Well this was entirely predictable. The authoritarian right insist that Dave’s efforts at making the Tory party electable are in fact what has prevented the party from storming to a landslide victory. We’ll be hearing a lot more of this nonsense if the Tories fail to win a majority but Melanie Phillips’s most recent post is a decent enough starting place and summary of the argument. Naturally she quotes Norman Tebbit at length and, presumably, it’s only a matter of time befre Simon Heffer and the others weigh-in too.
Of course this analysis conveniently ignores the fact that it’s the manifest, obvious, failure of the right that has left Cameron in such a difficult position. The failures of 2005 and the years before it left the Tories needing their best result in a century to win a convincing majority. Thanks for that legacy, guys.
It is, I suppose, just about possible that the electorate wishes the Conservatives were more obviusly and stridently right-wing; unfortunately there appears to be little to no compelling, persuasive evidence to support this proposition.
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