Of course, I have no idea what the Conservatives’ strategy for 2015 is – but after listening to swing voters in marginal seats up and down the country I have a few thoughts about what it should be if they want to win.
BritainThinks’ work for Progress, Meet the Swing Voters – a stern reminder of how much ground Labour has to make up to win back the credibility they need to win – shows the Tories’ task is about ensuring that ordinary voters feel some benefit from economic recovery. While Labour do not need to persuade people of their niceness, they do need to persuade that they are capable. For the Tories, the opposite is true. Voters believe that they can and will take tough decisions but are much less certain that those decisions will be in their best interests.
It is this prevailing view – that the Tories don’t care and that Labour, while caring, are ineffectual to act – that has opened the door to the United Kingdom Independence party. So, what is each party’s response – and can the Tories win?
Thinking first about Labour, I am concerned that the unity and discipline that was once its strength has now become a weakness with too few of Labour’s talented team prepared to think really challenging thoughts. Instead, we see a gush of cheerleading around popular polices that go no way to addressing the party’s central problem of credibility to deliver. Against the backdrop of voter disillusionment they risk further alienating an already disenchanted electorate.
The Tories, by contrast, seem to have a more positive disruptive energy. We have seen the rise of thinktanks like Bright Blue, whose director Ryan Shorthouse spoke at the Progress conference this weekend. They are prepared to make waves and are being listened to. We’ve seen Michael Ashcroft investing his time and considerable resources in weekly polling that is unafraid to push back hard. We have seen influential backbenchers like Robert Halfon thinking the unthinkable with audacious proposals that include demands that the Conservatives should be renamed the ‘Workers’ party’.
It is what Tim Montgomerie calls ‘Little Guy Conservatism’ and, I believe, if executed well, could actually work. The last time we saw thinking like this led to Margaret Thatcher unveiling her policy to enable council tenants to buy their homes – a policy that is still lauded decades later.
But do the Conservatives really have enough empathy to see the need for the 2015 equivalent of council house sales? Or will a panicky response to Ukip be to blow the dog whistle, while simultaneously launching the inevitably vicious personal attacks on Ed Miliband confirming the Conservatives’ status as the nasty party?
BritainThinks’ work for Progress showed the scale of the problem that the Tories face, especially in those vital marginal seats where they were dismissed as ‘posh’, ‘arrogant’, and ‘out of touch’. Their friends were seen as ‘big business and ‘the rich’.
As one voter put it:
The Conservatives are not out to please people. They don’t have to look like they’re worrying about us, they’re not the party of the people. So they can make the tough decisions and they don’t care if it’s hurting us along the way.
But before Labour start celebrating, the same voter paused, then added:
Maybe that’s what we need right now.
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Deborah Mattinson is founder and director of BritainThinks and author of Talking to a Brick Wall. She tweets @debmattinson
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Credit: Adrian Teal