Cameron’s response
to the local elections was to issue a statement saying that he has got the
message, “loud and clear” from the electorate.
I’m not sure that the message was that clear; but I’m certain
that, whatever it was, he hasn’t got it.
It’s not often that
I agree with Eric Pickles, but his statement that Labour were going to win
hundreds of local council seats across the UK just by turning up looked close
to the mark to me. It really didn’t
matter a great deal what message Labour used on the doorstep, that part of the
result was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
It doesn’t
necessarily mean that people have switched from Tory to Labour in any great
numbers though – it’s more likely to be an effect of differential abstention. However, back to the Tory reaction.
I’m trying to
imagine the scene in Central Office as the team pored over the results and
analysed what had happened. It seems to
me inescapable that they would rapidly have come to one clear conclusion, which
is that people, by and large, don’t like their programme of cuts and austerity.
It’s hard to see how they could avoid that
conclusion.
It’s what happened next
that I’m struggling with. Did some bright
spark at the back really come up with the brilliant notion that “we should forget all the things that people
didn’t really care much about, one way or the other, and concentrate all our efforts
going forward on doing more of the one thing that really deterred people from voting
for us?”.
And did all the rest
of them really say, “what a brilliant idea,
we’ll do it?”. It seems that they’re
not so much out of touch with reality as living in an alternative one.
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2 comments:
John
Spot on
The real problem is that we are locked in a scenario not unlike the States where the only alternative to the Conservatives is Labour and the only alternative to Labour is the Conservatives
Labour in Wales have milked this for all its worth.
You cannot blame the Conservatives for pursuing the same line.
Remember Parties do not win elections in the UK its the other Party who loses it
Our tragedy is that both Labour and the Conservatives are in a land dominated by clouds and cuckoos and with voter apathy at an all time high it is difficult to see a resolution to the problem
Animal farm foresaw all this!
"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
From Labour to Tory, from Tory to Labour. Both seduced by neo-liberal dogma.
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