Tories back to days of Duncan Smith - poll

[AmericanErrorist]

Michael Howard's Tory party is now as unpopular as it was in the darkest days of Iain Duncan Smith's leadership, according to the results of a special Guardian/ICM poll on Conservative fortunes.

The party is eight points behind Labour - the biggest gap since May 2003, when Mr Duncan Smith was facing his summer of discontent.

Mr Howard has achieved the distinction of becoming even more unpopular than Tony Blair in the country at large - and even less popular among Tory voters than the prime minister is among Labour supporters.

Yet the survey also shows that Mr Howard is set to soldier on as leader until another general election because two-thirds of his party members cannot name a credible alternative.

The depth of the crisis facing the party is underlined by a raft of findings in the Guardian/ICM poll based on interviews with a representative sample of 300 Conservative party members. The poll shows that:

· Most members accept they cannot win next year's expected general election;

· One in four of the members think Labour is more in tune with average voters in the country than the Tories;

· Half the rank and file say they would vote to pull out of the European Union and, even more worringly for Mr Howard, 70% say that the party must toughen its stance on Brussels or risk losing "members like them" to the UK Independence party;

The regular monthly Guardian/ICM poll of the wider electorate shows Labour on 38%, eight points ahead of the Conservatives, the biggest gap on the Guardian/ICM series since May 2003. It would be enough to see Mr Blair returned with a Commons majority of more than 120.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,1353734,00.html

[non sociopath skin]

1. So the soft conservatives prefer the Bliar Christian Democrats ...

... and the hard ones prefer the Baggy Trousered Misanthropists of the UKIP.

Why do I not feel happier about this?

The Skin

[LSdemocrat]

2. Is it normal in Britain not to have a fully competent opposition party?

If I recall correctly, even Labour in the 1980's led in the opinion polls occasionally.

Has the opposition ever been so pathetic for such a long period of time?

[non sociopath skin]

3. Is it about "competence" or "electability"?

I don't think that the Tories have a particular organisational problem. It's just that not enough people are interested in their policies. Their selling points used to be macho leadership, enlightened self-interest and law 'n' order. Now the Bliar Christian Democrats have cornered the one-nation-Tory schtick, there's nowhere for the Real Deal to go ...

The Skin

[Wat_Tyler]

4. Ever heard of a competent opposition party anywhere?

[Mr Creosote]

5. Well

the Tories have actually managed to lead the opinion polls once or twice! Labour was unelectable for, I suppose, a period of 10 or 12 years. The difference is that the Labour Party schism occured very shortly after their election defeat and Kinnock, whilst unelectable himself, sorted out the party. The Tories haven't moved on from 1997 at all.
Since Blair has stolen all their policies all they can do is challenge him on competance. Eventually enough time will have passed for people to forget how useless the last Tory government was. Certainly not at the next election. Or the next. Perhaps in 2014?

[T_i_B]

7. The tories have not been considered fully competent...

...since Black Wednesday in 1992. They were in power for five years after that (before losing by a landslide to Blair in 1997)

The only respect in which they have moved on since those days from what I can see is that they appear to have stopped fighting over the Euro.

[AP]

6. After what this party did to the UK, they deserve to disappear.

I think everyone knows that I'm OK with Blair, and part of the reason is because I see the huge value in him stearing towards the middle just long enough to totally wipe out the Tories and send them off into their Save the Pound or Nationalist-Racist, or Save the Queen/Fox Hunting/Property Rights constituent elements.

If what's left over is a Labour and Lib-Dem party trying to align themselves on a left-right spectrum, that a long-term GOOD thing, not a bad thing. (And I wouldn't be surprised if the Labour Party ended up to the left of the Lib-Dems when things settled down.)

[non sociopath skin]

8. The tories are not wiped out.

They are going through a bad patch, not for the first time.

I think some of us half-believed (it was never more than that) that Bliar would do what you suggest and move politics back to normality via the centre-right. I don't think that many of us ever envisaged a day when a "Labour" Prime Minister would be the greatest supporter of an American President with the politics of Barry Goldwater in a war of colonial expansion. Indeed, eyebrows would have been raised, not least in the Tory Party, if Margaret Thatcher had done that.

As other posters will be aware, I don't regard the LibDems as in any way, shape or form a party of the left. Neither, nowadays, do I so regard the Bliar Party: at best they are now the UK equivalent of the European Christian Democrats - a centre right, business and IMF friendly party with a social agenda tacked on where it doesn't get too much in the way of the market.

I cannot share your optimism, I'm afraid.

The Skin

[McKenzie]

9. hey NSK!

they were wiped out in Scotland a few years ago. Not one Tory MP out of 65 seats. I remember watching as Rifkind et al lost their seats, unable to believe what was happening. Then again, Scotland has always leant markedly to the left. Even the brand of Toryism in this country (Scotland, that is) has always been largely of the "traditional" type, rather than the right wing idealogue driven variety that developed in the 1980's.

BTW, I was wearing Levi's Sta-Press and a Crombie 30 years ago...

[non sociopath skin]

10. ... but thanks to PR, the Tories are still around in the Scots Parlt ...

... and if they ever look like like disappearing in the UK as a whole, watch the system change.

Yes, I accept that Scotland is more left-wing as, to some extent is South - though not North - Wales, but if there's any lightening up in the Sarf of England and in Northern Island, they're keeping quiet about it. At the moment, the Bliar Christian Democrats are just Tory enough.

The Skin

[non sociopath skin]

11. And I see from today's Guardian ...

... that the Tories are beginning to look at PR again as a National system. As we say in the North East, "ye cannit bray them back!" They will do ANYTHING to get back.

The Skin

[Wat_Tyler]

12. 72 seats.

Scotland never bought Thatcherism, outside of Newton Mearns.