Nothing illustrates the utter delusion of the Conservative Party more than their recent bid to re-brand as the “workers’ party”.
Having finally realised that chasing green-loving hipsters in the name of Cameroonism wasn’t a winner, the Tories have launched a land grab for the blue-collar vote. Problem is, it has absolutely no authenticity.
Much excitement abound yesterday when the party rolled out Sir John Major, reiterating the fact that the boy from Brixton became Tory Leader back in the day before becoming Prime Minister. Yet the Tories viciously contradict themselves by parading around a leader from the 1990’s who got his break via a grammar school, whilst simultaneously being the party that helped abolish selective education. More importantly, it is the party which is now continuing to take the same approach as Labour on the issue. No new grammar schools – because the Etonians know best.
It may sound crass but that is the reality, given that it was revealed earlier in the week that five of the six Tories working on their next manifesto are Etonians – and the other is Osborne of St Paul’s. If this was a party truly interested in representing workers and not just the elite, why would they fail to receive input at the highest level from someone who hadn’t been born into tremendous privilege?
David Skelton of the Tory-supporting Renewal is doing a lot of talking currently, but his appeal to the electorate is delusional. He says that the UKIP surge in the North isn’t happening and that the Tories are the only challengers to Labour.
But every recent by-election in the North shows this to be an outright fabrication, the clinging on to straws as the Tories go into extinction. It is as if these people cannot believe what is happening, and instead of offering policy solutions to help the poor, are left with reminiscing about the good times when they won elections with far broader support than they have today. Stomping of feet coupled with dismal by-election campaigns anywhere outside of South-East England does not a one-nation party make.
This disconnect between swathes of the country and the Tory Party could realistically be another noticeable strand of the David Cameron legacy. A party that went to grab blue-collar voters when it realised it needed them to get into power, but yet utterly failed to stand up for the working class by opening the door to even more Eastern European countries whilst presiding over a society with vastly declining social mobility.
Tories may have gone from heads-in-the-sand to frantically attempting to cling on, but voters will simply not be taken in by desperate last ditch Cameron schmoozing. After all, the days of the working class having to hold their nose and vote Labour or Tory are dead and buried. The country has moved beyond two-party politics and the Conservatives are being increasingly left behind, forcibly entrenched in traditional heartlands.
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