Death rattle of the Conservative Party

Paul Goodman's analysis in Conservative Home is comprehensively damning about what has happened to the Tory Party under the leadership of the Cameron clique. All this and not even delivering an electoral victory over the most discredited government since . . . umm . . . the Major government, where the present Tory leadership first dabbled its pedicured toes in politics.

The Conservative Party is the largest force in local government. It may win the next election. But it's dying on its feet. Ponder the likely course of events -

• Membership is falling. It currently stands at roughly 177,000 
• The Party will lose council seats, and control of councils, as this Parliament continues... It's happened whenever we've been in government before - voters use local elections to protest against the Government of the day. And it will happen this time round too, possibly in spades.
• Leaving MPs and candidates exposed at the next election, since by then some councillors will have lost their seats and local membership fallen further.

Goodman says he has no big idea how this could be turned around. He's quite right - the Tory Party took an irreversible turn into a dead-end when it chose Cameron over Davis. Enjoy the five years, guys and gals, because you're not going to have any more of them.  


P.S. The Bitchy Boys report that Cameron has reversed himself in the matter of putting his personal photog and film-maker on the public payroll. It was a silly, vain little thing to do in the first place, and he was very slow to realize how revealing it was about himself and his priorities.

Don't often get to say this, but Nick Robinson's comment hits it right on the button: "Quick is not, perhaps, a description for Team Cameron's response to this, given the amount of column inches written about it”.