Why aren’t the Tories doing better?

My apologies for responding so tardily to Alex Massie’s post of Friday, but it was quite well hidden, maybe prudently so.

He begins by objecting to my assertion on National Review Online that given the failure and unpopularity of Labour, “the Tories [as the main opposition party] ought to be winning easily and by a landslide.” This is an unfair critique, he argues, because “it’s the failures of the past and that he inherited that make Dave’s task so difficult. If 2005 hadn’t been such a ghastly failure perhaps the Tories wouldn’t need to win an extra 130 seats to win a majority. *In other words, they essentially need a landslide just to win a small victory*.”

Well, let me try to unravel the confusions here. To begin with, the Tories need a landslide to win a small victory not because of the 2005 election but because of the anti-Tory bias in the electoral system.