The final lap: a pre-conference round up (Part 1)

Back at the start of August I promised you a round-up of the political position as we go into the final Parliamentary term of the election. August has been and gone, and I've failed to deliver! The truth is it grew. From being a look at the last year, it became a look at the last 4 years, and the Wells version (or at least, the first draft of the Wells version) of how we got from Labour winning an unprecedented third term of office to Labour starring into what looks like a landslide defeat... and what is left in the final few months that could change that. It's a hefty piece, so it's split into five-ish parts that I'll publish over the coming week.

To get the best idea of how things will pan out over the next nine months and at the general election, we need to start by looking at how we got where we are. If we can understand what happened to put Labour behind we can make some good predictions at how sticky that position is. Four and a bit years a go Labour were re-elected for a third term, three points ahead of the Conservatives (albeit on a very low overall percentage of the vote), move forward to 2009 and Labour are 13 to 16 points behind in the polls. What happened to turn things around? I'm going to go through the last four years, concentrating on what I think are the four defining events (in terms of party politics at least) and see how we got where we are. By definition, that's going to be mostly about the Labour government, but to start with, I'm going to look at their opposition.

December 2005 - David Cameron and the Conservative Party

I am a great believer in the idea that oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them (albeit with the caveat that oppositions are also quite capable of losing elections). If we go all the way back to 2005, was that an election that Labour won, or one the Conservatives lost? While I don't want to dwell too much on the last election, but I don't think it's too controversial to say that the Conservatives at least contributed to their own defeat. That isn't necessarily a criticism of Michael Howard and Lynton Crosby, they started out with a pretty poor set of cards and played them the best they could, but the Conservatives in 2005 were still widely seen as a nasty, right wing party with a narrow set of insular concerns. The most telling polling from the 2005 election campaign was that conducted privately for Lord Ashcroft, which each day asked people if they recalled hearing the Conservative Party saying or doing anything. Day after day people recalled that they had been talking about immigration, regardless of whether Michael Howard had actually been talking about cleaner hospitals, tax cuts, more police or whatever else. The Conservative's 2005 election offering was defined in the public's mind as being about immigration - an issue where the public actually agree with them (back in 2005 it was often the only issue where polls showed the Conservatives preferred over Labour), but an issue that reinforced the Conservative image as being bigoted, selfish, backwards looking, insular and generally "the nasty party".

This was further entrenched by the public perception of Michael Howard as being sinister. Asked to describe the Conservative campaign, people opted for the words negative (41%) and aggressive (38%).

Our first step on the road from 2005 to here was a move away from that - the election of David Cameron in December 2005, and the subsequent changes to the Conservative party image. This is really two seperate, but intertwined, developments, a more attractive leader, and a more attractive image. David Cameron's approval ratings remain resolutely positive three and a half years after becoming Tory leader and, perhaps more importantly, people like him. It was the one thing that the burdens of office never took from Tony Blair, whatever proportion of people thought he was dishonest, polls consistently showed he was still seen as likeable. That is not something that should be underestimated.

Cameron becoming Conservative leader had an immediate effect upon the polls, putting the two parties level pegging. However, the change in the party image was a more gradual process. For a long time the Conservative party was seen as just as right-wing as it was under Michael Howard. While David Cameron was always seen as more centrist, only this year have polls appeared showing that the Conservative party is now seen as more centrist. They are also seen as more caring and understanding - since 2003 Populus have asked the same party image questions in their conference poll, and the improvement in perceptions of the Conservative party are clear - in 2003 28% of people thought the Conservatives understood how ordinary people lived their lives, that is now 41%. 40% think the Conservatives share their values, compared to 30% in 2003. 43% think they care about the problems of ordinary people, compared to 34% in 2003. Note that the increase is not just a softening of the Tory image - on the less value orientated measures of competence and unity, the Conservative increase is even higher.

For perhaps the best illustration that the Conservatives have managed to detoxify their brand we need to go back to just after the 2005 election and a YouGov poll carried out for the Centre for Social Justice. Back then only 42% of people would even consider voting Conservative. More recently the Conservatives have actually been at 42% in the polls.

Here's the first factor in the turnaround then - under Cameron the Conservatives have reached the point where they are at least eligible to win again. That isn't enough though, so in the next part I'll turn to the government and the 2007 "Brown Bounce".