Mark Pack posed the intriguing question this morning on LDV, So, what is the Conservative Party strategy now?
I would only question Mark’s use of the word ‘now’: for a long time it’s been hard to discern the Tories’ strategy beyond their assumption that it was their turn to become the next Labservative government.
We’ve seen yet another example of that today, with the mixed messages sent out by the Tories. On the one hand, they say they will ‘focus on the positive’. Yet which advert do they release in order to back up that claim? This one, with a picture of a pumped-up David Cameron promising to “cut benefits for those who refuse work”.
It’s not a positive poster. It’s not a poster designed to reach out to new voters. It’s a poster designed purely and simply to shore up the Tories’ core vote.
Four years of Cameronism and the desperate attempt to detoxify the Tory brand ditched after four days’ bad polls. And they say Dave is at his best when his back is to the wall? Not on this evidence.
Here’s a different version of the Tories new poster, as mocked-up by LDV’s own Alex Foster:
EDIT: Tim Ireland has a nice blank template of this poster, if you feel moved to express yourself creatively.
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15 Comments
Presumably Peter Lilley is advising them on how they failed to do this last time
I agree, targets new voters. I like your version. Get it seen for all the new Conservative supporting muppets out there. They may just wake up a tad.
I don’t think its a negative message designed to shore up a core vote. Looks to me as if its pitched at middle-England whose no. 2 concern is immigration. I believe that such a message will actually appeal more to many people that the LD position of letting 600,000 immigrants get away with having scrounged off our country for years.
Having experienced the results of Labour’s own efforts to placate the “cut benefits for unemployed people” demographic, I can’t say this policy fills me with enthusiasm. What we have is an arbitrary bureaucracy where, at random intervals, you will have your benefits reduced for one or two weeks in each year, when you did exactly the same thing that you did in every other week, because somebody presented you with a pile of new forms to fill out and then somebody else who you never met decided that your form-filling was inadequate. It accomplishes nothing.
Same old prejudice stuff, and they are much the same sort of level achieved by Michael Howard/Hague/Major…
Wedneday 31, polls include The Sun YouGov: Lib Dem 34, with Tory 31… Lab 26….
The Times, Populus poll for Wednesday: Tory 32, Lib Dem 31…Lab 28.
To win an outright majority the Tories need to be 40 per cent, and get a 7 per cent swing, bigger than Thatcher achieved in 1979. However, they might be doing well in the marginals thanks to the Ashcroft investment.
Some good facts and figures here to hit labour over the head with too. thelabourlegacy.blogspot.com blog is by an English Democrat insider. I think that party IS a wasted vote but these reports being published are good stuff.
Has anyone asked what the tories are going to do about the 600’000 illeagals in this country? I haven’t heard a solution come from them. If they say they will cut jobs in government how will they find them? I suppose they will disappear for another five years and pop again 2015. Come on we should be asking them what are they going to do about the 600’000.
Smacks of Kenny Everett to me….
Andrew, who are these 600,000 illegal immigrants who have been scrounging off the country? They don’t happen to work in the restaurants you patronise for less than the minimum wage, do they? Or clean the toilets you use? It might not have occurred to you that illegal immigrants are here to do the jobs that natives like you and I won’t touch. If you want to meet some real parasites, go to a Countryside Alliance rally.
Sorry, it was Mark, not Andrew, who made that remark!
Poster is a desperate attempt to win support because, as has been said, benefits are already stopped if someone refuses work. I did like the re-worked version that you did.
It also amused me that I got Labour Party ads when I looked here – thought you would have them blocked in adsense
and just to follow that – when the page reloaded after posting the comment – an ad for the conservatives
‘You’re nicked’ – Funny youtube vid by comedian David Schneider on Cameron plagiarism:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidCleggeron#p/a/u/0/C4pI0WreRnQ
@Ian. We are liberals. We believe in free speech. (Also, most of us would touch the other parties with a barge pole, so any clicks they pay for just cost them money with no return ;-))
At the start of the campaign I heard Polly Toynbee say that many new Coservative cadidates had strong banking connections and were obvoisly getting into parliament to make sure politicians did not interfere with the banking sysytem. If this is so the electorate needs to know about it. Can the Lib Dem research team check this out? Maybe some of them have given voice to the arrogant circular arguments bankers have used to prove their ‘invaluble’ satus and consequent invulnerability. All this would prove valuable ammunition in the final days of the campaign. You could use the Trojan Horse analagy with posters showing the horse with Cameron’s benign looking face and the inside cut away to reveal a bunch of hiding bankers with thier bunusses in one hand and swords, pikes etc in the other waiting to spring out onto the electorate.