… came from Lord Ashcroft, taking to task fellow Conservatives for their obesssion with Europe:
f there is one thing that unites Conservatives it is the desire to win the next general election outright. Certain things follow from this. The first is that we need more votes at the next election than we received at the last. This means attracting people who voted for a different party last year. This in turn imposes two requirements: to address the things they care about most, and to show that we are changing the things that put them off voting Conservative in the past.
You may think this is so obvious that is hardly needs stating. Indeed, Conservative audiences always nod earnestly when you tell them. Yet some Tories have an apparently limitless capacity to detach this objective from the way they actually behave.
What do we know about voters’ priorities? We know they are anxious about the economy, in terms of growth and jobs, not just cutting the deficit. We know they care more about the NHS than they think we do, that they believe it is subject to cuts and that they do not know how our reforms are supposed to benefit them. We know they are not sure whether our promises on immigration are being delivered. We know they do not think this government is dealing as effectively with crime as they hoped and expected. And we know that for many people, the main barrier to voting Conservative is that they do not think we share the concerns of people like them. But which issue has the last week shown still seems to exercise our party above all others?
You can read his full post over on ConHome.
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5 Comments
the first line about one thing that unites Conservatives it is the desire to win the next general election outright says it all really – Tories are united not by any shared political philosphy, by a desire to improve the state of the nation or by a belief in Conservative means to achieve their goals, but by their quest for power for power’s sake.
added to the Prime Minister’s continued fawning over the City of London in the face of the Occupy Protests and the continued payment of unjustified remuneration to top bosses, the implosion over Europe demonstrates just how out of touch Tories are with the rest of the country…
Seems that Ashcroft hasn’t dampened the fires….
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2011/10/how-the-government-could-break-down-over-europe.html
Call Ashcroft dodgy if you like (and I do like), but he seems to have a bit of nous about him and often speaks with a toehold on reality. Must be all the polling. Thrillingly, the same toehold on reality doesn’t seem to be present among the comments below, reading this was a fantastic way to start the weekend, thanks Mark!
Favourite excerpt:
“The time has now come to abolish the Conservative party. It is pointless and represents the views of practically no one. The Europhiles should join the Lib-Dems (They already seem to think they are, anyway.) and the europhobes should join UKIP.”
What a master class in missing the point.
Though most gratifying for me personally was the number of people seemingly offended or aggrieved by being routinely described as “swivel-eyed”, “headbangers” and “foaming at the mouth”. I resolve to use these terms as frequently as possible henceforth.
It’s rather dishonest. He admits that raving europhobia is a massive vote loser (amazing the rest of them don’t get it after Hague’s efforts) and suggests they should keep quiet about it so they can get voted in. Once they’ve conned the electorate they can, according to Ashcroft, be as swivel eyed and foaming as they like.
@ Prateek – “Tories are united not by any shared political philosphy, by a desire to improve the state of the nation or by a belief in Conservative means to achieve their goals, but by their quest for power for power’s sake.”
Lol, my dear Prateek, lol!
The Tories are a broad church, much as Labour are, divided internally between the One-Nation-Tories, Traditional Tories, and Free Market Tories, a coalition in government in exactly the way I presume PR Lib-Dem’s would like see in Parliament.
They are also a broad and national party of government determined to win a plurality of support across the country, and do so by adopting positions that achieve broad enough consensus to win that plurality, so acting like a pointy-headed pressure group in obsessing with pointy-headed constitutional tinkering from within an ideological rut isn’t really an option for them. Labour are broadly the same.
I’d say it is more than a little tendentious to state that the Tories, or Labour, are disinterested in improving the nation, but they recognise that they can best do so by being elected into power, perhaps Lib-Dem’s don’t recognise this motive because they have adopted a mantle of ideological purity only possible when a party has no interest in getting into power. Something of a self-reinforcing cycle as the decent into purity makes ones interests ever more pointy-headed, and ever less relevant to the electorate at large.
If Clegg achieves one thing in his time as leader of the Lib-Dem’s, it must be to drag the party kicking and screaming into being a party of government too!