Something very peculiar happened recently. A Guardian poll released this week showed the Tories to have gained a five point lead over Labour. As well as being enough to secure an outright majority if an election were held tomorrow, the timing of this Conservative renaissance is particularly puzzling. This sudden surge in popularity, as many on both sides of the political spectrum will admit, was never supposed to happen. Support for the ruling party is supposed to tumble after its customary breaking of most of its election promises. The Conservative party braced themselves for what should have been a rocky ride amidst mammoth spending cuts and near stagnant economic growth. On the other side, liberal academics sat flabbergasted, unable to understand why the Proletariat hadn’t turned their backs on the Tory pigs and stationed themselves at picket lines in true 1970’s style.
As has been demonstrated, the electorate isn’t as naïve as Labour would like to think. According to the most recent polls, a geo-political map of Britain of 2012 wouldn’t look so different to one composed fifty years earlier, characterised by vast swathes of home county blue juxtaposed with the deep reds of the wilds of the north. It’s what is in between these two brutal contrasts that is most interesting. In the battlegrounds of the Midlands, the Tories have surged ahead with a ten point percentage lead. To explain this political puzzle, we return to the question of reality. Unlike our spendthrift European counterparts, whose extravagant spending has seen five continental nations credit ratings recently downgraded and mired the whole European Union in an economic quagmire, the British have adopted a make do and mend attitude. Whilst finding our ration coupons and sewing kits, we conceded that perhaps we didn’t need umpteen government bodies monitoring cultural diversity, and maybe hospitals can function just as well without multi-million pound artworks adorning their facades.
And then we turn to the party of the working class, and their response with Ed Miliband as it’s leader. Poor old Ed, well intentioned Ed, but frightfully naïve Ed. If it is at all possible to sympathise with the trade unions of the 1970’s whose tentacles wrapped themselves around every vein of the Labour party, at least they understood. Derek Robinson, or aptly named “Red Robbo” for his affiliations with the Soviet Union, was there when it all happened. He was just as qualified to swig beer in the countries WMC’s as any of the thousands of industrial workers who were laid off under Thatcher’s economic shake up. Ed however, coming from a Jewish family of London intellectuals has none of these “rough around the edges” qualities, and instead resigns himself to regurgitating the same old rhetoric about class warfare and tax relief for the wealthy.
David Cameron, with his porcine features and slicked back hair making him an ideal pig in the eyes of a cartoonist, is similarly as detached from the economic hardships of your average Joe in the street. Mr Cameron, however, has never pretended to have witnessed first hand the hardships of his electorate, (admittedly his political allegiance means he doesn’t have to feign it quite so much as Ed). He did however promise to listen, and quite bizarrely for a politician, he did. By humbling himself to admit the mistakes of the Tories of elections past, he combined the traditional Tory ethos of shared values with the “rugged liberalism” that featured so prominently on the Conservative’s election manifesto. Mr. Cameron therefore acknowledged that no one wants to be reliant on the state, and that increased welfare was not only incredibly costly, but also hampered social mobility. He also realised that, as well as being a sure popularity pleaser, Europe had become more of a nosey neighbour than a friend in Westminster. Most importantly of all however, it is his ability to appear genuine that appeals most to an electorate tired of broken promises and innocuous politics that fails to offend and likewise fails to achieve.
It is the Tory party’s new found universal appeal, as well as being totally unapologetic about Mr Cameron’s social background that lies at the heart of their recent poll surge. Labour however, growing bloated with the same old tricks and losing its flair, as anyone going through a mid-life crisis will know, would do well to find a new hobby.
