'Big Tent' Tories

Early on Tony Blair decided that the way to electoral success was to be perceived to adopt the centre(-right) ground figuring that enough traditional supporters could be retained for the electoral arithmetic to pilot him to Downing Street. The tribal nature of party politics meant that a majority did stay on board, especially prior to the Iraq war, despite having in straight policy terms arguably greater affinity with the Lib Dem policy programme, as the GE voting intentions expressed in the traditionally pro-Labour 'New Statesman' suggested.

It seems like David 'call me Dave' Cameron is attempting the same tactic. Sod principles and core values, lets pretend to be New Labour-lite. Make announcements, but crucially not policy itself, that **suggests** a shift to centre politics. This is surely premised on the belief that the Torygragh vote has no-where else to go and that UKIP and [God-forbid] the BNP are not only unpalatable choices but FPTP voting makes voting for them a wasted vote.

Will the Tory press let him get away with this ? Still it's good to see right-wing commentators like Simon Heffer and Melanie Phillips and their ilk foaming at the mouth. How far can he go before the grassroots and parliamentarians revolt ? What happens, as may be starting to happen, that the opinion polls aren't drastically improving the Tory position ?

The public should be remined of the volte-farce that is Cameron's current pitch based as it is on his prior authorship of the dismal, reactionary list of grumbles about modern society that was the 2005 Tory GE Manifesto.

For the Lib Dems I think it's a case of presenting a Liberal case opposed to the other two authoritarian parties, remaining steadfastly independent and playing to their strengths of civil liberties, progressive taxation, environmental concerns and diffusing power from the centre et al.

Time to start puncturing that tent !