Friday 14 October 2005

Vote Cameron and breathe easy

As you well know, I am a Cameron supporter in the Tory leadership race, but a anti-Cameron debate is raging on Once More concerning his electability, to which I simply respond:

No, no, no!

Firstly, this is a process to win an election to lead the Conservatives and the methods required are different to those needed to win an election to lead the country.
Cameron alone, however, understands that if he is to stand any chance of converting success here into the higher sphere of a general election, then he must set his tone accordingly from the outset. He needs lots of non-Tories to tell their Tory friends that if he were leader they would vote for him in 2009.

Fox and Davis are pitching to the Tories alone and will not recover from the harsh tones they use to win this first small step.

This is the whole point, we Conservatives must look beyond our own ranks for the answers to electoral success.

Secondly, get over the Eton crap. Deep down in places we don't talk about much, everyone wants to look up to their leader. We want them to be different and we want them to convey the authority of Britain and all that that means to us.

I knew Officers in the Army whose entire leadership ethos was about being their soldiers' friend. They wanted to be perceived as being the same as them, and would wear similar clothes and go out drinking with them. But what they were basically saying was "I'm not confident enough to lead you and to take decisions" and the soldiers knew this and would take advantage of it. On Operations at the sharp end, these leaders were f****d. Fox and Davis, Davis especially, want people to think they are the same as them. Council estate born and bred, harsh life etc. It sounds good, but its rubbish because it fails to represent the aspirations of the electorate.

Thirdly, Cameron has fixed on a significant political reality - there is no great political problem in Britain at the moment. The electorate are moaning and whingeing a bit but actually the majority are still pleasantly insulated from politics and well enough off to buy their way out of trouble if they really need or have to. Harsh, bold fighting talk may impress dyed-in-the-wool Tories but it takes the general electorate out of their comfort zone. We can see where things are going but nobody is ready to bring in the Infantry. We are not ready for nor do we have a need for a Churchill or a Thatcher and that is what Davis is trying to be - a man on a mission without a cause.

What people actually want is another, fresh, clean Blair. And don't lets deny that we Tories would all have loved Blair to have been a Tory all these years. If he had had a proper Blue Chancellor behind him, just think where we would be by now.

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