I’ve said on here before that Ashcroft should have been told to get stuffed at least a year before the election, as his tax status was an embarrassment; it’s not even as if the party needed the money by that stage.

The idea of “A list” candidates to me substantially failed, and the experiment should not be repeated. There should only be one class of potential Conservative PPC, and the party should not bend over backwards to shoehorn into seats those with superficially impressive CVs who may very well under closer scrutiny lack some of the very specific skills that make a good Conservative PPC and MP, and may have limited commitment to the ideals and values of the party.

Where I cannot agree with him is that the Conservatives’ “incoherent economic policy” was a problem. The economic policy of all the parties could conceivably be characterized in this way, as they all (probably rightly) assumed that telling the electorate the truth about the extent of the cuts necessary to restore the nation’s public finances to good health would have seen their level of support suffer. Few successful election campaigns are built upon telling voters things they don’t want to hear.

I also believe he is wrong in asserting that policy on Europe, Afghanistan, the alliance with the UUP, Chris Grayling’s gaff and the airbrushed posters shifted more than a handful of votes across the entire country (although the Tory-UUP link up clearly repelled voters in NI). In particular the issue of who the Tories sit with in the European Parliament seems to be primarily of concern only to regular contributers to Comment is Free over on the Guardian site. I also have yet to see any polling evidence to suggest that George Osborne has ever had a significant negative effect on the party’s level of support.

they didn’t have these problems in the 1980s but there are currently a string of middle class seats in urban areas that have yet to return to the tories

despite the upper middle class credentials of the cameron team they’ve had more success in white working class seats such as this one – where they have generally outperformed their 92 levels of support

we’re not there yet but there are definite connatations with the US – where Republican success has been based on working class (or what in America they call middle class) support

Likewise the majority intelligentsia and middle class professionals living in urban areas in the US have put their lot in with the Democrats for the last 10-15 years

The last election suggests the tories are suffering from the same phenomenon this side of the atlantic

also for the last 30 years in political terms new york city has been decisively against the grain compared to the rest of the US. Gulliani might have got elected mayor, and patika won the governorship in 94 – at the height of bill clinton’s unpopularity – but when it comes to most elections the republicans just aren’t in the running

there are parallels with london here – and the last election was the first since the war in which the party that won the most seats in london (labour) ended up losing

The more I think about it the more I believe the Conservative successes came despite their leadership.

Cameron and Osborne had bought into the notion that the economy was fundamentally sound and that the country as a whole was doing okay but that they could lead it better – the ‘heir to Blair’ idea.

The whole ‘Cameron Project’ was based on an evergrowing economy allowing a Conservative government to do ‘nice’ things.

Tax cuts on inheritance and marriage on one hand and increased spending on the environment and overseas aid on the other. Issues aimed at the urban middle classes who the Conservatives expected to be the swing voters at the next general election rather than the people who would suffer most if a recession did occur – the skilled working class and lower middle class in the midlands and north.

That’s why the Conservative leadership looked so shambolic in the autumn of 2008 – it wasn’t just Labour’s economic record that was being publicly demolished it was the Conservative strategy as well.

Now looking at my own situation and from the annecdotals I heard from people I know, I strongly believe that the Labour vote among WWC voters in the private sector and particularly manufacturing industry collapsed but that the main beneficiaries in many areas wasn’t the Conservatives but the minor rightist parties. Where the Labour vote did hold up was among ‘fear factor’ voters especially those whose income comes directly or indirectly from the state.

I’m speculating here but perhaps Cameron and Osborne with their posh backgrounds and trendy urban living and with no personal experience of WWC areas simply never realised the Conservative potential in places like Stalybridge. Did they fall for the BBC’s line that the north consists of Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle? The consequence being a strategy aimed at the urban middle classes ‘vote blue go green’ etc ie aimed at the sort of people they were themselves familiar with and believed they could win over.

The whole ‘detox’ the party idea wasn’t a bad one, the error was in the people it was aimed at and the manner in which it was carried out.

One thing that I think Cameron needs to do as much as possible is to stay out of London. Notting Hill is not a good representation of the country as a whole.

I think you have been proved right in what you’ve argued about WWC seats – but are you also saying that even the increases we got in those areas are entirely despite the national party? That seems a little harsh.

I would add another thing to your list – expenses, and this blew up just before the 2009 elections, although we had plenty of warnings dribbling out from summer 2008.
Some commentators argued this would damage Labour more (perhaps unfairly because people would just tend to pile the blame on the incumbent establishment).
I don’t entirely agree – I think it led to a kind of cynicism which made it harder for the main opposition party to enthuse people about politics and present something fresh.

The Conservatives were ahead here at the 2009 Euro elections.

Having considered the failure of the Conservatives to win an overall majority I think the June 2009 elections had an dangerous effect on the Conservatives.

The Conservative performance in those elections wasn’t actually very good. That they produced excellent and better than expected results was due to the collapse in the Labour vote.

It must have been likely that Labour would recover to and extent from their disasterous performance and indeed they did do. What didn’t happen though was a corresponding increase in the Conservative vote back to the levels of 2006 to 2008.

In short the Conservatives didn’t ‘seal the deal’.

Alongside the strategic error of targetting urban voters and not the WWC the Conservative leadership made a number of tactical mistakes in the year before the election:

An incoherant economic policy

An incoherant European policy together with the loss of trust it caused

Failure to consider Afghanistan

Osborne and Grayling on public dispplay

Wasting time on irrelevancies like the EU parliamentary group and Northern Ireland alliances

Not dealing with Ashcroft much sooner

‘A List’ numpties in target seats

Airbrushed posters

Supporting the debates

But I do think – although we’ll never know – that if there had been a General Election called a year or so ago, that this could have been Tory gain.