The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

DC has plenty to think about - but voters still don't want Gordon Brown as PM

There’s no mystery as to why the Conservative lead in the polls has narrowed. In fact, reading PR Week this morning, it was quite refreshing to see Alex Hilton spelling it out for any reading Conservatives who may not have realised yet. And if we look at the polls, we don’t really see any massive increase in Labour’s polling – they are steady at just under 30% – but a decline in support for the Conservatives.

The tipping point was the Lisbon Treaty being ratified by President Klaus of the Czech Republic. For the first time, DC and his team looked like they’d been caught out – like they had thought that the wily old Klaus would hold out for them and they didn’t look as though they had really thought through what would happen next. Or perhaps they underestimated the level of opinion within the Tory grass roots and had expected them just to swallow the whole debate being kicked into the long grass.

In reality, there wasn’t much alternative, as I argued at the time. A referendum on the treaty is a totally pointless waste of time and the activists’ posturing on it just that. But the question of whether to put Tory grass roots ahead of country as a whole was a particularly poignant one for him because voters see that question as the benchmark as to what kind of PM he will be. In the end, he chose neither and pleased neither.

Since then, we’ve had some cracking grass roots-pleasing policies. Punishing people for not being married is one. For goodness’ sake, we’ve had 13 long years of a government telling us how to live – from the beef we can eat to detention without trial, people want a Conservative government that will leave them alone, not tell them they’ve got to march to the Register Office or else. Marriage doesn’t automatically equal childhood bliss as we’ve seen in Edlington; please DC, just let it go.

Next we’ve had the Tories arguing about strengthening the law to allow people to defend their homes. The simply fact is that we have to have some kind of trust in the rule of law and the police to distinguish us from the animals. You are already entitled to use reasonable force – which may include deadly force – to defend yourself and your loved ones in your own home; there is no for any further “clarification” of this fact. By banging on about it, Chris Grayling and everyone risk succinct exposure by the legal profession.

Then DC had a pop at teachers and told them that they would need to be cleverer in future. I happen to agree with his view on this but saying such a thing was never likely to endear him to the NUT, BBC, or the many parents who are potential Tory voters that have a healthy respect for the teachers at their childrens’ school. There is an issue with teaching standards in this country but he’d have been better leaving it to Michael Gove to say so.

He’s also playing a risky game engaging the government over the raising of the UK Terror Threat to “severe”. The public do not like to see politicians making political capital of national security. Yes, DC means well but he needs to engage his PR brain a bit more to see how these things may be perceived. Is Andy Coulson on holiday?

DC’s greatest political achievement has been to drag a tired old party kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I and many others waited 10 years for someone to do it and it remains a great achievement – but it’s only a starting point. And with Lisbon, he has been a victim of circumstances trying to do the right thing – but hey, that’s politics. Now is the time for DC to be fitfully stubborn and stand his ground – the centre ground.

He must, must not allow the party to do what many of its activists want and move back to the right. He needs to focus back onto the left of politics – to talk the language of inclusion, of accessibility and of aspiration. He must ignore the threats of UKIPper defections – he needs to stay focussed on the mainstream of society, the probables, the Liberal waiverers, the people who are looking for him to uphold their vision of a small-c conservative society that celebrates success and achievement but makes this possible for everyone. I’ll fight and fight for the party forever – but I’ll feel a lot better about it if I hear more of this and less Monday Club rhetoric.

Labour won’t make it easy – they are focussing on Gordon Brown the statesman with the War on Terror, the Northern Ireland process, they are talking about banking bonuses again and tax will be an issue too. There are probably brighter economic figures to come. DC needs to stay strong, to regain confidence in his ability to be the Prime Minister of everyone, not just his own party.

The time for him to become PM is approaching fast and his margin of error is narrowing. It’s now or never and he needs to get a grip once more.