Cameron under fire from all sides
David Cameron’s attempts to modernise the Conservative party are alienating its core supporters, Lord Tebbit has warned.
The former party chairman said the Witney MP was failing to capitalise on Labour’s woes and by moving closer to the centre-ground, was offering little to woo back former Tory voters.
His comments appear to be contradicted by a new ICM poll for The Guardian which shows the Tories have the support of 39 per cent of the population, up two points since last month and four ahead of Labour.
It is the highest rating for the party in an ICM poll since January 1993, after which they plunged into a decade-long slump in public support.
But in an article for The Spectator, Lord Tebbit warns that opinion polls are meaningless given poor showing by the Conservatives in the Blaenau Gwent and Bromley by-elections last month – in the latter, the Tories lost half their support.
“In the past, we would have expected the Tories to be riding high on Labour’s failure, but the present Conservative strategy is eroding its ultra-loyalist bedrock vote, while doing nothing to entice back its thoughtful erstwhile supporters,” he wrote.
By contrast, however, the party’s advertising guru, Lord Bell, told a BBC documentary on opposition leaders this week that despite Mr Cameron’s efforts to change the Tories, they had “not moved one inch”.
“David Cameron has convinced the public that he is different to their normal expectation of a Tory leader. Brilliantly done, well done,” he said.
“He has convinced the public that he thinks the Conservative party should be different. He has not changed the Conservative party.”
Labour was quick to seize on these comments, with transport secretary Douglas Alexander telling a meeting of young party supporters yesterday that Mr Cameron’s claim to have transformed his party was nothing more than putting “lipstick on a pig”.
“While David Cameron looks to the centre ground, he moves to the right. While he sounds right-on, he acts right-wing. The packaging might have changed but the substance hasn’t,” he warned.
Electoral success depended on the alignment of policy, values and presentation, Mr Alexander argued, and while this was what Labour did “over a painful ten years of change”, the Tories had so far failed.
“They’ve taken off their ties but they’ve not ditched the dogma. And that is why ultimately David Cameron’s approach is doomed to fail,” he concluded.
