Letters | 25 October 2012

The toxic centre-ground

Sir: I found it hard to be convinced by Matthew Parris’s claim (‘The centre holds’, 20 October) that David Cameron has ‘brilliantly understood’ that old ‘nasty party’ problem. It is held by the soft wet left of the Conservative party that Mrs Thatcher’s party was that ‘toxic’ nasty party. However, the figures suggest the opposite. She won her first election as leader in 1979 with 13.7 million votes, her second in 1983 with 13.0 million and her third with in 1987 with 13.8 million. In the afterglow of Thatcherism without the poll tax, John Major scored a record 14.2 million. That master politician Tony Blair managed 13.5 million in 1997, but by his third victory that had fallen to 9.5 million and by 2010 Labour could muster only 8.6 million electors to support them. However, what Matthew Parris calls a brilliant understanding of political positioning harvested David Cameron’s friendly middle-ground soft-focus lovable Tories only 10.7