wing” in the correct place.
(ii) its obviously escaped your notice (keep up!) but the election tales place on 2nd March. We don’t yet know who our new leader is.
(iii) all three candidates (yes, even highes) are remarkably united on the direction the party needs to go in. Their main differences are on emphasis.
And hint: have a go at predicting the results of a simple poll:
Poll of Conservative Party members and activists:
“Do you think your party is facing a crisis of leadership and political direction?”
Poll of Liberal Democrat members and activists:
“Do you think your party is facing a crisis of leadership and political direction?”
66 - Valerie, the redoubtable Anatole is never one to let facts get in the way of his beliefs … he ought to go into journalism
Interesting post on the woman vote. Is there past evidence that women change their vote more readily than men ie. are more women swing voters than men?
I think Cameron is making real progress with the under-40 vote as well. Anecdotal evidence only but amongst my non-political friends he is getting very favourable reviews.
68 - I expect they’d come out about the same.
65. don’t forget the ToryGraph showing all its liberal attitude in column like this one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/01/31/do3102.xml
Women and men’s voting patterns in most European countries are not really comparable with Britain because of the stronger religious dimension to centre-right voting. In France I think every right wing victory after women got the vote in 1945 was attributable to women’s votes (until the 1990s?). It was largely to do with religion (women went to church to a much greater extent) and men were more exposed to socialist and communist influences in the workplace (and the public sector had a highly secular ethos). Same true to some extent in Italy and Germany, although in Germany there was a tendency for the women’s vote to swing to the incumbent government.
In Britain this pattern was less distinct. Also there are generational factors - a woman aged 70 in 1955 would have come to political awareness before the Labour Party had a distinct existence. I think gender gaps now tend to favour the left among young women and (decreasingly) the right among older women.
From previous thread - SW London local elections. In Sutton I would expect a swing to Conservative, on the basis of what I know about the local issues (which isn’t much) but maybe not enough for control (and sometimes, as I’m sure Marcus Wood can testify from Torbay’s history, running the council isn’t a plus for a parliamentary candidate). Croydon should probably go Conservative, but it’s not in the bag - the swing in a recent by-election was pretty standard-issue. Richmond I think (like Torbay) seems a difficult place to govern well and also like Torbay I think will probably alternate - maybe with a disproportionate swing in seats.
42 - Good Morning Jack , I think we did have a discussion on the prospects for May local government elections back at the beginning of January while you were still in your Scottish castle .
Going on topic if we accept the poll indications that there has been a swing to DC amongst women , then we must presumably also accept the indications that there has been no improvement at all for the Conservatives since the GE amongst men .
[61] As I suggested a few weeks ago, there are many individuals in the media who are hacked off with Blair (the stated reason is his dishonesty and poodling to Bush) and can identify with Cameron’s background, professionally and geographically. This may be infatuation, it may be true love, none of us (or them) can yet say
- and the one remark of Harold Wilson’s that we all agree with is that a week is a long time in politics.
71. Oh come on, that really is the height of delusion and precisely what I am talking about. You cannot seriously believe that; more importantly I don’t believe you do, nor do I think most poeple on this site do.
Don’t you think the danger for non Conservatives is that if they do have one of their historical bust-ups it might actually do them some good. Liberals (small l) don’t believe Cameron at the moment. If he picks a fight with his right wing might it not give them the evidence that he is for real?
BTW I agree I left out the change of “left wing” to “right wing” on that 62 - bit of a rush!
64 Andrea. A write in vote for Tabman !!!!!!!
Tabman is Viscount Thurso and I claim 5,000 acres.
62 Anatole. Or Cameroon might tell the voters what he really believes …… Bloody hell … a politician telling the truth … do you think it’ll catch on ??? …… You boys at the back of the class ….. Kennedy, Oaten and Hughes see me in detention ….. Oaten you go to the toilet first !!
68. We may have a leadership election on, but there’s no way we’ve got this kinds of ferret-in-sack fighting going on:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2006/01/cameron_modern_.html#comments
79. Jack, I haven’t received the 5 Brazillian boyfriends you claimed for me yesterday!
Steve @33, 45, FWIW, I don’t believe - and (hope) I haven’t posted comments to the effect that the LibDems are in “meltdown” notwithstanding the banter of the “13% debacle”! My guess is that your party’s level of support will eventually reach 17-20% when all the dust finally settles. But I predict the deficit with the Tories will continue to be nearer 20% than the 10% or so in May 2005.
After almost 30 years active membership, I think I may have a rather more accurate feel of the Tory pulse (open goal for Jack W here ;)…but beating soundly :P: ) than your admirable self. Sure, they’ll be rumblings from the irreconciliables: for example, the old polecat has been snarling bitterly for yonks. But a confident leadership and an enthused activist base can easily cope with the background noise.
And as Anatole comments @51, your musings would carry rather more credibility if they could contrive to be - how shall we say - a little more balanced.
76 - “crisis of leadership” - well, it’s certainly true we don;t have a leader at present.
“crisis of political direction” - we don’t have a new leader or an appreciation of where he will take us. So hard to say.
You do have a new leader. He is (talking about?) dropping most Conservative principles and positioning himself as “Heir to Blair”. Given how passionately anti-Blair most Conservatives are it looks as though you’re storing up trouble …
83. That’s a very weak explanation for why, at the end of the day, Tories are not “feeling” that they are in a crisis whereas the Liberals are.
77 - my own view is that only a fool picks a fight needlessly.
WRT local elections, because the seats now being contested have come up in different years, it will be very hard to get an idea of how the parties have done just by looking at summaries of gains/losses.
One can look at vote share. To be considered a good result, I’d say the Tories have to be at 38%+ across the country as a whole, and at least 6% clear of Labour.
London is useful, as all of the seats were last contested in 2002. A good result for the Tories would be a gain of 100+ seats, 12+ boroughs won outright, and a 5%+ lead over Labour. A bad result would be no net improvement on the results in 2002.
Besides which a leadership election does not have to result in a crisis of leadership. The Tory leadership contest actually helped the party in and of itself in exposing proper debate and making all candidates concede that they pursued centre ground, “modernisation” policies - even David Davis was a self-proclaimed (though not terribly credible) “moderniser”. What the Liberal contest is exposing is that there is no real consensus about which way the party is going - hence why activists and members are feeling like a choice is being made where there are no winners.
77 - Roger, if Cameron loses his right flank he won’t win a majority. His party will be more acceptable (assuming it puts together a truly liberal platform) and there’s scope for a coalition. Which is porbably more likely to be with Labour on present form.
79 - Jack, you’ve given the game away …
82 - John - exactly, I was making the point that thigns are rarely as bad (or good) as they are painted. The MSM likes black and white stories (”meltdown” … “comeback” … ) and finds it hard to write in shades of grey.
Yes - we have problems to deal with, but things aren’t as bad as the MSM paints them. Yes - things are going better for you, but not as well as the MSM paints them.
Score draw?
33:
I really do think the forces of anti-Toryism should start working out a better plan to deal with Cameron instead of just waiting/hoping for Norm Tebbit and the Tombstone group to stage a coup. I’m beginning to think these rumours of right-wing disquiet are all spin anyway: make Labour and the Lib Dems sit back on their hands waiting for a bloody Tory split which never comes, while DC glides along getting great media coverage and no opposition from the other parties.
Roger - Your comment on the UK and French health systems appears ill-informed. The French system certainly has its weaknesses but no-one who has experienced it for any length of time would say the NHS is a better system (and serious studies of health outcomes put France consistently ahead of the UK).
If the NHS is so wonderful, why does no other major economy in the world use the same approach? Answer - because it isn’t. The problem for the Tories is that a semi-religous belief in the NHS still exists among many in the population, so any suggestion of radical reform will lose votes. Gordon Brown’s enormous injection of funds actually proves that the system is fatally flawed - the actual rise in output brought about by this money is very small - but the public are still clinging to the idea that more money will eventually work. There will be no consensus for big changes for at least another decade, in my view.
74 Hi Mark. Sorry missed the locals discussion …… I was repairing the dungeons at Castle Jack in preparation for the Tory S&M Easter Conference …… sorry Tory Boy, fully booked now !! ….. the self flagelation rack especially popular with Finchley types !! …. and the Widders Fluffy Bunny Tickling Stick is a massive hit.
86 - Anatole: “What the Liberal contest is exposing is that there is no real consensus about which way the party is going - hence why activists and members are feeling like a choice is being made where there are no winners.”
Anatole, all three leadership contenders agree on the following fundamental principles:
- change of emphasis from direct to environmental taxation? check
- increased prominence for civil liberties? check
- belief in progressive taxation? check
- engagement with and reform of EU? check
- greater devolution of power to local government? check
- an end to centralised planning in education and health? check
Just how does that constitute “no real consensus on the direction of the party”?
86. “What the Liberal contest is exposing is that there is no real consensus about which way the party is going ”
Can you enlarge on that?
87- Steve, MSM? Should know, but… Well, as it’s you
And in the same spirit, I agree with all Sean Fear’s points @85.
97/93. pardon me, but what is MSM?
I know MSM could stand for “men who have sex with men” and considering we’re talking about the LD, it could be on topic, but I’m not that sure…….
i have a feeling downing street finds the whole cameron-blair clone thing extremely amusing. by 2010 being ‘the new blair’ will not be ground the tories will want to be on - even blair himself recognises that.
91. Yes but tell me simply, as if I were a six-year old :-):
Are you going left or right?
85 - I think Sean may be setting the bar a little low for London. No net change on 02 would be regarded as a spectacular result for Labour. If the Conservatives fail to gain Hammersmith, Bexley and Havering, and net 60 seats, it’s a bad result IMO. Par for the course would be gains of control in Croydon, Merton, Hillingdon and Harrow and NOC in Brent and Hounslow. A good result would be control of Sutton, Kingston and NOC in Hackney and 220+ gains. They can also lose Barnet and Richmond and be having a good election elsewhere.
94 - mainstream media.
When Norman Tebbit starts publicly criticising Cameron for going too far to the left, then that can only be good news for the image of Cameron.
Can you imagine if Tebbit was leader. That is not a good image at all. The party would be in meltdown.
It is time to dump that image of a Little Britainer obsessed by foreigners. Cameron represents the one-nation Conservatives at the centre right that have been election winners, not the narrow little box of grumpy men that can look to many like Victor Meldew and Alf Garnet combined.
Blair moved to the right and the left had nowhere else to go but to follow. The same applies to the Tory party. The nasty image has to go. A softer approach dealing more with social problems is sure to attract more female voters.
96. And you tell me: Do we have to do either?
96. There’s the centre-ground too…it’s not that DC has pre-bought it!
98. Thanks BV.
98 - Thks. I was wondering ‘Mail, Sun, Mirror’
100. The common perception is, “yes”. You certainly couldn’t keep going with a Kennedy style, “traddling the boats”strategy, could you? In fact,that was a key reason for having got rid of him in the first place, to bring a more coherent direction to the party!
91. If all Lib Dems want an end to the centralised NHS I must have missed something - didn’t you fight the 2005 election on basically an Old Labour platform on this issue? Sudden change of mind?
96 - Anatole, you tell me. Would dropping a 50% top rate of tax that was going to be used to fund tuition fee reductions, care home fee reductions and LIT reductions for middle class voters be
classed as left-wing or right-wing?
I’m more concerned with whether (a) its the correct thing to do (yes) and (b) whether its Liberal (yes).
104. Yes we can, and we will. It’s not straddling the boats, it’s called having principles and sticking to them.
Fair enough, Lewis. Not winning Hammersmith and Bexley would certainly be a bad result (unless there were unusually good results elsewhere to compensate). Havering may (oddly) be harder to win because of the big Residents’ vote.
A really poor result for the Lib Dems in May (if it occurs) would, IMO, be bad news for the Tories, as it would help Labour hold places like Brent and Camden, and likely gain Lambeth as well.
108 - perceptive post, Sean.
105. Not a change - I think the phrase we used in the election was ‘freeing doctors and nurses from the dictates of Whitehall’ or something like that.
106. Yes but, as with the Tory situation, it is not about what you drop from a previous failed manifesto, it is about what you are replacing it with.
If you are telling me that the three remaining candidates agree, in general, about the role and nature of state provision in public services, for instance, or of the extent and sources of taxation, I admit that perhaps the Liberals are not in the state they are being portrayed in the press. However my understanding is that this is not the case - that a fundamental directional dilemma faces the voters in this contest which the Tories did not face in theirs.
108 - I agree - if the Lib Dems really flop in London then the spoils will be divided and Labour may get some eyecatching victories that could divert attention from bad results elsewhere. As well as Lambeth, more ambitious targets like Southwark and Waltham Forest might come into view for Labour. Take your point about Havering, too.
mid term election results can be misleading. i remember william hague’s tories storming to victory in the parliamentary constituency of wakefield if you counted up the 1999 european election results.
111 - have you been to any hustings? Have you heard any of the candidates speak? Have you been reading their interviews?
Most of London, Tabman, is a Conservative vs Labour battleground. There is a smaller Lib Dem vs Labour battleground, and a very small Conservative vs Lib Dem battleground.
It’s in the Conservatives’ interest that Labour’s losses be maximised. That means the Lib Dems polling reasonably well in the first set of battlegrounds, but also pulling Labour down in the second set as well.
The battle in the third set (apologies to Rik W) is really not very important.
I have and the impression I get is that certain candidates still have differing views over which newly gained voters, Labour or Tory, are the most important to hang onto. Additionally, Hughes has not, to my knowledge, conceded the principle of higher taxation (or “fairer taxation” or whatever it is called) to Vincent Cable and the OBs. As I said, I stand corrected if this is not the case.
I’ve been to several NHS A and E departmenst recently and the difference from the early 1990’s is startling. I do entirely take the point that much of the investment has gone on things that are not obviously productive such as new buildings and staff salaries but in the long term you can’t ignore these. I agree cameroons move to the centre on this issue effectively cancels any real debate on this issue with all three parties being different shades of “old labour/shove more money in”. I suspect turning NI into a hypothecated health tax will rear its head again. A ageing population really needs to be spending more of GDP on health anyway.I’m intrigued by the idea of “localising” control. direct elections to management bodies? police authority style local control? I just suspect that britian doesn’t have the localist traditions to make accountability work at this level
See the latest Lib Dem voting web sites polls here are saying
1. Campbell 42, Huhne 41, Hughes 17, movement to Campbell over 48
hours.
2 The STV setup poll
Huhne 44.9, Campbell 32.8, Hughes 22.3; run off Huhne 58.5 Campbell 41.5, as votes are made position changed only marginally.
116:
“[Hughes] told this newspaper that the proposed 50p top tax rate had been ‘the right policy for the last election’. But he was not ‘theologically’ wedded to that figure. He added that the party’s future lay with the principle of ‘not higher taxes, but fairer taxes’ - as championed by the party’s shadow treasury spokesman, Vince Cable.
‘Vince is right,’ Hughes said. ‘If you looked at all the polling for the last 10 years, you would see that we would often score well on environmental policy, well on international policy, well on civil liberties, well on human rights, well on education policy.
‘But where did we not score well? Would you trust them with the economy? Do you believe in their policy on mortgages, on pensions, or law and order? We’ve got to deal with people’s personal and financial security.’”
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/libdems/story/0,,1686932,00.html
I think when the dust settles on the leadership you’ll find a few policy positions have been forged that the party will be very very happy with
1. complete opposition to the new nuclear build
2. a smaller cheap replacement for trident
3. fairer not higher taxes. I think 50% is doomed to be replaced by revenue neutral eco taxes with much bigger personal allowances.
this is distinctive and something just tells me might be attractiove to some of those women voters we were talking about. still to come is LIT (might survive in an amended form) and positioning. huhne made the interesting point that our major targets are now fairly evenly divided between labour and conservative
Lewis Baston. Surely the bar in London should be the implied GE performance. It must be possible to work out which boroughs would have fallen on that basis. Since the Tories did relatively well it may be that any bounce is less than in the Midlands or the North. Certainly the Tories will take for granted something of a Labour debacle in London based on May’s figures. Can Cameron show that his appeal spreads further North? That’s the key.
blue moon - see above - the tories “won” wakefield in the 1999 euro elections, 2 years before their worst electoral performance in a general election. it’s totally meaningless 4 years away from a general election.
120. What would the smaller, cheaper replacement be? For it to mean anything it has to have global reach. In a UK context only submarine launched ballistic missiles can do this.
All you boys have missed a major reason Cameron is doing well with women; his feminism. His first ever speech as leader talked about ending the scandal of 9%-91% w/m MPs and then he came out with the A list proposals. And women are thrilled.
The right, cf Toryhome, especially would be male PPCs, are bleating that this means no white men are welcome any more etc etc. The Tories have selected some PPCs already and I make the break down 13 men, 5 women.
Cameron is married to a working woman and most young women I know appreciate his action to reverse the sexism of Tory selection committees.
124. The funniest thing about the try to increase Tory female women would be if DC will find himself with 50 Theresa Gormans!
But probably the Priority List serves to avoid it
“And women are thrilled.”
And, if the polling figures are correct, men are presumably not.
121 - No that would set the bar far too low. We were 7% behind in London in May - good by comparison with 2001, but that would be a truly disastrous result in the local elections.
89. Fred. My information on the respective health services is completely anecdotal and relies on my mothers hip operation on the NHS and my favourite restaurateur’s attempts at the same operation in Nice. As happens when a family member uses surgery I did some research of other people who had been through similar treatment. Most stories were of speed efficiency excellent home visits etc and after it was over I found this to be the case. In contrast my friend the restarateur had nothing but problems and delays. And after many conversations on the subject he almost decided to come here to have the work done. Only one example I know but after several months I think I got a pretty good flavour of the NHS and certainly in my mothers area it was excellent.
“But probably the Priority List serves to avoid it ”
I think we can be fairly confident that people with identifiably right wing views are *most* unlikely to find themselves on the priority list.
118. Where are you getting those figures from? I like them a lot and feel “down South” that members are thinking like this but all “evidence” points to Ming dominance.
127. Roger - I think we’re only just beginning to experience the NHS’ financial crisis, though. Yes, people may have had good treatment this year or last year, but the future is grim.
130. Financial and organisational crisis, that should have said.
18 - I got a christmas card from Howard Flight. He is keen to rejoin Parliament in a safe Tory seat. Can anyone tell me if there are any Tory MPs in danger of popping their clogs in such a seat?
132 - it would be entertaining if Michael Howard stood down for him. Maybe DC will nominate MH for a peerage.
well his wife is now a councillor in Pimlico
122. but in Wakefield Labour had a worse than average result in 2001. So a midterm election could have pointed out something: not the result, but the trend. Anyway, I agree with you that Euro-elections could say us little.
132. I think someone here mentioned that Widdy is thinking about her future.
127. As I said Roger ’serious studies show’….not individual anecdotes. We can trade good/bad/horrendous NHS stories all day. I could give you examples of all three from my own experience. But it would be meaningless. The evidence from properly conducted international studies points clearly towards the NHS being a sub-standard system. The problem is, we in Britain are too parochial and fearful of the future to take any notice. In the same way that Germany has become paralysed over economic reform (everyone knows it is needed but no-one wants to set the ball rolling because of the political costs), the UK is paralysed over health care reform.
43 - roger - as a non-Tory, it seems like DC is dropping the ones I liked - e.g. grammar schools. Also at the time of the election I didn’t like what MH said on immigration, but a couple of months afterwards, I started to think he had a point.
Well, I’m a pretty right wing kind of guy (which won’t be a surprise, I’m sure) - very libertarian, staunchly eurosceptic, pro American, not a huge fan of PC, pro tax cuts, want freedom to foxhunt for those that do it, generally favour deregulation. My only lefty positions are that I’m just about anti-death penalty, very pro NHS and fairly pro state education. I’m probably closer to Tebbit than Cameron if you plotted me on a graph.
So you might expect me to be up in arms about Cameron, if these newspaper reports are right. But I’m not. Sorry, you wishful thinking Lefties, but I accept (as I’m sure most right wing people do) that Britain won’t vote for all my views (and perhaps a good thing too), but they will vote for a nice smiley centrist nuTory guy (who will then go and implement at least some of my views…).
Ergo, Cameron is the best thing to happen to the Tories in fifteen years. He can win, I think he will come close to winning in the next G/E. He’s just got that buzz. Go, Dave!
So there’s no splitting or complaining from this right-leaning voter. Cameron is out best chance of power in the next ten years. I’m sure most Tories feel exactly the same, and will not want to rock the boat.
Phooey to these Tory split stories, desperately concoted by leftwing papers. They’re largely rubbish.
fred - what would be your solution out of interest?
35 - the trend between 1997 and 2005 seems to have been a 3% swing in Wakefield over an 8 year period, from a very low base to start with.
119. Well yes, I had seen *that*, but I would hardly call it what I described above. He is not “theologically wed” to it, but almost by implication thinks it the right thing to do. I think the general impression is certainly that Hughes looks left, Huhne looks right and Campbell looks down. The Liberal activists I know, including my other half, certainly see it like that and are very much agonising over the decision that has to be made.
We are evidently not going to agree on this but I do think it is incredible to claim that, taking a step back and looking at the general situation of the party at the moment, this is not a crossroads. Furthermore, I think any party that is debating with itself over whether to be “left” or “right”, is in an inherently more difficult - and potentially catastrophic - position than one where the debate is “how much to the left” or “how much to the right”.
140. sorry, maybe I misunderstood. I was thinking about the parliamentary constituency. So there the swing was higher than 3% in 8 years. Lab majority is down from 28.9% in 1997 to 11.9% in 2005
Tory Boy at 53: Yes, so far as I know every current Labour MP is anti-death penalty, though obviously there are a good many who I’ve not talked to about it. But most Tory MPs are too. There used to be an annual private members’ bill on it to keep the restoration cause alive, but they’ve given up.
FWIW, a straw poll of my email list (400-odd respondents) produced a majority against of over 4-1. Even those in favour say resignedly they realise it’ll never come back, like public flogging.
Religious Hatred Bill returns to the Commons today - interesting to see how the votes pan out. The debate has uncanny echoes of the arguments when incitement to racial hatred was banned.
138. But if the Tories did get into power would you continue to settle for your the “nice smiley centrist nuTory guy”, or would you with time get more and more disillusioned with a party heading in a direction away from your own views?
Stephen Byers, remember him?? has been cleared by the Parliamentary Standards Committee of “lying” but told to apologize for telling an “untruth”.
Don’t you just love these politicians:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4665498.stm
39. I think the best approach would be to build a mixed, social-insurance based system similar to that which exists in some of our European neighbour countries. Germany, Holland and Denmark are three of the better examples.
In my proposed system, members of the public would be obliged to buy an insurance package from competing providers, with the government subsidising the low paid or unpaid on a sliding scale. The terms of the policies offered by insurance providers would be tightly regulated to prevent cherry picking - it would be a kind of universal service obligation. The insurance providers would contract with hospitals and GPs, or groups of these, to provide services. Hospitals would be independent charitable trusts, GPs would be essentially private but conducting the vast part of their work through the insurance providers.
I am afraid the prospects of such a system being created are remote at this point, but this looks to me like the best hope to achieve a)much better efficiency via competition and incentives to keep costs down and b) ending political inteference while c) maintaing a high degree of equity in access to healthcare - crucial given our traditions in this area.