Kampanj: Tories går mot förlust i London!

VAL 2016 | Tecknen var tydliga från första början. Nu ser Labour och Sadiq Khan ut att vinna borgmästarvalet i London.

Den bästa krishanteringen för ett Labour som förväntas göra dåligt ifrån sig i lokalvalen den 5 maj är just en seger i det prestigefyllda Londonvalet.

Isabel Hardman skrev i The Spectator om varför Zac Goldsmith och Conservative Party har haft en sådan dålig valrörelse I London.

[T]he countrywide councils failure will be shrugged off if Boris Johnson is replaced as London mayor by Sadiq Khan, a Labour candidate with close links to the Corbyn machine. Khan started this campaign as the underdog but is now leading the polls by a healthy margin.

[…]

Those around Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith are in despair, and think the race is as good as lost. Tories in Tooting, the constituency Khan will resign from if elected mayor, are already bracing themselves for a by-election.

Goldsmith’s campaign has struggled for a number of reasons. He doesn’t give the impression he’s all that bothered about winning — a problem given that he’s up against the scrappy, energetic Khan. Goldsmith spent his earlier years trying to avoid the media, who were always interested in the son of a billionaire. In showbiz, the photographers chase you. In politics, you need to chase the photographers. Senior Tories are frustrated that their candidate doesn’t seem to have made the switch. One says: ‘Boris won in London despite the party, but if Zac wins, it will be because of the party.’

That bodes ill for Zac, because the Conservative party has an ageing and dwindling base, especially in London. When Lynton Crosby helped Boris campaign four years ago, he complained that many Tory members were taking their afternoon naps when he needed them on the streets. Those members haven’t got any younger.

Tory MPs are ordered to help Goldsmith as much as possible. Behind the scenes, however, a number of them point to the upside of losing the capital: an impressive Khan victory could well mean a few more years of abysmal opposition from Jeremy Corbyn. They would do better to ask themselves why the party is failing so dramatically in the capital. Some of Goldsmith’s allies grumble that Khan was the biggest single beneficiary of George Osborne’s last Budget. The recent rows over welfare cuts and the EU referendum have made it much harder for London campaigners to get their message across.

Bild: Från Zac Goldsmiths kampanjhemsida BackZac2016.

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Strategi: Krama ihjäl motståndaren!

LONDON | Det skall mycket till för att en kandidat från Labour skall förlora ett borgmästarval i London.

Det är lika svårt för en konservativ politiker i London som för en republikan i New York.

Trots detta har Boris Johnson varit den perfekta konservativa borgmästaren för en storstad som London. Även om Johnson inte varit någon kopia av den tidigare republikanska borgmästaren Michael Bloomberg har de hel del gemensamt.

Båda har varit sitt eget varumärke. Båda har lyckats sälja in sin egen person snarare än deras partitillhörighet. Båda har gått sin egen väg och snarare varit pragmatiska än ideologiska.

Så när London nu skall gå till val igen i maj skall det mycket till för att Tories skall lyckas upprepa Johnsons bragd.

Den här gången kommer det att stå mellan Sadiq Khan från Labour och Zac Goldsmith från Conservative Party.

Eftersom Labour idag har en rejält impopulär partiledare i Jeremy Corbyn samtidigt som Johnson har varit mycket populär har Khan valt en strategi som går ut på att distansera sig från sin partiledare samtidigt som han talar väl om allt som det bara går att tala väl om hos sin motståndare.

James Forsyth, politisk redaktör på The Spectator, har tittat på Khan och hans kampanjstrategi.

He ran Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign in 2010 and led Labour’s fierce — and surprisingly effective —campaign in London last year. Now, his sights are set on reclaiming City Hall for Labour and persuading even those on the right that he is the natural heir to Boris Johnson.

‘I want Spectator readers to give me a second look,’ he says, when we meet in the House of Commons. He is not, he’s keen to stress, a lieutenant in Jeremy Corbyn’s army. He’s keen to ladle praise on Boris Johnson — a ‘great salesman for our city’ who made him feel ‘proud to be a Londoner’ during the Olympics. He even likes rich people. ‘I welcome the fact that we have got 140-plus billionaires in London; that’s a good thing. I welcome the fact that there are more than 400,000 millionaires; that’s a good thing.’ If you shut your eyes, it could be Peter Mandelson speaking. It is not what you would expect from someone who has always been on the soft left of Labour.

If elected mayor, he says, he would not attempt to taunt David Cameron’s government as Ken Livingstone once taunted Margaret Thatcher’s. ‘I’m not going to be somebody who puts a big banner up outside City Hall criticising the Prime Minister, he says. ‘As a Labour councillor for 12 years in Tory Wandsworth I saw the benefits of having to work with the Tories to get a good deal for my constituents.’

But this is all part of Khan’s ambitious strategy: he doesn’t just want to win, he wants to win big. He is confident about his own ability to run a campaign; to him the issue isn’t whether he’ll win — but how.

‘If we wanted to, we could just target those Labour voters and increase the turnout. We could win London just by doing that.’ But, he says, ‘That’s not the sort of mayor I want to be… I want to be everyone’s mayor.’ In particular, he wants to be that vanishingly rare thing: a Labour friend of business. ‘Bearing in mind who our leader is,’ he says, ‘it’s important to reassure the right people that he doesn’t represent all Labour thinking.’ Khan is clearly aware that his biggest vulnerability is being branded Corbyn’s candidate. He is eager to say he is not in regular contact with his party leader; the last time he saw him was when they had their photos taken together to promote the Living Wage more than a month ago.

[…]

The Tories would dearly love to turn this contest into independent-minded Zac versus Jeremy Corbyn’s man. But by love-bombing Tories and business, Khan is determined to stop them doing that. So if the Tories are to stop Labour retaking City Hall, then the Goldsmith campaign will have to match Khan’s organisation, energy and enthusiasm.

Tidskriftsomslag: The Spectator, 2 januari 2016.

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Humor: Tories inför EU-folkomröstningen!

Bid: Matt. Fler teckningar av honom i The Telegraph.

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Strategi: Torypartiet dominerar den politiska mitten!

INTERVJU | David Cameron hoppas att hans eftermäle skall bli att han ”moderniserade” Conservative Party och erövrade den politiska mitten.

I intervjun i The Spectator beskrev han också för tidskriftens medarbetare James Forsyth och Fraser Nelson sin förvåning över hur Labour utvecklats efter valförlusten och valet av Jeremy Corbyn till partiledare.

Cameron säger det inte rent ut men han tackar säkert sin lyckliga stjärna att Labour valt en partiledare långt ut på vänsterkanten samtidigt som Liberal Democrats näst intill utplånats som politisk kraft i Storbritannien.

He says he is ‘a great believer that you have got to do things properly and make sure you behave appropriately’.

[…]

Is this still the political epitaph he would like? Cameron shoots back a quick: ‘Yes, I think it is very important.’

So rather than an ‘ism’ or any great political mission, he would be content with a perhaps slightly old-fashioned sense that generally he handled events as well as he could. It is one of the curiosities of Cameron that while he is so often described as ‘a moderniser’, he actually harks back to a much earlier tradition of political leadership.

[…]

He declares that the general election was a ‘victory for Tory modernisation’ because he won votes from all manner of parties. ‘It demonstrated that you don’t have to keep tacking to the right to win votes — and, indeed, actually it’s a self-destroying ordinance if you do.’

Cameron says he is particularly proud of gay marriage, labelling it a ‘big achievement’, and talks with pride about how he still gets ‘a regular stream’ of letters. ‘As people go to get hitched, they send me a nice letter saying thank you very much.’ He is convinced that opposition to it is almost gone, remarking with great satisfaction that ‘even Nigel Farage is now in favour of gay marriage as far as I can see’. This is a change of emphasis: when he listed his proudest achievements during the Lynton Crosby-run election campaign, gay marriage didn’t feature. What a difference a majority makes.

Changing the Conservative party is something that still matters to Cameron: he wants his ‘one nation’ politics to define Conservatism even after he’s stepped down as leader. This is why he was so pleased by the speeches of his two most likely successors at Tory conference, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. ‘What surprised me, in a very positive way, was that the tone, message and overall feel of those speeches were absolutely similar. Very much that the Conservative party should be strong in the centre ground, a compassionate force.’ He says that it made him think that ‘this party really has changed in a good way. A traditionally Conservative way of responding to events and things going on in our society to make sure it is still doing a proper job.’

[…]

Ultimately, the most surprising development in British politics this year was not Cameron’s majority but Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader. Cameron admits that he ‘did not see it coming at all’. He seems genuinely puzzled — ‘I thought it was so obvious why they lost the election’ that they would plump for a ‘more sensible centre–left approach’ — but likes to credit himself with a small role in Labour’s lurch to the left. ‘One of my longstanding friends and supporters said that because the Conservatives have taken the sensible centre ground, we have left Labour with so little to camp on that they have done that classic reaction of heading off into the hills.’

Tidskrifsomslag: The Spectator den 12/19/26 december 2015.

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Front Page: Tories vinner valet 2015!

VAL 2015 | Exit polls indikerar att premiärminister David Cameron får fortsatt förtroende och kan bilda sin andra regering.

Daily Mail, 8 maj 2015

The Times, 8 maj 2015

The Daily Telegraph, 8 maj 2015

The Independent, 8 maj 2015

The Guardian, 8 maj 2015

The Sun, 8 maj 2015

Läs mer: Fler framsidor på nättidningen för The Daily Telegraph.

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Kampanj: Tories och ”white-van man” strategin!

VAL 2015 | Många av de väljare som Margaret Thatcher fick att känna sig välkomna i partiet har övergett Conservative Party för UKIP.

De är väljare som David Cameron nu måste locka tillbaka om man skall ha någon chans att vinna valet.

Hela deras strategi går ut på att locka tillbaka de väljare som står för något parlamentarikern Robert Halfon kallar ”white-van Conservatism”.

”White-van”-väljare, eller ”aspirational working-class voters”, refererar till väljare, inte så sällan småföretagare, som lockades av Thatcher på 1980-talet och Tony Blair på 90-talet.

The Economist skriver:

Over one in ten people who voted Conservative in 2010 have since left the party for UKIP, which detests the European Union and immigration. The defectors are typically male, white and working-class. Lynton Crosby, the Tories’ campaign chief, reckons that the party’s typical target voter earns about £15,000 ($23,000) a year—40% less than the national average—reads the Sun on Sunday, a right-wing tabloid, and values economic and national security above all else.

This analysis colours the entire Conservative campaign. In an interview on April 6th Mr Cameron urged UKIP voters to “come home”. At the party’s manifesto launch on April 14th, he described the Tories as “the real party of working people”. Two weeks later he called it the party of “the grafters and the roofers and the retailers and the plumbers”. He talks endlessly about security.

The Tories have courted white-van man in their manifesto and in the promises they have made on the campaign trail. The prime minister has pledged to create 50,000 new apprenticeships, expand free child care and take those earning the minimum wage out of income tax. He even promises to legislate against any increases in the government’s main revenue-raising taxes until 2020. He has revived Margaret Thatcher’s totemic bid for working-class support by promising to extend the “right to buy” social housing to tenants of housing associations.

The pursuit of van-driving voters also partly accounts for the Conservatives’ frequent dire warnings about the risk to Britain’s economic and political stability of a Labour government propped up by the separatist, left-wing Scottish National Party. Polls suggest UKIP supporters worry more about this than most.

Bild: David Cameron talar till anhängare i Abingdon, södra England, 4 april, 2015. Reuters.

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Böcker: ”5 Days to Power” av Rob Wilson!

VAL 2015 | Koalitionen mellan Conservative Party och Liberal Democrats kommer (sannolikt) hålla ända fram till valet 2015.

Men med den misstänksamhet man i Storbritannien känner inför koalitioner var det många som inte trodde att en regeringskonstellation skulle överleva en hel mandatperiod, oavsett vilka partier som skulle ingå.

Och valresultatet gav pessimisterna vatten på sin kvarn. Inget av partierna var riktigt nöjda med utgången av valet.

Regeringspartiet Labour, som fick både färre röster och färre mandat än Tories, var den uppenbara förloraren band de två statsbärande partierna. Trots detta hade de konservativa inte lyckats få tillräckligt med röster för att bilda en egen majoritetsregering.

Och valrörelsens till synes stora uppstickare, Liberaldemokraterna, överraskade både sig själva och oberoende bedömare med att tappa mandat. Det var en stor besvikelse för ett parti som hoppats göra sitt stora politiska genombrott detta år.

Att man i Storbritannien är ovan vid koalitioner kan man se även på bokutgivningen. Till och med de förhandlingar som fördes mellan de konservativa och liberalerna och mellan liberalerna och Labour har genererat böcker från aktiva i inom respektive parti.

Den konservativa parlamentsledamoten Rob Wilson och hans parlamentskollega David Laws, en av Liberaldemokraternas förhandlare, gav var för sig ut 5 Days to Power respektive 22 Days in May redan 2010.

Sedan var det dags för Andrew Adonis, som var en i förhandlingsdelegationen för Labour, att 2013 publicera sin syn på förhandlingsspelet i 5 Days in May.

Så här sammanfattar Wilson den historiska bakgrunden till dagens unika koalition:

[…]

Bild: 5 Days to Power av Rob Wilson.

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Strategi: Att besegra en fiende!

KAMPANJ | Liberal Democrats var partiet som inför förra valet kunde suga upp väljare som var trötta på de två huvudmotståndarna.

Inför valet 2015 kan det vara UK Independence Party som blir alternativet för missnöjda väljare.

Risken är den samma för både Conservative Party och Labour; att man tappar så pass många väljare till UKIP att man inte kan bilda en egen majoritetsregering.

Både Tories och Labour slipar därför på strategier för hur man skall kunna underminera förtroendet för UKIP. Men inget parti vill vara allt för tydliga med sina attacker eftersom riskerar irritera de av ”sina” egna väljare som uppfattar UKIP som ett alternativ.

Rafael Behr, på tidskriften New Statesman, skriver om partiernas våndor inför utmanaren Nigel Farage och hans UKIP.

Downing Street is becoming more aware of the limitations of “Vote Farage; get Miliband” as a message. One No 10 source tells me: “It will have to be more sophisticated than that.” The general election campaign will stress economic dependability. Cameron will be sold as the only candidate who can be relied upon not to poison the recovery with snake-oil policy prescriptions, whether bottled as Farage’s fearmongering nationalism or as Miliband’s wealth-destroying retro-socialism.

[…]

On the Tory side there is growing confidence that Ukip support can only decline as the party acquires a disreputable air. The source of many press reports that embarrass Farage is Conservative Campaign HQ, where researchers scour pamphlets and social media for unsavoury remarks by Ukip candidates. Tory strategists recognise that undermining Farage is a job best undertaken at arm’s length. Too many direct attacks by Cameron would lend Ukip the status of equal adversary and risk reminding Tory dissenters of the times they have felt insulted by their own leader. “We need the racist thing to seep into public consciousness,” says an ally of the Prime Minister. “But it can’t be us saying it.”

[…]

Labour has been slow in waking up to that dynamic. At first, the opposition tended to view Farage’s strength as a helpful disruption of Tory support – a family feud on the right that eased Miliband’s path to Downing Street. Then it became clear that Ukip was attracting support from older, working-class voters who felt neglected by Labour in government, especially over immigration policy, but remained culturally immune to voting Tory. At that point, Miliband’s allies conceded that there was a potential hazard down the line but insisted it was not big enough to cost Labour seats in the 2015 general election. Only in recent weeks have aides started voicing concern that Ukip is dragging the whole political debate on to terrain that the Labour leader finds inhospitable.

[…]

Ukip’s reach may be limited by its status as a vehicle for protest votes but that gives it power to define the terms of protest in ways that harm the constitutionally recognised main opposition party. Labour’s priority is to look like a government-in-waiting but part of that image requires also looking like the main destination for people who don’t like the incumbents.

[…]

Instead the party is lumped in with the Tories and Lib Dems as part of a shabby establishment stitch-up, with the added baggage of a reputation for economic mismanagement.

It is an old opposition conundrum: how to fashion a message that is dramatic enough to represent a credible alternative to the status quo, yet responsible enough to withstand scrutiny as a potential programme for government. Ukip isn’t bothering with the second part of the equation (which will be its undoing next year), but Farage is hogging the rhetoric of change and upheaval. His incendiary nationalism burns up the oxygen of publicity that Miliband needs to illuminate his milder offer of soft-left populism. That all suits Cameron to the extent that he is in the business of promising security through continuity.

While Labour and Tories have opposing reasons for wanting to see Farage thwarted, the basis for their arguments is the same. Downing Street aides and Miliband advisers both speak of the need to impress upon voters how high the stakes will be in 2015; how the ultimate question is whether Cameron is allowed to continue as Prime Minister – with one side warning that another term of Conservatism would finish off hope of fair rewards for all and the other warning that Labour would guarantee national bankruptcy. What they want, above all, is for the public to view the general election as a two-party race, with the Lib Dems and Ukip as sirens, luring in wasted votes and thereby abetting the real enemy.

[…]

The threat that situation poses to Cameron lies in the electoral arithmetic – Ukip can cost him seats. For Miliband, it is a problem of momentum – Ukip has stolen his insurgent thunder. The Tories spent too long chasing Ukip’s agenda; Labour spent too long ignoring it. Farage’s bubble will not suddenly burst. More likely, the air will seep out slowly over the coming year, by which time both Cameron’s and Miliband’s prospects of winning a majority may already be blown away.

Tidskriftsomslag: New Statesman den 23-29 maj 2014.

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Strategi: Tories behöver attrahera fler arbetare!

IMAGE | Borgerligheten i Storbritannien är idag lika splittrad som vänstern var på 1980-talet. Gör man inte något nu riskerar man en valförlust vid nästa val.

Om premiärminister David Cameron förlorar nästa val kommer det till stor del bero på att väljarna har övergett de konservativa för UK Independence Party och deras partiledare Nigel Farage.

Detta är anledningen till att allt fler förespråkar någon form av samarbete mellan Conservative Party och UKIP.

Problemet är bara att ingen vet hur ett sådant samarbete skall se ut. Än mindre kan någon garantera att det inte får negativa konsekvenser för Torypartiet.

James Forsyth, politisk redaktör på The Spectator tror inte att Torypartiet kan locka in UKIP i någon form av öppet samarbete.

Istället borde man satsa på att bli bättre på att locka över traditionella arbetarväljare till partiet – en målgrupp som UKIP aktivt uppvaktar.

At present, the main Tory strategy for dealing with Ukip is to hope and pray. They hope that the Ukip vote will collapse as polling day nears. They pray that ultimately Ukip voters will balk at putting the pro-Europe, pro-Human Rights Act, pro-green-energy Ed Miliband into No. 10. Tory strategists point to how Ukip polled close to 20 per cent in the European election in 2009 and then got only 3 per cent of the vote at the general election less than a year later — they see it as a soufflé party that will crumble at the first firm tap. They are confident that voters can distinguish ‘between elections that really matter and elections that don’t’.

[…]

A better solution to the Ukip problem is for Cameron to seek a pact not with the Ukip leadership but with its voters — including those who are ex-Labour. If Cameron plays this right, voting Ukip could become the gateway drug to voting Tory for disillusioned Labour voters. Having already slipped the bond of tribal allegiance, they are more likely to be open to persuasion that the Tories are capable of representing them.

To do this, Cameron doesn’t need a new European policy—the pledge of an in-out referendum has not made Ukip go away. But he does need to understand that Ukip is successfully pitching itself as a party of the working class. It now has the support of a fifth of C2DE, the groups that make up blue-collar Britain.

These voters worry that the benefits system has been corrupted. So the Tory emphasis on welfare reform does appeal to them. George Osborne’s benefits cap has addressed some of the most egregious abuses of the system, and I understand that the Tories will have more to say about tough-love welfare next week. But the same voters also think that big companies are making profits at their expense. So Ed Miliband’s new populist socialism — with its promise to cap energy bills — also strikes a chord.

Tidskriftsomslag: The Spectator, 28 september 2013.

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Strategi: Kan David Cameron stoppa UKIP?

IMAGE | David Cameron och Tories har blivit alltmer oroade över UKIP:s förmåga att locka konservativa väljare.

Partiledaren Nigel Farage en naturlighet som går hem även bland väljare som inte tänker rösta på UK Independence Party.

Medan mer etablerade politiker har blivit alltmer slätstrukna och rädda för att säga något som kan skrämma mittenväljarna väljer Farage snarare att gå den diametralt motsatta vägen.

Han verkar snarare anstränga sig att inte framstå som ”vanlig”.

Han klär sig ofta i dubbelknäppt kostym eller i tweed. Han dricker gärna öl med väljarna på de mest udda tider under dagen. Och han reser gärna första klass och försöker inte dölja att han har haft framgång i livet.

Än viktigare är att UKIP:s politik ligger väldigt nära vad den genomsnittlige konservative politikern och väljaren tycker mellan skål och vägg.

UKIP vill att Storbritannien lämnar EU. Man vill ha lägre skatter och avskaffande av alla gröna subventioner. Man är skeptiska till den rådande invandrarpolitiken och vill öka försvarsanslagen.  

Inte konstigt att Tories är i desperat behov av en strategi som kan neutralisera partiet.

James Forsyth skriver i The Spectator:

In recent days, the Tories’ anti-Ukip strategy has begun to emerge. It has three main elements. The first of these is emphasising to voters that the next general election is about whether Cameron or Miliband is Prime Minister. The second is stressing that the Tories are the only party who can actually deliver a referendum on Europe or control of immigration. The third, in a change of tactics, is an end to insulting Ukip. No. 10 made clear on Monday that Ken Clarke was off-message when he attacked Ukip as ‘clowns’ at the weekend. Instead, the Tories plan to let others do this work for them. The fourth estate will be pointed towards any Ukip candidate who comes close to meeting Cameron’s description of them as mostly ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’.

When I put this strategy to Farage, his response was, ‘short term, the first one would worry me more. If Miliband comes up with a very left-wing [manifesto], that potentially could be hurtful.’ He tried to dismiss the second point by saying that Labour will be offering a referendum by 2015 and that ‘Mr Cameron attempting to campaign on immigration will be a very major mistake indeed’ if, as Farage expects, there is a huge spike in Romanian and Bulgarian migrants.

[…]

Ukip is changing as a party. It is becoming a more hard-headed, pragmatic outfit. Farage warns that ‘You don’t want to have policies that distract from your main objectives in life.’ He wants to drop the 2010 proposal for a flat tax, which is attacked by both Labour and the Lib Dems as a policy that would see the poor pay more and the rich less. He plans to replace it with a two-rate tax system, with one set at 40p, which will, in Farage’s words, be ‘seen to be fairer’.

Many predicted that coalition would see a return to two-party politics. But what we’re seeing in England today is the emergence of four-party politics. Ukip is moving to fill the protest party vacancy created by the Liberal Democrats, while simultaneously winning over disillusioned Tory and Labour voters.

The question is, can an anti-politics party succeed in the long run? If it can, then the political explosion Ukip is about to spark could blow traditional politics apart.

Bild: Tidskriftsomslaget är The Spectator den 4 maj 2013. På omslaget har Stephen Collins avbildat Farage som Guy Fawkes.

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