The Tories have made great strides in the capital over the last year or so. At the general election, London provided the Tories with their best results across the country. This momentum was seemingly maintained in the London borough elections last May as the Tories overtook Labour as the party that controls the most councils in London.

So does this mean that Labour’s London mayor will be next to be swept aside by this Tory onslaught in 2008? Are Londoners really being won over by David Cameron and the national Tory message? Well not quite. In fact, you need only scratch the surface to see that these successes are arguably far more to do with local campaigning than anything coming out of Conservative central office.

For a start, when you look at the campaigns in the eight seats the Tories gained in London at the last general election, nearly all of them were remorselessly local in nature with barely a passing reference to the right-wing campaign being waged by Michael Howard.

For example, David Burrowes, who produced probably the Tories’ most eye-catching result in London by defeating Stephen Twigg in Enfield Southgate, almost completely ignored the national Tory message in favour of campaigning on important local issues like the widening of the north circular and mobile phone masts.

The rejection of the national Tory message at the last general election by local candidates was hardly surprising. But what is surprising is the failure of the new Tory intake at Westminster to outwardly embrace David Cameron’s regime in their campaigning.

These new Tory MPs ran as ‘local’ rather than ‘Tory’ candidates at the general election, and are continuing to campaign as purely ‘local’ MPs. This localised approach is further entrenched by the fact that many local Conservative associations do not rely on handouts from Tory central office, but receive funding direct from significant Tory donors, such as Lord Ashcroft.

This forsaking of national messages in favour of localised campaigning is clearly producing results. In the London borough elections last May, Greg Hands saw his former Tory group take control of Hammersmith and Fulham, while Andrew Pelling and Stephen Hammond both saw their breakthroughs entrenched in Croydon and Merton respectively.

The successes of these active local campaigns, while very much welcomed by David Cameron, provide an interesting comparison to the failure of the national Tory party when it has ventured into the London political arena.

This summer has seen the debacle of Cameron’s announcement of an ‘X-factor’-style contest to select the next Tory candidate for London mayor. A contest which was supposed to capture the publics’ imagination has so far only produced the ‘X factor’ equivalents of tone deaf never-going-to-be’s.

This announcement was quickly followed by the disaster of the Bromley by-election. In Bromley, the Tories conspired to almost lose one of the safest seats in London, dropping nearly 12,000 votes in the space of a year.

It is clear from the Bromley by-election that the Tories’ are in a difficult position in many London seats. Many traditional Tory voters clearly deserted Cameron’s party in Bromley because they didn’t like the pro-European views of the Tory candidate Bob Neil, and because the Tories didn’t compete with UKIP on immigration and tax cuts.

However, if the Tories heed that message they risk making no progress in London beyond what Michael Howard achieved in 2005. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the new intake of Tory MPs prefer to concentrate on local issues rather than get embroiled in the difficulties facing the national Tory campaign.

This article will be published in the November 2006 edition of Progress magazine