Posted on 02/06/2005 5:40:26 PM PST by quidnunc
Michael Howard’s election guru has told him that the Conservatives have no hope of winning the next general election.
The crushing blow from Lynton Crosby, the Australian campaign expert hired by Mr Howard at great expense to bring about a surprise Tory victory, came as Mr Howard attempted yesterday to put immigration and asylum at the heart of the party’s election campaign.
The opposition leader was accused of desperation for his personal pledge to restrict immigration to Britain, to be presented in a speech today as a Tory vote-winner.
The Times has learnt of an extraordinary power tussle at Conservative campaign headquarters after Mr Crosby contradicted advice from Lord Saatchi, the party co-chairman, who believes that the Tories should fight to win, or at least deny Labour a majority.
Mr Crosby has concluded from the party’s private polling, showing Labour with a comfortable six-point lead, that the Tories cannot win the next election, expected on May 5. He believes that Mr Howard should concentrate on a face-saving attempt to increase his strength in Parliament by 25 to 30 seats.
His findings are similar to those in a Populus poll last weekend, which suggested that Labour is heading for another 160-seat landslide and that the Tories may lose seats. The poll, along with the Tories’ private data, have torpedoed persistent claims from Lord Saatchi that the Conservatives are doing far better in the seats they need to win to secure a majority at the next election.
The battle of wills between Lord Saatchi, the advertising expert who helped Margaret Thatcher to win three elections, and Mr Crosby, an architect of John Howard’s four successive election victories in Australia, has created a febrile atmosphere at the party’s headquarters only weeks before the campaign is expected to begin. A senior Tory source told The Times last night: “It is terrible for us out there. The polling suggests at best we can win up to 25 seats. But Saatchi is telling Howard that the election is all to play for and that we should fight to win the 165 seats required to give us a majority.
-snip-
Michael Howard is a feckless crapweasel. Everyone recognizes him as an opportunist with no core beliefs. He is a disgrace to Maggie Thatcher's party.
Anyon who watches Prime Minister's Question Time on C-SPAN can see Tony Blair clean Michael Howard's clock regularly. Labour won't fall unless there's a huge scandal or a general strike.
This is the ntural result of running a Michael Moore conservatuve platform. A cocktail of paleoconservative (or ante-Winston Churchill) and me-too-ism "Wet" stance on foreign policy and in particular towards the United States is bound to end up with this state.
Here's what Melanie Phillips has to say:
The Tories continue to damage themselves — maybe irrevocably —by failing to grasp the nature and full extent of this culture war and what side of it to be on.
The problem is, I get the impression that Britain as a country has become so quixotic that it's difficult to predict how they will react from issue to issue and day to day.
At times the Brits strike me as being emotionally unhinged.
It is a consistent surprise that it was Tony Blair that recognized the seriousness of the WOT, and dragged his party in line behind him to much grumbling. It is doubtful given the state of britain today that anyone but someone from Labor could have survived thus far the anti-war sentiment. The Tories had an opportunity we did not have. They could have secured a legacy in helping to unite their country at a critical period. Surely with a Republican President that was never going to happen in our country with the '60's radicals still living.
Instead the tories decided to side with our Dems.
I have no idea what will happen in these elections but the only one I have respect for is Blair. I wouldn't trust any other to risk what he has in war, nor would I ever trust someone as obviously lacking of core as Howard.
I personally think the Britain of Margaret Thatcher's times still maintained a degree of sensibility. The end of Cold War and effective formal end of the British Empire maked by handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China made British people realize their days of world importance appear to be over, and in a desperate measure to correct this, they have taken two poison paths: either the "Jolly Good Independent anti-US pre-WWII Tory" stance or "All the way to Brussels" stance (in my heart I think most of these anti-Bush and -US Poms are secretly hoping to revive the days when Britain was "an empire of which the sun never sets"). I have seen this mentality from discussion boards like ( http://www.voy.com/29530/ ) in which Euro enthusiasts and High Tories are united in their rage at a former colony having displaced the old "Mother Country" in world influence.
Thatcher's Britain is gone for good - and this is a bad news. Britain is now what West Germany was in 1982 and with each passing day I sense it will become more like where Germany stands.
Ping to okie01!
Didn't they have a campaign to attract Muslim voters?
They're going to pass a law to make it a crime to defame a religion, thereby making a frank debate on Islam and its undesirable aspects' effect on British society difficult.
Tories seem to be taking after American paleos... or is it the other way around... yeech.
They're all fiscal socialists in the EU, but Blair at least seems to be cut from the Joe Lieberman cloth.
Who're "they"? Tories or Labour or...?
Sadly the rest of the Western world does not have any concept of absolute freedoms.
Labour is saying they will pass the bill in Parliament.
How jolly.
Either they are in denial or they aren't paying attention, or both.
I have noticed that too. When evidence becomes overwhelming they will then say "Well, this isn't really a wrong thing after all. We must move with the times.".
Huh? Is this the best of British conservatism? Accepting every fad of leftist thoughts by a lag of 15 years?
A sad assessment of a once proud nation. Increasingly, I fear you are correct. Great Britain's natural home is in the Anglosphere -- where they would always have both respect and a seat at the table.
Instead, they will evidently subsume their sovereignty and national identity into a Eurocratic bureaucracy. Their ancestors -- who explored the world, built nations and created societies -- deserve better...
Thanks for the ping.
Why would you ever not fight to win?
Lapsus linguae.
Don't they have any real leaders?
"The unsettling thing is that when I correspond with Brits, the majority of them will adamently deny that the social pathologies so widely reported in the press are actually happening."
Ah yes, that omniscient paragon of honesty and discernment, the press. It must be true then.
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