What do the polls mean for Cameron and the Conservatives?
February 25, 2007 Leave a comment
What a week it has been for David Cameron – a quite astounding mixture of news coverage. The 'hoodie' saga was given a new lease of life and his latest standings in the polls according to YouGov seemed to pass the world by thanks to Ryan Florence.
The age-old debate over how much importance we place on such polls continues. Both Labour and the Conservatives publicly announced that they didn’t put much emphasis on the latest poll, although this in itself is not newsworthy. But, unlike most surveys of public opinion, the most recent polls that put David Cameron on anything up to a 16-point lead over the Labour Party have surprisingly large implications for his next piece of tactical thinking.
The comparisons between Cameron now and the pre-1997 Blair are well deserved. He is focussing on getting his message into ever corner of the country, highlighting the ‘principles’ with which he intends to govern the country, and taking every opportunity to increase his public profile. Where this might become intriguing is when the policy groups that David Cameron set up to address the 'key challenges' facing Britain report back later this year. His rhetoric on these challenges has been very positive thus far but soon he must support his rhetoric with clear and detailed plans on how exactly the Conservative Party will solve problems such as family breakdown, the disastrous state of the NHS and our poor education system.
Here is the dilemma – should the new Conservative policies fail to provide viable solutions to the problems faced by this country, David Cameron’s poll ratings will sink because his tough-talking will be seen as nothing more than a gimmick (as Tony Blair has found out to his cost over the past few years); but by the same token, if the new policies are bold and radical, which they need to be, he risks alienating some voters and yet this is precisely what he has been avoiding like the plague thus far for strategic reasons.
So, the question is this: with an impressively consistent lead in the polls, will his policy groups now be tempted to shy away from the radical and structural changes that this country so desperately needs in order to protect his position in the polls?
Tom Richmond