I want a Conservative government as much as any of you; I just happen to doubt that one is on offer.

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It ain't!

Derek

There's no point having ideas unless you can get into power. You have to appeal to the middle ground, the floating voters, to win an election. You won't win an election by proposing head banging policies which lost two elections. You won't win an election by banging on about Europe either. The important thing is to get Brown out and stop the damage. Cameron has transformed the Nasty Party image..................... Thatcher didn't show her hand before she was PM..........

There's no point getting into power if it's only on the basis of not being Brown, but having no policies and worse, no principles, presumably to change nothing and manage decline. Or are you proposing the dishonest strategy of winning an election by saying as little as possible and making deceptive soothing noises, basically being elected on a false prospectus, then cutting public spending, declaring Global Warming to be a scam, clamping down on immigration and other policies which the grassroots want? Banging on about Europe? They're frightened to say what their policy is, if they have one. Cameron's a lightweight PR man, too much like Blair, and the Tory lead is fragile........... Thatcher was not dishonest in presenting her policies before she was PM.........

And so the arguments bat back and forth.

I'm inclined to the second misself.

According to today's Mirror, it seems that Mandelson is considering resigning his peerage to become an MP, & will then try to topple Brown, & himself become Labour's new PM prior to next year's election - on the grounds that only he can save Labour! Some hope! The electorate will hopefully say "No" at the polls, & if he succeeds in becoming an MP & unseating Brown, all he will probably succeed in doing is to split the Labour party apart1

As the old saying goes: Oppositions don't win elections, Governments lose them!

Watchet

Is this true ? Is anyone here old enough to remember how she presented herself, and the Tory party, while leader of the opposition ?
All I really remember is her getting into No 10 and doing her Francis of Assisi bit (I think).

I can't recall. I was just rehearsing the arguments which amount to principles vs PR based expediency to get into office.

Another discussion in much the same vein was whether the Tories needed a clause 4 moment.

Abandoning Clause 4 showed that the Labour Party had broken with the 1970s past where the unions ran the country and they were saddled with a set of doctrinaire policies such as unilateral disarmament which would never see them elected. Thatcher had changed the course of British politics. They broke with impractical idealism and became electable. The Tories need a Clause 4 moment to show they've broken with the Thatcherite past and the Nasty Party image. Labour had to abandon their loony tendency and so must the Tories.........

Clause 4 was abandoned because about a hundred years of experience had shown that economic socialism had failed, and the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated that. The New Labour Project turned a party with it's reason for being gone, into a PR machine for gaining office by appealing to the lowest common denominator, lying and mortgaging the future. No part of the Conservatives basic premise has been exposed as nonsense in the same way, and we don't need an unconvincing, concocted PR stunt.............

But Blair changed politics in the same way that Thatcher did and he broke with the impractical, died in the wool left, so we have to break with the Thatcherite, me generation past........

Blair was a passing abherration who damaged public life in this country and shows the dangers of getting power but having no guiding principles apart from getting power for the sake of getting power.......

Is this what you wanted Harry?

http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/19 ... esto.shtml

Now they too can come to the Teletubbies tea-party...

We need MPs who will kick some bureaucratic butt, not poodles on a choke-chain from Party HQ. We must break the Party stranglehold on the HoC.

Yes, which requires the legislature to be divorced from the executive. The separation of powers, the eradication of the party whips and the removal of the 'green bench to cabinet table' career path ought to do the trick.

Do we have any powers left to separate?

The House of Commons has not simply been rendered an irrelevance by the New Labour method of governance but also by successive governments giving away powers to the EU.

The first and most important separation of power we need is between London and Brussels.

Billykwiz_ , thank you, but no, not really.

Regarding manifestos (-oes ?) - I'd guess that the Tories currently have a set of options for all the key paragraphs, and they won't make the decision on which to include until the election is actually called.
On the EU, for example, they will have to weigh up the risk of losing votes to UKIP if they are too soft, versus the risk of losing, er, I don't know who, if they are too hard. In the absence of any driving principle, other than winning, I can't see why they would make that decision too early. And, of course, if they still think they are going to get a landslide of anti-Brown, I can't see why they would make any decision at all - just leave the manifesto fuzzy, and capable of multiple interpretations according to the audience.

So what I am more after is how Maggie was presenting herself in 1977 and 1978, in order to compare to Cameron now and recently. Did Maggie in opposition really give a clear picture of how she would work out in government ?

Check her Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

Read it and compare......then you'll probably weep.....or beat hell out of the cat.

The difference could not be more stark.

I've said it before, Cameron is falling into the trap of teh Joe Clark Fallacy.

Joe Clark Canadian Priminister 1979-1979. He really was a Liberal in a blue suit. The electorate decided they prefer their liberals to wear red suits.

..................writes 'therewaslight'' who has said something I understand & with which I agree.
One can discuss tory/labour policy & manifestoes until, to the undoubted chagrin of warmist fanatics, hell freezes over...but, FFS, to what purpose?...apart from micro-fiddling & kowtowing to the 'higher authourity', our eunuch elite lack the power (& guts) to do anything the most undemanding of electorates would find positive.
I, for one, want my bloody country back!

Permanentexpat,

Couldn't agree more, we all want our Country back together with the liberties and tolerance it guaranteed. Unfortunately I do not think that our political class want to know what we think, they just want to make more money and treat us like mushrooms. Parliament has to claim back it's sovereignty fast and then challenge the EU....... It won't!!! Negative I know but I just do not know how to get the message through to the thick skulls of the politicians.

Derek