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Yorkshire Post - 8
May 2007
So which problem would YOU rather have? The Tories’ problem in the North or Labour’s problem in the South? A problem of painful, grudging Tory attrition of the Labour hold in its heartlands north of the Trent or pretty well total wipe-out of the Labour vote in the South East outside London – the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph underbelly of Britain which delivered the stunning landslide for Tony Blair in 1997?
Actually it’s a no-brainer. That massive swathe of blue from the Severn to the Trent, reproduced at a general election, looks good enough to push David Cameron through the doors of No 10 with or without Manchester and Liverpool.
Ah yes: Manchester and Liverpool (and, for that matter, Newcastle). Tory-free zones. Not a single councillor. How can Cameron claim that the Tories are a national party again when these great northern cities turn their back so dismissively on him?
The technical answer is that these cities have very tightly-drawn boundaries around the urban area, leaving relatively little suburban or rural hinterland available to the Tories (unlike Leeds or Bradford.)
The political answer is that the Conservatives have only got themselves to blame: at last year’s local elections they publicised their determination to win back a toe-hold in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, even if it was a single ward. They failed- handing their opponents the gift of a political spin which portrayed them as the party which could not capture the cities.
This year the Tory High Command took the precaution of renouncing any ambition to make dramatic inroads into the big northern cities. Too late: the totemic status of Manchester and Liverpool was already established.
And before we use too much indelible ink on the north-south divide in British politics don’t forget the bit in the middle: Rugby, North Warwickshire, South Derbyshire, and North West Leicestershire fell into the Conservative column while they became the largest party in Birmingham – a totemic city for the Tory local government since the days of Chamberlain.
In the North Conservative gains have been largely in seaside towns (with elderly populations) and rural or semi-rural areas. They had a good outing along the M6 corridor with Blackburn, Blackburn and Oldham falling even if they fell short in Bury and Bolton (though near enough to make those Labour-held parliamentary seats look very vulnerable).
So do the Tories have a northern problem? The short answer is yes. Partly this is social and cultural: by and large northern areas have more people working for the state and dependent on the state than the South. The legacy of the Thatcher “modernisation” of industrial Britain bites deeper. But if this is true Cameron’s “de-contamination” of the Tory brand is even more necessary here than elsewhere: the party would be very foolish to seek to invent a northern version of Cameronics.
But there is also a serious problem of organisation. Put briefly, in large parts of the North the Tories do not have one. The loss of council seats under the previous Conservative governments, the ageing of the activist base, the felling of Tory MPs in the 1992 and 1997 elections, the siege mentality (and policies) following the Labour victory as the party struggled for identity – all these took a terrible toll of organisation.
And no organisation means no candidates for local elections, no leaflets going out, no recruitment – and a generation of voters growing up without a Tory choice.
The party is tackling this. It has set up a Northern Board under William Hague with the aim of improving dramatically campaigning. It has devolved fund-raising, spending and campaigning to the region with the promise that money raised in the North stays in the North. This year it is promising to double the 2006 spend on campaigning and to boost that again in 2008. New campaigning centres are being established in Bradford and Salford. A key target will be voters aged 18 to 35.
In last week’s elections the party contested 92 per cent of the wards in Yorkshire and the Humber (against 72 per cent for Labour) and 90 per cent in the North West (80 per cent for Labour). Even in the pretty barren political terrain of the North East the party fought more than half the wards being contested.
This is a strategy for five to 10 years. The immediate focus is on the next general election. The three northern regions currently send 19 MPs to Westminster. To win an absolute majority the party needs to win 116 seats nationwide: it is looking to the North to provide around a quarter of those gains. Tough, but no longer fantasy.
Of course, there is a quick way to Tory power in Westminster: Scottish independence. The Conservatives won the popular vote in England in 2005 so they are set to hoover up English votes in 2009 or 10.
Over the next couple of years the sound of Tories wrestling against the temptation to play the card of English nationalism will be nerve-jangling!
© Yorkshire Post
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