Tories: ConservativeHome too right-wing for us


by Sunny Hundal    
9:42 am - September 4th 2009

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In the clearest sign that many Tory modernisers find ConservativeHome’s editorial policy too right-wing, they are launching a new project.

“Conservative modernisers are developing a comms offensive geared towards wooing a new breed of Tories as the general election approaches. Party insiders are developing the Bright Blue project in a bid to pull in floating voters,” reports PR Week magazine.

Part of that strategy involves a new website which, according to David Singleton, is being masterminded by Jonty Olliff-Cooper, a former aide to Tory strategy director Steve Hilton.

‘It’s definitely not for the traditional rank and file,’ said Olliff-Cooper. ‘We’re primarily aiming at people who are not sure for which party they would vote.’

Olliff-Cooper said a new website would be ‘part of the mix but not the most important part’.

He added: ‘ConservativeHome doesn’t always reflect accurately the genuine opinions of everybody in the party or around the party. But it’s really good and we wouldn’t want to copy it or usurp it – we’re working with it.’

Heh.

Well, there is Fiona Melville’s Platform 10 but that hasn’t really taken off. The Conservative Party’s own The Blue Blog also lies bereft of readership or comments.

I suspect the problem for Tory modernisers is that ConservativeHome regularly runs polls of readers who inevitably offer opinions to the right of Thatcher. These polls are regularly reported in the helpful right-wing press and end up putting pressure on Cameron from the right, while putting off centrists.

Once the Tories come to power this will be even more potent, with the press looking to jump on any poll that looks even slightly critical of the leadership. The website will turn into a regular headache.

The comments of one source are telling:

ConservativeHome is seen as too right wing – it jars against the modern, progressive Conservatism for which David Cameron stands. There needs to be a place for progressive Tories.

What, all five of them?

The problem for the Tories is that setting up a blog isn’t just a matter of creating space – you also have to get the strategy (for promotion and discussion, and engagement with other bloggers) right. You also have to know the technology and be super-ambitious.

The failure so far of numerous Tory blog projects, and their online strategy in general (there’s a FT article detailing this I can’t find), suggests these qualities aren’t exactly abundant in their midst. Tim Montgomerie may be your typical neo-con but he knows better than most how to edit and promote a group-political-blog.

I doubt this will disturb the Tory online pecking order.

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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


1. Alisdair Cameron

Maybe they could adopt LabourList, as it’s too right-wing for many of us on the Left…

Interesting article although I think the idea of ConHome and its polls being unhelpful is a little simplistic. I recall that ConHome actually refused to publish the results of a poll critical of Cameron during the 2007 Conference until a while afterwards so as not to undermine his leadership at what was then a difficult period. Their regular polls also seem to show satisfaction with Cameron amongst the grass roots (probably because he looks like leading the Tories to victory).

The problem for the Conservatives is that their presence on the internet has been entirely taken over by people who really belong in UKIP/BNP – if you don’t believe me look at how they’re fawning over Farage. When your main party website is full of people saying how they’re going to vote against the party’s candidate in an election you’ve got a problem.

Add to it the fact that Hague has already proved conclusively that wingnut Europhobia is a great way to lose an election (and Cameron is well aware of it) and you realise they’re in a mess.

There is no, as in zero, enthusiasm for the tories among the electorate. What there is, is hatred of the government. If Hannan says a few more really offensively stupid things, or (less likely) Gordon actually manages to do a couple of sensible ones (cancelling identity cards totally and properly would be a good start – why on earth do they cling to this idea?), the prospect of power for Cameron could fade fast. Remember how we all thought Neil Kinnock was going to walk it? With a political system dominated by two nasty and utterly incompetent parties, I’m dreaming of a hung parliament and new voting system as the price for LibDem support.

4. Guido Fawkes

87% of ConHomies thing Cameron is brilliant. Very unhelpful. Not. You are assuming the people who post in comments are the people who read blogs.

Of some 200,000 comments on my blog made in the last few months, something like 50% of them were made by 50 people. My readership (absolute figures) is over 100,000 people, so half the comments are made by 0.05% of the readership.

Comments are not representative of the readership on blogs. If you set your editorial course in the direction charted by your comment makers your blog will hit the rocks.

5. Daniel Hoffmann-Gill

Alisdair Cameron makes an excellent point. And I don’t know if it was just me but reading this post and considering the impact of a foul Tory regime…urgh…made me quite ill.

Oh and to the fat drunk, conservatives will never, ever be homies…ever.

That’s a good point Guido, the polls from their members on ConHome do seem to show that Cameron’s standings have rocketed and been stable in the heady highs of people that are satisfied with Cam, additionally it might be best to have a high profile contradictory angle that the Conservatives will have to be carefull of, we’ve all seen in Labour what happens when the grassroot voice is subjugated and a fake façade is spun by the spinners to make it seem like “everything” is all right. Behind the doors feuding and fighting results in a terribad government that had promise. Hopefully the independent nature of the net will stop that from happening and call out people who slither about in the shadows.

7. Donut Hinge Party

Hang on, if you can’t judge a forum by its commentators, what are you judging it on? The whole point of Con home is almost as if it’s trying to create a social network – they discuss policy, they rant about Europe and Muslims, and they have a “Grass Roots” manifesto. It’s almost as if they’re a focus group For Hire, lurking around Tory HQ saying “Listen to us!” If you discount the views of the wingnuts, then essentially ConHome just becomes Tim Montgomerie and Jonathan Isaby plus whichever bits they drag from other newspapers.

Guido has his own problems – largely because his comments often reflect the gravity and dignity of a YouTube Video – although with slightly more homophobic content – they’re are a cheering peanut gallery.

ConHome sells itself as a place for Conservative Support, so if they’re not succeeding in winning over front (or even back) bench members, it makes a mockery of their proposition.

8. Martin Coxall

Conservatives are pragmatists. As long as Dave is on course to win big next May, grassroots disquiet will remain a murmur.

We are ruthless, however. When a party leader begins to underperform, we take action. (Note to Labour: you will pay a heavy price for your lack of cullions.)

But for as long as (and ONLY as long as) we’re riding high in the polls, Dave can expect loyalty from ConHome.

9. Martin Coxall

@Donut Hinge Party

It’s well known, for example, that ConHome comments threads are regularly stalked by UKIP trolls trying and succeeding in starting fights over Europe. Also, fringe elements of the party find a voice at ConHome that they won’t find anywhere else.

So, it’s arguably true that ConHome better represents the British Conservative diaspora than it represents any middle ground of post-Thatcherite Toryism.

Guido – you don’t seem to get it. The readers of ConHome have been supportive because they have no alternative and they’re desperate for power.

On policy however these ppl differ wildly from the party leadership. As Sunder at Fabians has rightly said, the modernisers colonise the top but there aren’t that many.

Cameron accepts climate change consensus, isn’t going to cut taxes soon, has expressed support for the NHS, isn’t going to be as anti-EU and anti-centralisation as the Hannan fanbase want. In short, he’s going to offer a lot of centrist disappointment. Then watch th ConservativeHome comments and polls fizzle.

And the less said about your commenters the better really. At least you keep the deranged off the streets.

#3: “Remember how we all thought Neil Kinnock was going to walk it?”

That was the general election on 8 April 1992, right? But then few expected that triumphalist rally in Sheffield just days before the election:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G8F-4du3rQ

“So what did cost Labour the 1992 election? Worcester has no doubt that it was the Sheffield rally, just eight days before polling day. On the eve of the rally, three polls came out, showing a seven-point lead, a six-point lead and a four-point lead for Labour. That day, Labour peaked.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/199812110020

This is the Wikipedia entry for the Sheffield rally, which gives a fair summary IMO as to why the rally was an electoral disaster. The entry also (correctly) reports that in Sheffield, the view was that the rally had been a huge success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Rally

Well done, Sheffield Labour Party.

Appropriate lessons about that debacle can be drawn by other parties.

12. Guido Fawkes

Always angry Sunny. Chill. Be happy.

It seems I mistakenly assumed your line was that Cameron was a crypto-Thatcherite with secret plans to dismantle the welfare state and crush the working class.

Are you saying Dave is a centrist who will disappoint some of the loons who make comments on ConHom?

Many of my blog’s comments, like yours, are made by windowlicking loonies, they don’t set policy or even editorial direction.

13. Alisdair Cameron

@ Sunny, (11)

On policy however these ppl differ wildly from the party leadership

Sounds familiar to the left and the centre-left among us, having the party supposedly for us being led by people wildly different from us, with objectionable views, and pursuing policies that more properly belong with those we’d traditionally have associated with our foes…

14. Disorganised1

Chris ~ “wingnut Europhobia” as you call it would seem to be what won UKIP second place in the recent Euro elections.

Until the Liberal Democrats drop their commitment to make GB a fringe party in Europe, they will remain a fringe party in England.

The drive of the whips in Parliament is dominating all political thought, back-bench MPs are forced through as lobby fodder, and told they have to like it or they’ll be forced out. The Conservative Party seems to be taking a different line, as the recent open primary in Truro shows.

As for people who comment on blogs – well, we’re all just feeding the egos of the writers, how often does serious debate take place ?

@Sunny. But substantively, in terms of actual policies, Cameron follows some Hannan lines. Not that Hannan is especially Thatcherite. There isn’t anything left or right about having elected police chiefs, for example.

16. Dick the Prick

Window licking loonies – gaddzooks!

Guido: Are you saying Dave is a centrist who will disappoint some of the loons who make comments on ConHom?

Yes. Furthermore I think that the aim of ConHome is to try and push party leadership further rightwards by over-stating the extent those views are prevalent among Tory supporting voters.

Also, you may be happy to call commenters on your blog ‘window-licking-loonies’ but I wouldn’t with LibCon. We have good discussions here, thanks. :)

18. Racist sock puppet

TORIES FOR PROGRESS!

Trustafarian Wisteria Cameron of the Bollinger Club is the Jeremy Cardhouse of our age!

19. Daniel Hoffmann-Gill

Oh dear.

Until last year, I used to dip into Conservative Home from time to time. I must say the discussion there of economic issues is a bit funny, peculiar. It’s all pre-keynesian. On this perennial divide, try Krugman on Keynes v Neoclassicals
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html

Or that superb book just out by Robert Skidelsky: Keynes – The Return of the Master (Allen Lane 2009)

John Redwood was quoted in Conservative Home last year as saying the credit crunch and the recession were caused by interest rates being kept too high for too long. ROFL !

I posted a note there asking how then did he account for the house-price bubble and the consumer debt mountain of £1.4 tillion. My post soon got censored out. Apparently it’s wrong to criticise Conservative “big beasts”. So much for a free and open exchange of opinions.

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”
John Stuart Mill (1866)

@21

Bob B – You are misrepresenting Redwood. He often says that the problem was that interest rates were kept too low for too long and then, when it was obvious the bubble was about to burst, they were kept too high for too long.

@Sunny

You’re correct in the article. Setting up a website isn’t just about buying the webspace. Labour found that when they tried to get LabourList going with Dolly. I think the reason sites such as LibCon and ConHome work is because they are independent of the parties. I may disagree with most of what is written on here, but I can’t accuse the site of toeing the party line. The ‘top-down’ approaches that dominate party-political appraoches don’t work on the internet. People don’t want to be told what to think. They like to read different angles and make up their own mind.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    : Tories: ConservativeHome too right-wing for us http://bit.ly/kOnor

  2. Mark Pack

    Liberal Conspiracy » Tories: ConservativeHome too right-wing for us http://bit.ly/95MSR < Agree about importance of Tim Montgomerie’s skill

  3. sunny hundal

    Tory modernisers say ConservativeHome too right-wing for them. But will an alternative succeed? http://is.gd/2Slgl

  4. Leon Green

    RT @pickledpoliticsTory modernisers say ConservativeHome too right-wing for them. But will an alternative succeed? http://is.gd/2Slgl

  5. David Singleton

    RT @pickledpolitics Tory modernisers say ConservativeHome too right-wing for them. But will an alternative succeed? http://is.gd/2Slgl

  6. Liberal Conspiracy

    : Tories: ConservativeHome too right-wing for us http://bit.ly/kOnor

  7. Mark Pack

    Liberal Conspiracy » Tories: ConservativeHome too right-wing for us http://bit.ly/95MSR < Agree about importance of Tim Montgomerie’s skill

  8. Twitted by markpack

    [...] This post was Twitted by markpack [...]

  9. sunny hundal

    Tory modernisers say ConservativeHome too right-wing for them. But will an alternative succeed? http://is.gd/2Slgl

  10. Leon Green

    RT @pickledpoliticsTory modernisers say ConservativeHome too right-wing for them. But will an alternative succeed? http://is.gd/2Slgl

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