Seven awkward questions for the Tories

Tony Blair asked Labour seven awkward questions this week, ranging from issues that everyone’s talking about to rather more quirky ones that the former Prime Minister would like everyone to talk about, like using advances in DNA to fight crime. It’s the mid-term, when parties start to wonder what they can tell voters they stand for in the next general election, what problems they believe the country is facing, and, more importantly, whether they think they’ve got a hope of solving them. I’ve spent most of today talking to Tory MPs about what they think the seven awkward questions for their own party might be, and here they are, in all their awkward and quirky glory:

1. How do the Tories address public concern on immigration while continuing to be a globalised economy?

Currently the solution from all three parties on this seems to be to give a speech saying ‘it’s OK to be worried about some aspects of immigration and for too long we haven’t been worried about this in Westminster’, while re-announcing Labour’s social housing allocations guidelines from 2009 as a ‘tough new policy on migrants’ to show that Westminster is finally taking the issue seriously.