The David Cameron paradox: His “little black book” could form both the CON and LD manifestos
In an interview with Speccie editor, Fraser Nelson David Cameron gives an interesting insight into how his party will present itself at GE2015
“..The coalition is still strong and radical, he says, ‘but because of what I see as the problems facing Britain — and what I want to do next as Prime Minister — I feel very passionately that I want single party government’. It’s strange, I say, he doesn’t come across as a man held captive by the perfidious Liberal Democrats. ‘I don’t believe that you succeed in government by sitting around whingeing about what you can’t do,’ he says. ‘But I’m happy to tell you — and Spectator readers — privately that there’s a good list of things I have put in my little black book that I haven’t been able to do which will form the next Tory manifesto.“
That’s fine except it is exactly the message that the Lib Dems will try to put over as well. For their main hope of beating off the CON threat to most of the seats they’ll be defending is that LAB>LD tactical voting to block the Tories continues.
- In this context the more Cameron highlights the things that the LDs have stopped his party doing the more that it makes the case for such anti-CON tactical voting.
The great hope of the Tories is that in the LAB>CON battlegrounds the 2010 LDs will stay with their allegiance and that in the CON>LD ones that LAB voters will stay with the red team.
Concerted tactical voting in both sets of marginal seats makes the CON majority aim that bit more difficult.