Just 5 ½ weeks ago The British Conservative Party (Tories) appointed Lynton Crosby to begin work on the party’s 2015 parliamentary re-election campaign. Troubled by weak poll numbers and a base defecting to a principled new UK Independence Party (UKIP), the Australian “master of dark political arts” has been drafted in to save the government’s position of power.
David Cameron’s Tories have suffered from three significant problems. One is the departure from his base on important issues such as the legalization of gay-marriage. Second is the general unrest with excessive immigration which is tied to the EU membership that Cameron is indecisive about. Third, as a result of the first two are defections to UKIP in significant numbers, including major donors.
Crosby favours a wedge strategy, one that he appears to have quickly employed. The dissenting or opposing party to the Tories is not the traditional enemy – Labour & Liberal Democrats (Lib-Dems) but the relatively new UKIP. This is where they are hemorrhaging support.
Subsequently Tory central is aligning itself with some policies that UKIP has run and built on such as the growing criticism of immigration policy along with having a good moan about all the families with bunches of children who get a mass of social benefits.
The aim is to pick off voters who have aligned with UKIP and bring them into the Tory fold, where many of them came from in the first place. By stoking vitriolic debate it also allows the Tories to become sympathetic with sentiment previously considered inappropriate.
Where the party is running into trouble now is that there is kickback from the progressives in the party who liked what they were doing, are OK being in coalition with the left-wing Lib.-Dems., and think that UKIP members are prejudiced because they oppose immigration reforms.
Ryan Shorthouse, the head of the Bright Blue think tank said Cameron is guilty of “pandering to prejudice, uncertainty and anger” and “At the moment, the messaging is quite negative and uninspiring – it's not enough to win voters and gain momentum. We need to be more inspiring and bigger picture than that and we need a positive vision.”
“Liberal conservatism!”
Shorthouse and his group that confronted Cameron after he was believed to say "get rid of all this green crap" last month, give away their progressive ideology with the following "There's a generation of people in their 20s and 30s who came to work for the party under Cameron and campaigned for it just after 2005, because of the more liberal Conservatism.”
“Liberal conservatism!” That has to be the oxymoron of the year. Conservatism is keeping government small and efficient, on a need to do basis. Liberalism is tackling every single problem with government programmes, regardless of the cost.
The Conservative Party has been led by this contradictory thought for a while but in fact it’s just old-fashioned progressivism. It is the thinking that all social ills must be addressed by a new government programme with increased spending to match.
The reality that the Tories not only face defeat in May 2015, but also heavy losses in the euro elections before then, seems to be resonating at 10 Downing Street hence the arrival of Crosby who has also been dubbed ”the Australian Karl Rove.” (Rove of George W Bush campaign fame)
Without a new strategy the defecting Tories are unlikely to return. Coupled to that a growing amount of those defectors, including significant donors, are setting up shop with UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Winning them back is something the Tories must do quickly or not at all.
Progressive leaders like Tim Montgomerie, Times writer and Editor of Conservative Home, are openly critical of the tactical shift but ironically Lynton Crosby's tactics may not only attract back wayward Tories (albeit with concepts the Tories will never actually carry out) but will also be attractive to former Labour Party voters turned UKIP who previously defected to the BNP (neo-Nazis) in hope they would curb immigration.
Shorthouse continued in some extensive comments to ‘The Guardian’, Britain’s intellectual left-wing standard of Edward Snowden fame. "It's time to capture that optimism and openmindedness again. Often those of a moderate disposition are fearful of putting their head above the parapet, but we must provide energy behind that modernising agenda and make sure that No 10 hears there are actually quite a lot of us in the party and around the party who want that agenda to carry on."
What that actually means is that there are quite a lot of Conservative Party members who aren’t conservative at all. A “moderate disposition” means they can’t choose between competing and diametrically opposed philosophies and so opt for one heavily polluted by the other. This is not a political compromise it’s a mess that mixes as well as oil and water.
The outcome remains to be seen. The government has time to steer back towards Thatcherism and push past 40% in the polls again. However it’s unlikely that Cameron is strong enough to force the issue the way Thatcher did.
This will ultimately lead to a political re-alignment as UKIP becomes the nationalist and populist right free of Tory class-ism, progressives from the Tories join with Lib.-Dems. who believe in limited free market, while Labour gobbles up the unions and the rest of the left. The Tories could remain separate from the Lib.-Dems. if the Christian vote doesn’t find enough of a home with UKIP where social libertarians may excessively prevail.
Regardless it seems difficult for the current alignments to hold out much longer. UKIP seems too strong and is here to stay. The Conservative Party is more and more becoming like the "RINO" Republicans in the USA who just don't inspire anybody.
