Dr Andrew Lilico, Managing Director of Europe Economics, asks you to consider the following three accounts of why we lost in 2001 and 2005 and what the implications are...
Account 1:
In 2001 and 2005 we were perceived by the public as far too right wing. People believed that we were overly ideological, wanting to privatize everything, and were obsessed with economic and financial issues - wanting to cut taxes and slash spending. This meant that our policies on issues like health and education and tax rendered us totally unelectable (i.e. it was certain important policies that made us "right wing") . Because the Party leadership understood that our policies on public services and the economy were impossible to sell, it rightly focused on more popular policy areas such as immigration and Europe. Unfortunately our strength in these areas was insufficient to overcome our basic weakness in public services and economy-related issues, and Labour was able to leverage off its lead in these issues to underpin its own authority and undermine our credibility.
Although, in principle, Labour might eventually make itself so unpopular that a "one more push" strategy could one day work, we cannot afford to rely on this happening soon, and so must address our weakness on these core questions. The way to do this is to adopt policies that the public can understand are close enough to Blair's to be credible, but then impose on those policies our own Conservative spin - so that we will carry Blair's agenda to a Conservative conclusion. With credibility on public services and economic issues, we can then take proper advantage of our lead on other issues - moving the debate onto new and radical ground such as the environment, on which Conservatives have something unique and interesting to say that the public has no heard before.
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