Disagree as I do with a lot of what Cameron’s government is doing on constitutional reform and on Europe, I still consider myself as a Conservative that just happens not to be a party member at the moment. I still refer to the Conservative Party as ‘we’ for example when talking to friends.

I was thinking initially of joining UKIP but then David Campbell-Bannerman’s timely defection reminded me that the only way we will get a referndum on EU withdrawel will be to change Conservative Party policy on the matter.

And now that my local party has been thoroughly crushed at the local elections in May, the offending people have all lost their seats (and in many cases are no longer active locally) and we are no longer pursuing the damaging policies we were pursuing before the election in coalition with Labour.

I’m enjoying my time outside of politics at the moment but I’m sure one day I will go back.

http://cllrjeremyrowe.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/jan-powell-joins-the-lib-dems/

As for the two geographical wings of the Tory party I’m not so sure

I remember in the 1980s, when the Tories won a string of seats they had never previously won since 1945 – especially in the North West

Many of these MPs, whilst fairly conservative on social and moral issues, were quite ‘wet’ on economic matters and were quite skeptical of Thatcher’s free-market agenda

The real division now seems to be on the right – between the Thatcherites on the one hand, and the Cornerstone socially conservative MPs on the other. Obviously these two groups can overlap – but collectively they comprise more than half of the Parliamentary party

I don’t know how populist either grouping is

For example on public sector pay I think anyone earning over the national average earnings should have their pay frozen with those earning double having proportionally rising pay cuts with maximum public sector earnings being restricted to ten times national minimum wage.

The howling guardianistas would make if this policy was applied would be a sight to see!

Likewise the Cameroons missed the opportunity to have a genuinely populist IHT policy – raise the threshold to £1m but increase the rate above that to 50% ie tax multimillionaires more to reduce taxes on non-millionaires.

And on public sector cuts a ‘populist’ Conservative would focus much more on job and pay cuts among public sector ‘executives’, ‘professionals’ and ‘managers’. However posh/privileged Cameroons are more likely to listen to the advice of said self-interested groups.

Privilegeds would have been a better description than Poshos.

There’s probably a geographical division for these two wings of the Conservatives as well – its hard to imagine anyone but a ‘posh’ Londoner calling for open door immigration as Boris Johnson has done.

Populists whose priorities would be to help the working poor and those on average earnings

and

Poshos whose priorities involve IHT cuts and helping the City / big business.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives they had a posho leadership when the electoral conditions were optimum for a populist.

As it turned out these policies and image gimmicks didn’t help them win seats but did help them get LibDem support afterwards.

As TJ and SNP have said the election result was remarkably fortuitous for Cameron. 10-20 MPs fewer and he may not have been PM, 10-20 MPs more and he may have been PM of a minority or tiny majorited government opposed by both Labour and the LibDems.

What has resulted though is as TJ says ‘a dream come true’ for Cameron.