A strange turn of events

Labour's rise in the polls has been built largely on a simple trick. Mandelson and Brown simply do not acknowledge any defeats or blows made against them. It would be very easy for an intelligent man to agonise about having once denied the need for cuts and (shortly after) presented himself as a man who could be trusted to cut public spending. Similarly, we would probably worry about presenting ourselves as having succeeded in controlling immigration, when it has merely fallen a little from record heights achieved on our watch.

But why worry if you can simply ignore those problems. Why be concerned if you can flatly deny them when the heat is on, and sneak out an apology later. Do not admit a failing when being cross-examined in Chilcott enquiry. Do not admit in PM's questions that the whole G20 was out of recession first. You mislead the enquiry, and put up a good show when it matters most. And you pretend (to cheers) that Spain is a G20 member.

Like Eddie Murphy in the sketch, and Shaggy is in his song, if you simply ignore your fault regardless of all the evidence, you may just get away with it. Hence, the taunts of Cameron as to Brown's boast of "no more boom and bust", does not ruffle Brown - and Cameron looks like a name caller.

At least that, perhaps, is what you see if you watch too closely. The audience on last night's Question Time seemed almost at times to queue up to call Brown a liar. Maybe the public do not take enough interest to end up giving high marks for artistic impressions to politicians, even when they are spinning tall tales. Like RicRoc's rebuke to Shaggy: but they caught us on camera saying we'd solved boom and bust, that we would lead the world out of recession, that there would be no cuts, etc.

So, maybe Cameron should not worry too much that he seems to be bashing his head against a brick wall trying to get Brown to admit failure.

His worry should instead be to present a positive case, and let the public take care of Brown's nonsense. We have seen with the National Insurance issue that a positive policy can cause havoc to Labour. Labour have committed themselves to outright denunciation of everything about Tory economic policy. They could not cope with the idea of businessmen supporting the opposition. So, they over-reacted and fell into the trap that they have laid for Cameron.

It is obvious that Labour should have respectably disagreed. They should have wheeled out those who back their approach. Then repeat a lot of half-truths and untruths about how the Conservatives have got everything wrong from Northern Rock onwards - Newsnight exploded this, but it still makes a good line. Instead, they ranted and raged. Labour does not really do criticism well.

Will it matter? I think, yes. The polls may go up and down in the next month. But Labour need the aura of being a saffe pair of hands, and they need the Tories to have an aura of danger and incompetence. They need those impressions to be whirling around the heads of undecided voters come 6 May. The sight of businessmen queuing up to endorse supposed "Tory incompetence" was actually good, doubtless helped. But it helped that Labour made it a much bigger story with their hysteria.

Why should I vote Conservative?

Some time ago, Matthew Parris dealt with the question of why he did not change to New Labour. At the time, there seemed little between the parties apart from a social conservatism where he was firmly on the side of Labour. “I am too tribal,” I recall was his answer. Essentially, the Tories were his team and he’d support them evermore. Faced almost 25 years ago with relegation from the league – Burnley fans had sung the same refrain, even those who seldom turned up to see a game.

And this, I think is the difference between most of us and those who have played the game of politics as a lifelong pursuit. Even if we have voted Tory at almost every opportunity, we do not support them with the unconditional loyalty that we give to our football teams. We are not tribal with our political parties in quite the same way. We do not shop around to support the team which plays the style of football that we most admire – we do shop around for the political party that supports the type of policies we most desire.

This, is the first flaw in Cameron’s modernisation strategy. It assumes that the core vote will vote Tory as they will still vaguely assume that the party is likely to be sounder on Europe (despite Maastricht), sounder on immigration, sounder on educational standards (despite introducing the GCSE), and tougher on crime (despite always disappointing in the past). But when we see a party flirt with all-women short lists, we are not so sure that it shares our principles – although the hostility of the northern women at the recent Question Time to the idea shows that these principles are fairly broadly held. The abandonment of the European referendum has sowed doubts (wrongly, in my view) as to their soundness in that issue. The code of silence on immigration means that (ridiculously) Labour are trying to appropriate immigration control for themselves – even if their definition of immigration control is finding a system to process the record numbers that we have seen for over a decade, and to pretend (clearly wrongly) that it has all been about temporary Eastern European immigration. Stripped of a policy direction on matters of general conservative thinking, we ask ourselves why we should vote Conservative.

The second flaw is presentational. You do not want to be the nasty party? But how can you be anything but a nasty party if you have no policies? All you are left with is negative campaigning. For sure, there can be times when this is sufficient – but we live in an era of real difficulties where difficult policies must be announced. How can you say we will cut, and not say how? To say how is to give a rational explanation of what you plan and hope to achieve. Otherwise, you are just cutting.

The third flaw was shown by his Gay News interview. It was a simple question - how far would he use the whip on gay equality issues? To translate - it means when does he regard the issues as being open and shut, and when it is the sort of difficult thing that requires compromise for us to live happily together? The teaching of gay issues in church schools is an obvious example of such complications - if civil partnerships are upgraded to marriage, then should churches be required to conduct gay marriages? These are the sort of issues that lie beneath the question. What was shocking was that Cameron had embraced gay issues without having any understanding of the limits of his support, or the complexity of some of the issues. Other than that it sounds nice and modern, he does not seem to understand why he supports gay rights. If he understood why, he would be able to have an idea as to what demands might be going too far, in his view. And this encapsulates his whole approach to modernisation - it is done for the sake of image. He doesn't know what any given step should be thought of as a good thing. No wonder his rebranding is quickly seen as unprincipled.

But to return to the main theme, parties are there to represent strands of opinion that exist in society. If those strands go unrepresented, then it is a failure of democracy. The Tories campaigned on reducing public spending in 2001 and 2005 – they lost. I do not say that parties should not take stock of the situation – politicians must ask if there is a constituency for their views. But they cannot simply track the fashions because they garner 33% as opposed to the winner's 36%. Oppositions can only hold a government to account if they disagree with it - and maintain that disagreement despite by definition haveing had their own views rejected.

If a party wins two or three elections, it does not follow that political debate must narrow and everyone must adopt the thinking of the recent winner - but that appears to be the idea behnd this "heir of Blair" abomination. We see that with Cameron and Osborne’s previous pledge to follow Labour spending policies – does anyone doubt that it would be better if they were now saying that the Tories had been right in 2001 and 2005? Would it not be better if they took Labour’s proposed efficiency savings and played a thousand times Brown and Blair denying in 2001 and 2005 that there was any scope for such serious savings? What Labour trumpeted on Budget Day, was Tory policy of 2001 and 2005. But Cameron and Osborne abandoned that policy – and with it they abandoned any sense the people might have that the country was moving towards Tory policies.

So, why should I vote Conservative? The harm that Brown will do is a certainty – the gain from humiliating Cameron is speculative. We know that the deficit will not be tackled – the overspend comes from Labour pet causes. We all know that immigration is a core belief of Labour, they will not tackle it. Left wing teachers are pathologically opposed to school discipline and academic rigour – how will a left wing party do anything but fail on education. If Europe comes asking for more powers, we know Labour will find an excuse to deny us a referendum – the Tory failure is a misdemeanour in comparison to Labour’s.

So, at the very least, let us to try to reduce their majority, or dent their legitimacy by giving the Tories the higher vote. I am very sceptical about winning – Cameron has done too much damage to woo the liberals, who repay him with talk of toffs. But we do not want Brown given a landslide as a reward for his many failures, and thus encourage him to many more and greater disasters.

In the meantime, it may be too late, but could Cameron remember that his voters are partisan towards policies not towards party colours. We are not interested in him becoming Prime Minister or any of his friends achieving office. We are interested only in what might happen next. And, frankly, he has given us only doubts.