What is interesting is how much of that list could also be applied to labour. In fact it reads more like “political campaigning 101″ than anything else, remarkable that both our main parties are so incompetent at the very thing that should be central to them.

@1 Planeshift

My thoughts exactly. It’s astonishing they even had to be told.

@1 planetshift

“…..remarkable that both our main parties are so incompetent at the very thing that should be central to them”

You think so? Perhaps the outcome of the last GE have just made me (even more?) jaundiced about political parties, and our political “class” in general. As you say, much of this should be so obvious, so “natural” that you would think it hardly needs saying….. and yet….. *sighs*

Given the current state of parliament and the 3 major parties, the effects of the MP’s expenses scandal, and responses to the economic crisis, it’s difficult not to be pessimistic about prospects for the future.

Yes it’s hilarious really. After every election you always get the far left (in Labour) and far right (in the Tories) moaning that their party would have won if only they’d had a more extreme platform. Talk about blinkered!

We have a Tory party, which could just as easy be the New labour party or is that Newer labour. When you vote now you vote for the Tory ideal you think is best for you.

I was in Cardiff last week listening to Miliband and to be honest close your eyes and listen to the words and it’s Cameron without a blocked nose.

Yes – surely those very sensible rules can be appllied to everyone?

I suppose on a more positive note it is good that a Tory considers the minions within his own party as vile, rather than, as normal, most Tories viewing us oiks in that way.

Unfortunately Fred, the problem here is that the majority of people in this country are actually complacently happy with the status quo.

This is probably because the majority of people in the UK are the beneficiaries of the current world order and have it so cushy compared to the global billions living on the edge of the abyss in what we used to call the Third World.

Why would British voters want to change the political and economic system as long as it upholds our privileged position as consumers so effectively?

I would question the consensus that the Tories did badly in 2010. They got 56% of the 2-Party vote, as against Thatchers 54% in 1979. The vote share of the biggest 2 Parties combined has been in decline for 60 years & we should strip that factor out.

Paul, that’s largely because labour voters were going to the lib dems and others. Whilst it shouldn’t be regarded as a forgone conclusion, it is probable that many lib dems will return to labour in the event of FPTP remaining and the coalition lasting.

@10 planetshift

I think you are right, many will go back however unenthusiastically to Labour. I reckon quite a lot won’t tho. Of course if FPTP remains, it won’t make much difference in many places; in my constituency neither Labour or the LD’s have a hope of unseating the Tory.

If the LD’s fail to get AV through, the authoritarian voices in the Labour party are only likely to be strengthened; I think we can kiss good bye to the chances of anything radical or progressive from Labour when they start to sniff a majority in 2015.

I’d quite like my vote to count for something, but given the current position of the “big three” I can’t see me voting for any of them!

The Tory Right will never take to Mr Cameron because they correctly recognise that he is not a Tory. That is why the likes of Gerald Warner and Simon Heffer despise him. I would argue that he is not even a Conservative. He is a right-wing liberal sailing under a convenient flag. Mr Cameron is more out of the mould of the old National Liberals who were assimilated by the Conservative Party than a true Conservative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberal_Party_%28UK%29

Most political parties are inhabited by ‘ idiosyncratic, swivel-eyed ideologues ‘ because activists are invariably obsessed with one issue and assume everyone else should be equally obsessed. Witness after the last election and the anti-Europe obsessed on the Tory Right who invented an alternative reality where if the Tories had been more anti-EU, they would have won a large proportion of the UKIP voters and won an outright majority. That all sounds so logical and plausible to an obsessive because they are totally oblivious to the millions that they would have lost from the centre.

Presentation is more important than ideology for modern political parties because they are selling a message. Therefore, presentation matters not because the public are stupid but because voters will not vote in large numbers for those who scare them. People care about their jobs, unemployment, interest rates and inflation. Deliver high employment and low the latter three and the public do not care if the government spit roast babies on the floor of the House of Commons.

Interesting that 79% of the tory grassroots felt that the 2005 elction manifesto was right, Probably 79% of the labour party agreed with the ’87 manifesto, i’d imagine by 2005 the amount of people who looked back and felt the labour ’87 manifesto was right would have been about 5%, Hopefully 15 years from now ,the amount of people in the Toires who agreed with its 2005 manifesto will only be 5% too.