The huge disconnect between the party and its supporters?

Looking at the table above, which is from data just published from the latest ICM poll, you could easily conclude that David Cameron and his close-knit team are mad to have made climate change into such an issue and one on which they are proposing unpopular policies.

For as can be seen just 11% of Tory supporters rank this as the most important issue at the moment compared with between 23-25% saying health, crime or immigration.

Of Labour supporters 15% rate climate change as their highest concern while with the Lib Dems the proportion is 23%.

Yet this emphasis on an area that is not rated very highly by Tory supporters does not seem to be affecting their desire to vote for the party.

The second table from the same poll compares current voting intention with how respondents said they did on May 5th 2005.

So the Tories are retaining 96% of their 2005 vote but are also picking up sizeable chunks of Labour and Lib Dem supporters. This might be partly because of the Tory moves on climate change.

Notice that the total of 2005 Tory supporters saying they are now opting for UKIP is precisely zero. In fact the poll found just 2 people in its sample of 1,010 who said they would support the anti-EU party.

As I have argued here before there is nowhere else that Tories can go and the Cameron gang can take the party in almost any direction they want.

This might not go down well at the Daily Telegraph or on CONhome but until traditional Tories start abandoning the party then the leadership has nothing to worry about.

Mike Smithson