Thursday, August 30, 2007

Indicating to the Right? Return to a Core Vote Strategy? Er, No...

At ten to seven this morning I woke to the sound of my mobile ringing. It was the Today programme. Oh God, I thought, who's died. Luckily no one had. They wanted to know if I could appear on their programme in the the following hour to talk about David Cameron's Newsnight interview and what he said about immigration. Er, Ok, I said, what did they want to do. Well, said the researcher, all the newspapers are headlining his words on immigration. Does this mean that he's reverting to a core vote strategy. Don't be silly, I said. Well, she continued, his people must have briefed it out. I doubt it, I said. He was asked a question and he answered it, and as far as I could recall he hadn't said anything particularly remarkable about immigration, merely repeated previously announced policies. But don't you think he's appealing to the right by saying this? Maybe, I said, but you don't have to be on the right to be concerned about uncontrolled immigration. But it does seem a bit of a coincidence that all the papers have led on his immigration comments, she said. Perhaps, I said, but it wouldn't be the first time the lobby had operated as a pack, would it, I rejoindered, reminding her of David Davis's conference speech.

By this time I could tell that what I was saying didn't really fit the line she was hoping I would take. But she seemed fairly adamant that she wanted me to go on. So rather than go back to sleep I waited for her call back. And waited. And waited. Anyway, I thought I would put the intervening time to good effect so I phoned one of David Cameron's press spokesman and asked if the immigration answer was the one they were highlighting and briefing out. As I suspected, it was not. A journalist had asked if Cameron had said anything new in the interview and the line on transitional arrangements for EU nationals was one that was mentioned. And so the story grew. In a 45 minute interview it would be surprising if absolutely nothing new were said, and it was this that the journalists latched onto.

Cameron's spokesman denied absolutely that this was either a 'lurch to the right' or even sending a signal to the right. Anyway, back to the Today Programme. I continued to wait... and wait... and, well, I went back to a deep doze until I woke at 8.30 to hear the dulcet tones of ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie explaining to the nation that that was indeed a signal to the right and the Tory grassroots would be very pleased indeed. He denied it was "lurch" to the right though. It turned out that he had actually done a live interview with John Humphrys at 7.15am which they repeated parts of before they interviewed Damian Green at 8.30am. Much of what Tim said I agreed with, particularly that you can talk about 'touchy feely' issues alongside core vote issues, but his analysis that the last week has shown Cameron rubbing himself up to the right I believe to be entirely misplaced. In The Times this morning Tim is quoted as saying...
The current focus on crime has connected Cameron with the Conservative
Party’s core vote for arguably the first time in his leadership.

With respect to Tim, this is rubbish, or at the very least a total exaggeration and over-simplification. All David Cameron has done is to confirm that the Conservatives are tough on crime, want a European referendum and want secure borders. This is not, as Tim says, "indicating right", it is sound Conservative policy which those on the left and right of the Conservative Party can unite behind.

To say, as Tim did on the Today Programme and on his blog today, that this is appealing to the core vote, is to do Gordon Brown's dirty work for him. The main line of attack by Labour at the moment is that Cameron is lurching to the right and will revert to a core vote strategy. It's a pathetic smear, but if Conservatives like Tim start saying things which appear to endorse it, then it does not bode well. Tim's his own man and will no doubt robustly defend his stance, but in this instance I think he called it wrong.

UPDATE: Dizzy reckons Cameron played a blinder on the immigration question.

UPDATE: Arch lefty journalist Seamus Milne proves my point HERE. Tony Sharp has fisked him HERE on The Waendel Journal.

66 comments:

Anonymous said...

Iain - do you always check the line with David Cameron's people before you do an interview? If so, it is not surprising they didn't use you. Isn't that what the shadow cabinet are for ?

You are becoming less a independent commentator and more a Cameron mouthpiece. Has a safe seat been found? MP retiring at last minute?

strapworld said...

Iain,

For goodness sake STOP worrying about what Brown might say and do!

Tim is Right. What Cameron said does resonate with the core conservative voters AND, may I say, those voters whom in the past voted Tory and for many years have deserted them!

I am pleased you did not get on Today because you may have done some damage.

The Tory party was a right thinking party, lost itself and has now rediscovered its place! Thanks largely to IDS and John Redwood.

Welcome home.

Iain Dale said...

Anonymous, I was asking as a point of information, not asking for a line to take. How you can say I am a Cameron mouthpiece beggars belief. Did you read my piece the day before yesterday on Gummer's report? Thought not.

Newmania said...

AS I BLOODY SUSPECTED !!!! Well that wraps it up for the BBC doesn`t it. I was hoping you ( Iain) were going to pick up the Private Eye bit on the lying houndess Boaden today and now this.

Tim was trying to be balanced but as I previously said you have to go a lot further than that without slewing the overall picure . Now I hear he has ben picked as a rent-aquote-righty so the BBC can condemn us out of our own mouths that shows excatly what the BBC are up to

How can you call, us biased ?They will say disingenuosuly , we have a right wing spokeman for the grass roots of the Party on to talk about Cameron ? Isn`t that what you want


By contrast how little was said about the tone of remarks made during the Labour Deputy leadership contest which would have a similiar bearing on Brown`s positioning ...why not drag out some Commie grass roots representative of Labour picked for the purpose to say exactly the wrong thing about for example Brown`s imminent cave in to the Unions at the conference and today over the 2% limit . Not likely .


THis is why the BBC are so hard to nail .It is the editorial descisions and framing that often carries the message and they simply stick their collective thumb up their collective arse and say

What ?

NO anon Dale is not a Cameron mouthpiece in my view he should be but he insists on nit-picking like a celebity ordering things not on the menu.. Also his support for lovely Boris is equivocal when it should be loud and clear. 70% of London Conservatives say GO BORIS

Anonymous said...

The fact that "Cameron's spokesman" didn't know where the story had come from in all today's national press tells its own story.

Old BE said...

Not quite sure how "tough on crime" and "immigration is too high" are "right wing". Those are issues that are core issues for the vast majority of people! Not just Conservatives. If anything the reconnection is not with the Tory rump but with the British electorate at large.

Only the extreme left think that we can sensibly let in millions more people into the country when there is already a crisis in housing, transport and health services. Cameron is right to frame the debate in those terms - as Dizzy says.

The crime stats say that we are about as likely to be shot or stabbed at ten years ago, but we all know what crime stats are like - we certainly don't feel safer than ten years ago! And anyway, are Labour saying that it is an achievement of their "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" stance to have kept the figures on violent crime about the same?

Chris Paul said...

Mmmm. Of course Coulson has not finally got his act together. Of course the media are not being manipulated. Of course not, of course not, of course not.

Cameron is not supporting Gummer's ideas now is he? Is supporting Redwood's and IDS's. So slamming Gummer is hardly evidence of not being a loyal servant of the party platform.

Anonymous said...

No point in complaining about these people.John Humphries is fair minded but isolated.The BBC is now beyond parody.It is time for the licence fee to be abolished and the organisation privatised.I did not think I would advocate ever this course.

BJ said...

Look at me! I'm Iain Dale! I'm important enough to be asked on the Today programme! Woe betide them if they don't follow their request through! Wah wah wah!

dizzy said...

I have to say I can't disagree with your point Iain. The Labour party are desperate to paint anything that Caemron says as somehow him playing to the Right in the party. The fact is the approach on immigration is a throughly centrist position. It may very well be that the Right of the party like what he said, but that does not, by defintion, make it a statement of the right. I don't think it is particularly wise to give the Labour Party what they want and endorse their position when the statements made by Cameron were, in my view, nothing of the sort.

Liam Murray said...

Iain,

You're right and Tim is wrong. What's more (and forgive me for continually banging on about this theme) we need to be extraordinarily careful when the discussion starts to revolve around Conservative 'core vote' or 'grassroots' or any other such euphamism.

Labour won 3 landslides by continually defining itself AGAINST what the public saw as it's 'core vote' - the lunatic left opposed to all private sector money, pro-nationalising everything etc. At no point in the Blair project was there ever any serious attempt to either court that vote or even suggest they were trying to. This may have been grossly unfair and actually a crude caricature of what the 'core vote' was but electorally it made total sense.

We tend to forget that blogs have more purchase & profile now so while we might think we're indulging in a low-key nerdy political chat that has no national significance the continual chatter about the Tory 'core vote' is drastically undermining everything Cameron is trying to do. As with Labour it's probably grossly unfair to the people actually being referred to but 'Tory core vote' in today's media landscape is code for racism, bigotry & intolerance and nobody who wants to see the party do well should have any truck with it whatsoever. Your experience with R4 this morning illustrates this perfectly.

Just to repeat I KNOW THIS IS UNFAIR and I'm certainly not labelling core Tory voters with those tags - simply pointing out the electoral reality we operate in. The party has changed - it's 'core vote' should do likewise or move on.

Iain Dale said...

BJ, don't be pathetic. I was in no way complaining I didn't get on the programme. It might have been nice of them to tell me they had decided to use someone else though so I could have gone back to sleep! With your unfailing politeness, I am sure you would have done so. I have just reread what I wrote. Can you point me to anywhere I have even intimated that I was complaining about not getting on? no. Thought not.

Anonymous said...

Iain, you now accept that the lobby can act as a pack without briefing. I recall your post a few months ago when you accused the Sunday lobby of being bullied en masse by a Government spin doctor to not report a Tory spokesperson. Does your post today mean that you accept that that happened without the bullying you alleged had happened?

Newmania said...

Cassilis- That just what I think but you have put it so much better

Iain Dale said...

That is muddled thinking in the extreme.

Labour Trial By Media said...

The purpose of this, and lets face it to pretend it was not purposely brought up would be naive, was to have a headline that said Cameron is for lower immigration. And it worked well. Most newspapers lead with the immigration theme today, despite the fact he said very little new about it. It was well timed and showed he is back to his vague yet headline grabbing best.

Sorry, but there are no coincidences when it comes to spin in politics.

kinglear said...

Cassillis - I think you have made the exact point necessary for Tore Cor, Grassroots or whatever to stop mucking about. Labour won against their grassroots. So who voted for them? Why, the centrist Tories, LibDems and anyone else who could. Their platform was appealing. They organised their constiuencies properly. And they had a wonderful front man.
So lets see if we can replicate their success.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
BJ said...

Fair enough Iain -- I would have given you a call back if I'd been working on Today. But a) the people who bash phones on Today have been there all night and, as I know from experience, are very tired and under a lot of pressure at the same time; and b) I did infer your post as a bit of a self-important whinge that Tim M was allowed on air and you weren't. Sorry if you feel that's not the case.

Iain Dale said...

BJ, well I must have written it wrongly for you to have inferred that, I suppose.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid this isn't the first time Tim has made up a story in the absence of any knowledge of the facts.

Newmania said...

I inferred from your post that because you were not going to hand Brown the sort of hostage right wing sound bite the BBC wanted they passed on you and lured the hapless dupe Timbo.

Was I wrong ? I think you are right but it is unavoidably a little condescending to Timbo the bimbo...I bet he is not pleased with you and as he and god are big mates you will probably get hit by a thunderbolt....

Windsor Tripehound said...

Strange thing; recently I've noticed that everytime I open up comments in Iain Dale's Diary the tune "In the hall of the Mountain King" immediately start running through my head. There's too many bloody Trolls in here by half!

The pseudo-intellectual waffle being posted by the noolabor hacks in here, and by David Boothroyd in particular, reveals all that's worst about this government. It's not out-and-out lying, it's dissembling - the skillful use of words to give a totally false impression.

We've all experienced it; you know the sort of thing. "We will consult the people!" Maybe you will, but you don't have the slightest intention of taking any notice of the outcome of the consultation. A minister states in the house that the government will be bound by the outcome of a planning enquiry into a development in Oxfordshire. The inspector gives a ruling, which is promptly overruled by Prescott. The minister's response? "The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is part of the planning process!"

I could go on, but I'll spare you.

I just feel that there is a new mood in Britain. People, finally, are sickened with dissembling and spin and mis-information and are now prepared for a change.

Anonymous said...

Agree with you entirely Iain. As a previous poster said, it's all about Tim M pushing himself and his blog as the voice of the grassroots. He's not and it's not.

James Higham said...

This is why I detest party politics. A 'lurch to the right' should be translated into a move back to sound, sane values and defended, not denied.

And by the way, David Davis should be PM.

Anonymous said...

Bloody BBC! Decide what the line is and then ring round until they find someone to run it for them.

I wonder how many other people they spoke to before they found someone to fit their template?

Unknown said...

There is nothing wrong with being a right-winger, acting like one or having right-wing policies. We can keep using euphemisms like rebalancing and responsibility or just tell it like it is. Cameron may not want to be intepreted as "sending a signal to the right" but if he comes up with proposals that are popular with 80% of the country then he is likely to be making them happy.

The party's well-rounded proposals on crime for example hit the nail on the head.

Mountjoy said...

We know what "The Unholy Trinity" (Brown/BBC/Grauniad) are up to; they are trying to paint Mr Cameron as a 'waving wight winger' (honestly, that is how a public-school lefty that I know described it -- he meant raving right winger but couldn't pronounce the Rs).

Most of the Noosetight interview was about crime and the broken society, but some elements of the media unduly focused on immigration/green taxes/something else. Green taxes sounds very 'wight wing' too, don't you think?

I happen to agree with what Tim Montgomerie said, because Mr Cameron:

(a) has got core-vote support behind him on crime/broken society, yes for the first time (the green taxes thing I think will be scrapped); and

(b) has already 'decontaminated' the brand so that people (e.g. Floating Voters, LibDem voters etc)just do not see as credible any attempt to paint him as a Waving Wight Winger. But they appreciate him being tough on murderers of 11-year-old kids and trying to mend the broken society.

Yak40 said...

Core (cor ?) voters or not, the future of England's green and pleasant land depends on NuLab being sent to the wilderness for a very long time, preferably for ever. The stakes are very high.

Anonymous said...

Good post Iain, right on the money.

The BBC and the Labour party both know that the Tories will lose the next general election if they can be driven off the centre ground and back into their core vote.

GEs are decided by that 35% of people who are basically politically ambivalent but do vote in GEs. These people vote out of duty, not affiliation. Since this group is as big as either main parties core vote Cameron can afford to hack off vast tracts of core support so long as he can keep them quiet.

Every word that comes out of Cameron's mouth indicates that he understands this. If he does win the next GE he will have earned the right to visit the BBC like a fox in a hen house, and they know it.

Man in a Shed said...

Why do BBC researchers spend their time searching for evidence to back the current Labour party spin line on the Conservatives. I think we all know the answer to that.

Now they think Brown is ahead in the polls- they are looking for Brownie points in helping his campaign.

They are the greatest direct threat to democracy in Britain today.

Hannibal said...

You should see the piece by Seumas Milne in today's Guardian about the Conservative Party reasserting itself. It's an interesting piece from a hard line left winger trying to paint the party as an unreformed relic.

As this blog entry suggests (http://ybfblog.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/the-return-of-tory-britain/) the likelihood is that the left are going to start running these stories now to try to stop Cameron from setting any agenda over the next few weeks and hopefully convincing Brown an October poll will be a bad idea.

I suspect Milne et al desperately want an October election to help them get rid of Cameron if the Conservative Party loses.

Unsworth said...

Typical BBC 'Researcher'. In another life I've always made a point of asking at the end of the discussion for their name and how it is spelled. That tends to ensure that they call back with either an apology or to get you on line. If they don't a letter to the producer usually produces some satisfaction.

Mannerless idiots. It's not even as if they are personally paying for their calls. And as has been indicated above, are they interested in your view or merely in showbiz? News as 'entertainment' is the order of the day.

Bob Piper said...

So... dizzy sucks up to Cameron and Cassilis is more articulate than Newmania. Whatever next... Titanic springs leak shock!

Anonymous said...

Cassilis you are right. The enemies of the Conservative Party have a habit of using Tim's utterances as a stick to beat Cameron.ConHome has a high profile and lazy journalists are always looking for a "row" to splash as "news" (not the policy discussions).I doubt that ConHome has been beneficial to the Conservative Party.

David Lindsay said...

What is this “core”, and where is this “centre ground”? A party which could give a positive answer to the following and various other questions would identify itself as being in line with mainstream opinion across all classes and in all parts of this country:

1. Will you restore the supremacy of British over EU law, use this to restore Britain's historic fishing rights, legislate that that no EU law should apply in the United Kingdom without having gone through exactly the same parliamentary process as if it were a Bill which had originated in our own Parliament, adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, disapply in the United Kingdom any ruling of the European Court of Justice by resolution of the House of Commons (giving this country the same level of independence as is rightly enjoyed by Germany through her Constitutional Court), and ensure that no ruling under either the Human Rights Act or the European Convention on Human Rights applies here unless and until ratified by such a resolution?

2. Will you repeal the Civil Contingencies Act, repeal the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, and restore the situation whereby a Bill which runs out of parliamentary time is lost at the end of that session?

3. Will you not only oppose but repeal any provision for identity cards, repeal the provision for control orders, repeal existing erosions of trial by jury and of the right to silence, repeal existing reversals of the burden of proof, repeal the provision for majority verdicts (which, by definition, provide for conviction even where there is reasonable doubt), repeal the provision for Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, and repeal the Official Secrets Acts?

4. Will you restore grammar schools, but on the German Gymnasium model, thus avoiding the 11-plus while working to overcome this country's crippling cultural division between arts and sciences, and between academic and technical education, and while recognising that the defence and restoration of schooling at the highest academic level for those to whom it is appropriate (including the restoration of O-levels in place of GCSEs) as intimately related to an emphatic dedication to the defence and restoration of Special Needs Education?

5. Will you ensure that the imperial and metric systems (both of which have long histories of use in this country) are taught and used side by side except where metrication has not already taken place, as in the case of road signs?

6. Will you defend rural services, in particular systematically reversing bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s, as well as of the erosion of local schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on, the first as part of the development of a national network of public transport free at the point of use?

7. Will you defend real agriculture as the mainstay of strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare (leading to safe, healthy and inexpensive food), as against American-style ‘factory farming’?

8. Will you defend the remaining field sports, and repeal the ban on hunting with dogs?

9. Will you require the supermarkets to fund investment in agriculture and small business (investment to be determined in close consultation with the National Farmers' Union and the Federation of Small Businesses) by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax, in either case with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this are not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment?

10. Will you raise the minimum age for jurors at least to 21, restore a minimum property and/or educational qualification for jurors, restore the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, abolish stipendiary magistrates, repeal the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, restore of the pre-1985 prosecution powers of the Police (i.e., abolish the Crown Prosecution Service), and return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with police forces at least be no larger than at present, and subject to local democratic accountability, most obviously though Police Authorities, although with the mind by no means closed to the idea of elected sheriffs?

11. Will you defend marriage as between one man and one woman (anything else being contrary to the interests of women), refuse to sanction State lying in the form of issuing transsexuals with new birth certificates, introduce a legal presumption of equal parenting, restore the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit is still being paid to mothers, and pay poorer mothers of small children to stay at home with them rather than to hand them over into the care of strangers?

12. Will you develop nuclear power and the application of clean coal technology as at least the core around which other things (wind, wave, solar, et cetera) may operate, since that core offers both the re-creation of strong working-class communities based on high-wage and high-skilled employment (as previously provided by pits, steelworks, shipyards, and so on), and independence from the affairs of the Middle East, as well as from Russian gas?

and

13. Will you cultivate Russia’s sense of herself as an integral part of the Biblical and Classical civilisation that is the West, and as that civilisation's bridge both to the world as defined by Islam, and to the world of the Far East, linking them to the West and to each other precisely by reference to the Biblical-Classical synthesis, and so overcoming anything in them that might ever give rise to any “clash of civilisations” such as is absurdly held to be happening at present, while acting as the West's gatekeeper against subjugation to Islam or to anything Far Eastern, and while sharing that historic role with all the Slavs?

Well, the Tories certainly couldn’t say Yes to any of that. So, have they changed? No, not really. Their party used to be a dazzlingly effective means to putting posh boys into positions of power and influence, entirely regardless of their views, if any. It is now a laughably ineffective means to that same end. But that’s all. The real change has been in Labour.

Labour used to believe in social democracy. It did so precisely because it had profoundly conservative social and moral values, not least a strong British (and therefore also Commonwealth) patriotism focused on the institution binding together each and both of the Union and the Commonwealth.

All of this was, and remains, mainstream opinion in Scotland, Wales, the North, the Midlands, and the decidedly less chi-chi parts of the South. In some such constituencies, turnout last time was as low as one in three.

So there is a huge gap to be filled by the restored party of those Labour MPs who defended the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement. By a party tough on crime because most victims are poor.

By the party of the Attlee Government, which dismissed the European Coal and Steel Community as "the blueprint for a federal state", which "the Durham miners would never wear". Of Hugh Gaitskell calling the Common Market "the end of a thousand years of history" and a threat to the unity of the Commonwealth.

By the party of ardently Unionist Labour MPs from Scotland, Wales, and their adjacent areas. Of Roy Hattersely sending British troops into Northern Ireland in order to defend the grateful Catholics there precisely as British subjects defined by their liberties under the Crown (whereas citizens are defined by their obligations to the State and to the government of the day). Of Roy Mason running Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom, with terrorism treated as a plain and simple security problem. Of Harold Wilson guaranteeing the Anguillan people’s right to be British, explicitly outside the American hegemony that had wanted to re-create there the brothels and drug dens of old Havana.

By the party of those Labour MPs (mostly Methodists) who resisted relaxation of the laws on drinking and gambling. Of those (mostly Catholics) who fought against abortion and easier divorce. Of those who voted in favour only after warning against exactly what has come to pass: abortion more common than having a tooth pulled, and one in three marriages ending in divorce.

That was the party in favour of the Welfare State, workers’ rights, progressive taxation, and full employment. It dissuaded Truman from dropping an atom bomb on Korea, and it refused to send British forces to Vietnam. It opposed the Soviet Union and wider Stalinism on the same grounds, and with the same ferocity, as it opposed Fascism in the Iberian world and elsewhere, as well as apartheid South Africa and its Rhodesian satellite.

And it won elections on enormous turnouts, and in the face of serious opposition.

Britain is crying out for just such a party today. So let’s get on and build it.

Tapestry said...

MULTIPLE CHOICES FOR GCSE.

Who is wrong?

BBC - Tories.
Tim Montgomerie - The EU.
Idi Amin - The BBC
Iain Dale - Gordon Brown.

Who is right?

BBC - might is right.
Tim Montgomerie - right is right.
Idi Amin - I is right.
Iain Dale - Idi Amin.

Anonymous said...

Iain, may I suggest that next time the Toady researchers call you, that you tell them what you think they would like you to say. Then once you are on the programme you can 'drift off' the message they are expecting you to spout...

Anonymous said...

Bob Piper, do you ever spend any time doing anything useful for your constituents?

You always seem to be lurking on this website - do you harbour secret desires to jump ship from NuLabor?

dizzy said...

Bob Piper: dizzy sucks up to Cameron

I would have had the same analysis whatever about it. The execution of the position is clearly a good one.

Tapestry said...

If the BBC would kindly provide a definition of the term 'right-wing', it would be possible to answer them. The term means different things to different people. To the BBC the term 'right-wing' means child raping, scroogelike murderous hunchback. To Tim Montgomerie, it means intelligent, caring and dutiful.

On Political Betting, it shows that Cameron is retaining 91% of 2005 Conservative voters while Gordon Brown is only retaining 85% of Labour's 2005 voters. It looks like Gordon Brown needs a core vote strategy more than David Cameron.

Cameron's strategy of necessity is to appeal broadly across the electorate.

Anonymous said...

Iain won't thank me for this, but did anyone else read Jan Moir on Cameron in yesterday's Telegraph? Some of it was laugh out loud.

In answer to some question, trying to sound like Mr Average (who he's never actually met), he said, "Well, I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it."

Wha'???

David Lindsay said...

On which of his three houses does he have this mortgage?

Geezer said...

The BBC, very predictably trying to show the Conservatives the way the Labour Party want them to be seen. But they have been doing that for decades. The issue of immigration is a great concern to most of the electorate, much of Labour's working-class core support, treat it very seriously as it is the unskilled workers who are finding their jobs made insecure, and the chances of a pay-rise dissapear, as a result of cheap imported labour.
What the Cameron said, would make perfect sense to most voters (just not the, head-up-their-own-arses, Guardianistas) but the BBC often obscure the message of the Conservatives, and instead, wrap every story in cheap jibes and negative spin. To many casual viewers and floating voters, the negativity of the stories, registers a lot more than what was actually being said, especially over a longer period of time when negative story is followed by another negative story and another and so on. The BBC can stop people voting Tory even if they can't convinve people to vote Labour. Apathy will suit Labour a lot more than it suits the Conservatives

Anonymous said...

Question for Bob Piper,

Which Labour MP when voting for the disgusting payrise in the form of a "comunication allowance" shouted with glee "hooray more money for MP's"? AND did you vote for or against that disgusting and money grabbing scam?
I could just check Hansard but I want you to come clean first!

Anonymous said...

David Lindsay - I rather think that was partly Jan Moir's point. Also that she has never heard this phrase before, and neither have I. It sounds like something someone like David Cameron would imagine ordinary people would say.

How can you bet a mortgage? I think this tells us that Mr Cameron isn't entirely clear on what a mortgage is.

dizzy said...

Bob is not an MP

Tapestry said...

suggested retitling of Cameron's campaign for the referendum.

STOP BROWN BETRAYING BRITAIN

* Immigration out of control
* Taxes through the roof
* Education Standards through floor
* Hospitals closing
* Gangs on streets
* Soldiers ill-equipped at war
* £170 billion wasted on quangos

Enough is enough.
Brown promised you a say in Britain's future
Back Cameron's Campaign For The Referendum on The EU Constitution

davidg said...

Ian,
I take your point and accept that many journalists will fall back on a lazy 'lurch to the right' headline.
However, I listened to the Today item after 8.30am and found it balanced and OK.
Labour tried to attack the Redwood report and found that a surprisingly large section of the press were not prepared to swallow their crude 'Tories are irresponsible" line.
Whatever people think about Cameron there seems to be a growing acceptance amongst the public that:
- The increase in public spending has resulted in a lot of waste and that it is reasonable to debate how matters may be improved
- We have probably reached a high water mark in the intervention of the state in people's lives and that it is reasonable to debate alternatives to state action.

If the above is correct then Labour will not be able to close down debate by crude 'lurch to the right" attacks on Cameron.

Newmania said...

David Lindsay- The Conservative Party is by its nature conservative and starts from where we are not where we would like to be.Some of your list is a bit loony tunes but the sensible things are all; directions in which the Conservative Party would move , spending political capital where it can.
The Labour Party actively detests all these objectives especially the important ones mentioning education( where they oppose all selection by virtue of being in thrall to the NUT). Above all on Europe.
Your edenic version of the Labour Party is wishful thinking , it only just about dropped Unilateral dis-armament and constantly saw equivalence between the US and the USSR . You are living in a fairy tale on that. You have also managed to forget that the Labour Party was and remains socialist and while Wilson ( a divisive lying sleazy intriguer) liked to claim it was Methodist at heart it was always deeply infected with Continental Marxism. Look how many vintage Labourites were in fact Communists rather than Methodists.
As for Unionism that is just nonsense. The recent interest of Labour Party in the Union is for reasons of such blindingly obvious self interest as to not need explanation. The Labour Party broke the Union up to the horror or 200 Conservative MP`s and the bulk of the Conservative Party. There wasnot a murmur form the left not a bloody whisper to their immortal shame …and now they blame everyone else for the end game we are in. Typical, whatever happens the spirit of the Union is dead and buried
I feel sorry for you , I daresay you spent years trampling all over the interest of your natural allies and now you have none that will ever listen to you. The only nationalist socialist Party is the BNP.
In the Labour Party Nationalism is a Dirty word and Brown has now proved his scepticism was a pose.
I am not surprised one bit .(Incidentally now he has adopted a tough stand against the Unions look forward ti sneaky climb downs in the approved Brown style. That man is the worst liar I can recall in British Politics I hate him I really do)

Anonymous said...

Well, Newmania, Blair is a liar, too. A private conversation between them must have been hysterical.

Like you, I hate Brown, but I hate Blair more because he was a more effective (as far as other people were concerned; not me) liar. Brown looks and acts like a habitual liar. All Commies are liars.

Harry J said...

Please don't ever forget the real extremists are the ones who have allowed and encouraged uncontrolled, unprecedented and massive levels of immigration. This has done without any mandate or real debate. The far left in the form of the Labour party are the real extremists.

Anonymous said...

Did I ever tell you how much I hate the Labour Party?

Newmania said...

Verity....As Blair presided over a n 8% electoral defacit while brown currently has an 8% lead I feel Brown is the most effective liar right now at least.

)

Geezer said...

"Brown is the most effective liar right now at least"

The BBC and Labour supporting media, are the most effective liars!

tory boys never grow up said...

I'm afraid that all Cameron is doing is playing his usual marketing man's game of trying to be all things to all people. He has just sounded the "dog whistle" for his own supporters - and my guess is that in a few days time this will be followed up some message to the "middle ground" which will get all the right wing bloggers in a lather.

The problem is that there is no coherent philosophy underlying all this mood music - and certainly not a coherent set of policies which could be used to run the country. It all sounds very similar to the way that George W Bush got elected - remember "social conservatism" (a real oxymoron if I ever heard one) - and look how that all turned out.

My guess is that within Dave there is good old fashioned Tory boy Thatcherite waiting to get out (why else would Iain Dale et al support him) - but he has realised that to come out would be electoral suicide, hence the current marketing stance.

Paul Linford said...

it wouldn't be the first time the lobby had operated as a pack, would it, I rejoindered, reminding her of David Davis's conference speech.

I know this isn't the main point at issue here, but do you really believe this Iain?

Of course the Lobby frequently does operate as a pack, but I'm not sure they needed to on that occasion. I think a lot of people simply decided, quite independently of eachother, that DD had made a very poor speech.

Anonymous said...

Sir James Robison - Agreed. On both points. The Tories would win with a man of the people like DD.

I don't like Cameron's approach of doing dainty curtsies to the left, man-made global warming, "deprived" inner cities, blah blah blah - the whole lefty agenda.

The Conservatives are on the right. We are not lefties. We think the left is destructive and dehumanising. Why pretend obeissance to this failed philosophy.

If Dave cannot deliver policies on the right, then he's no good for the party. I believe he is driving people away with his Blairesque sleights of hand and muffled meaning speak. If he is so shakey-kneed over the 10th rate Trots in the government that he fears to fight under his true colours, around which the Tories would gladly rally, then I just wish he would go the hell away because he is a force for destruction.

David Lindsay - and double indemnity.

Agreed on the state colluding in an almighty lie of issuing "transsexuals" new birth certificates lying about their sex. Your DNA is your DNA from birth to grave. No matter how much silicone you have injected, how many hormones you take, what you have cut off, you are still the sex of your birth. That the state is prepared to lie, courtesy of Cherie Booth, is one of the most sickening things ever.

Newmania - agreed. I'm just saying I can't decide which one I hate the most.

David Lindsay said...

The delusions on here are extraordinary. We now have Newmania even trying to cliam that Cameron is a Eurosceptic and a supporter of grammar schools! Even Margaret Thatcher was never either of those.

Of course, Dave really does believe in "Thatcherite" economics (to which she herself certainly did not adhere all the time), precisely beacuse it is the entrenchment through the economic sphere of the the collapse in persanal and social morality since the 1960s, supported by all the same people in the electorate at large.

Who swung in the Sixties? Who boomed in the Eighties? Who backed Blair in the Nineties? The same people all round. But what about the rest of us? Who are we supposed to vote for?

Poor Newmania really will be lost here, since he can't distinguish one historical period from another.

But then, he thinks of the Tories as a conservative, nationalistic party. When, exactly? It never, ever has been. It used to be a dazzlingly effective means for getting posh boys into positions of power and influence, entirely regardless of their opinions, if any. And it is now a laughably ineffective means to that same end. That's it.

The real change has been in Labour, as I described.

Anonymous said...

Good to see that Verity is thick enough to believe that people can only be 'XX' or 'XY' in the chromosome department..

Hooray for American education !!

Shame she can't blame being fat on her genes..

Anonymous said...

"It all sounds very similar to the way that George W Bush got elected - remember "social conservatism" (a real oxymoron if I ever heard one) - and look how that all turned out. "

Two succesive election victories?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous aka "Mike" 3:42 - What "American education" sweet thang? I'm not American.

Your constantly styling someone you don't know and have never even seen in a photo as "fat" is a little obessive bordering on the deranged. You also, if I recall, think I smoke and fantasize that I live in a shack in some jungle rather than a house in a big elegant city. Never been to Mexico, then? Don't get around much, do you?

I'm going to put the most recent insults down to hunger derangement.

Mike, when the garbage truck comes round your estate, do remember to buy enough to see you over bank holiday weekends.

Anonymous said...

"and have never even seen in a photo"

How about you provide a photo? As well as your full name and address.

It would assist your Mexican neighbours.

Anonymous said...

If by "lurch to the right" the BBC et al actually mean that Cameron is ceasing his aping of New Labour in favour of a return to some conservative ideals as well as the toucjy feely stuff then all I can say is good, about time too!This whole right/left thing is wholly dependent upon the left wing idea that anything right of centre must by definition be bad. That is not the case and equalkly there is nothing to indicate that anyone other than the BBC, Guardian and Independent think so, the voters certaibnly don't appear to.

fake consultant said...

might i suggest your "today" show experience could have a different explanation than what has been proposed here?

imagine the news editor telling the producer you spoke to to create a story that presents the issue in the same way as it has been presented in the print media-not for political reasons, but for simple laziness...or herd instinct, if you will.

i offer this hypothesis because of the clue you present when you report the conversation with cameron's media staff...that the story blew up from the "herd instinct" of wanting to offer any "new news" available-even if none existed.

so they call you up, you're not telling a story that fits what they intend to tell, and they find someone who does.

it sounds like another typical day in the american mainstream media; and i have to say i suspect your story is entirely too common.

fake consultant said...

the real question might be...how "squishy" are labour voters?

in other words, are they solidly labour, or disaffected on the issues cameron touched upon?

if labour voters are relatively "squishy", this could very easily be seen as a lurch to the middle, not the right.