Tea Party Tory
Before the Tea Party philosophy is ever even tested in America, it will have succeeded, or it will have failed, in Great Britain.
For in David Cameron the Brits have a prime minister who can fairly be described as a Tea Party Tory. Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes — government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions — Cameron has bet his own and his party’s future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O’Neill.
Two headlines Thursday testify that the Tories have seized the Tea Party banner. First was the headline in The Washington Times, “Tea Party Urges Drastic Cutting,” that carried a caveat subhead, “Economists Question If Move Is Wise at This Time.”
Second was the Financial Times banner, “UK Unveils Dramatic Austerity Cutbacks.” The FT story begins, “The U.K.’s conservative-led coalition has announced the most drastic budget cuts in living memory. …
“The sweeping cuts in entitlements and spending far exceed anything contemplated in the U.S., where Barack Obama … has proposed only a three-year freeze on discretionary spending and Congress is still debating whether to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.”
The Tory budget cuts defense 8 percent and military personnel by 7,000. Translated here, that would mean a cut of $60 billion and about 100,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.
By 2015, some 490,000 public-sector employees, 8 percent of the total, will lose their jobs. The rest will have their wages frozen for two years and face a 3-percent-of-salary hike in compulsory contributions to their pension program. The retirement age will rise from 65 to 66.
France is in the 10th day of demonstrations, strikes and riots over President Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age to 62.
If Cameron’s plans take effect and his projections prove correct, Britain’s deficit will fall from 10 percent of gross domestic product to 2 percent.
Writes the FT, “The UK cuts … over four years are the equivalent of 4.5 percent of projected 2014-2015 gross domestic product. Similar cuts in the U.S. would require a cut in public spending of about $650 billion.”
Nothing like that is being discussed here, and even if Republicans capture the House, cuts of that magnitude appear out of the question. The correlation of forces would not permit it.
Consider what seems the best possible outcome, Nov. 2, for the Tea Party. Republicans capture the House by winning 50 seats and come within a vote or two of capturing the Senate.
Should that happen, Democrats, shorn of their centrist wing in the massacre, will be in no mood to cooperate in cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps or the earned income tax credit, the party’s legacy to the nation.
They will vote against serious cuts with as great a unanimity as Republicans voted against Obamacare. And if the GOP House votes the cuts, Senate Democrats will restore them. And if President Obama thinks they are too severe, he will veto the budget, his veto will stand, and he will run against “Boehner’s House” in 2012.
And Obama would do so with conviction. For neither he nor Fed chair Ben Bernanke agree with Cameron that Carthusian austerity is the way to go. They are Keynesians who think that is Hooverism.
Both believe the $1.4 and $1.3 trillion deficits they just ran up prevented the Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression.
Recall. Obama endorsed George W. Bush’s TARP bailout of the banks. He enacted a $789 billion stimulus bill, pushing the deficit to 10 percent of GDP. Bernanke doubled the money supply. He has now embraced “quantitative easing.” He is going to print billions to buy bonds and inject the money directly into the economy.
Quantitative easing is another bailout of the banks, only this time through the Fed back door.
Hence, the Tea Party faces almost certain disappointment, if not disillusionment.
Why? Because many in the Republican establishment also do not believe austerity is the way to go in a recession. Second, while most Republicans may favor deep cuts, they know that if they vote to cut Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, but do not get those cuts, they will get the pain but not the benefit and be held accountable, just as Democrats were held accountable for cap-and-trade, which they voted for but did not get through the Senate.
Republicans will come out of this election with a tricky hand to play. They will have the appearance of power, but not the actuality. They will vote for cuts that will not be agreed to by the Senate or accepted by the president.
If the economy is in the ditch in 2012, they will seem ineffectual. If the economy is improving, Obama and Bernanke will claim credit.
By then, however, we will know the fate of the Tea Party Tory who will at least have seen his policy prescriptions put to the test.
The laws of economics will cancel out any of the political moves by either the Republicans or the Democrats. The United States is bankrupt and is in an economic box. Government can not tax anymore without ruining the economy. It cannot borrow anymore or print money anymore without destroying the value of the currency. There is no choice but austerity. If massive cutbacks to the American welfare/warfare state do not occur in the near future then hyperinflation will set in and destroy whats left of our economy and freedoms. There are just too many non-producers in America today, and unless the government gravy train is brought to a halt we are doomed. What will the tea party members do when their Social Security checks won’t even buy a loaf of bread? Time is running out,the political will must be found.
On the American side, all of this pre-supposes inflation doesn’t kick in with a vengeance.
America is no longer the economic superpower it once was, and simply can’t afford to go on spending as it has in the past. Since it will continue to, inflation will eventually set in in a big way.
All of the money that is being burned now to pay for bankster bailouts, unnecessary wars, and to buy off various special interests and government unions and pay off cronies will come back to haunt the Establishment neolib/neocon Political Class from “Left” to “Right” — not that it will care until it is put up against the pitchforks.
Cameron obviously possesses more foresight, brains, guile and intestinal fortitude than the entire establishment GOP combined. He also had the guts to basically admit his support for the Iraq war was a mistake, and demand an investigation of Blaire’s rationale for involving Britain.
Why can’t the American Right produce a politicians like him? Because they are mostly ignorant, effete wimps who have been corrupted and bought off by Marxist-lite Keynesianism who instead seek to prove their manhood by ordering the bombing of Muslim women and children as they smear their own smug faces with caviar.
We have been utterly failed by the post WWII generations of leadership, who with a couple of exceptions are basically a buffoonish joke, a nasty collection of sick clowns.
Hey …Guess who doesn’t proclaim his “faith” at every opportunity revere the sacrifice of the troops endlessly and bang on about 9/11 and gets on with his job…. the English thats who. Man… he doesn’t even wear a lapel pin or wave a flag every time he opens his piehole. I can see why fox news does so poorly there.
It may or may not work ..at least they are being adult over rebuilding their economy.
We’re still arguing over thee role of church vs state and evolution. Our GoP leadership can’t even say what they’d cut. the only policy is tax breaks for multi millionaires/billionaires.
What I do not get ,is that Pat also favors extending the Bush tax cuts,which are another form of spending.What’s missing from thsi article is the fact that taxes in Britain are much higher than here.20% of the stimulus program was in tax cuts,so dear to the Republicans, and their effectiveness is very doubtful to say the least.Bush and his tax cuts produced the only economic expansion in the history of the USA,without a net job gain,yet you are voting the same people back in office.
Only in America
The salient point here is that the U.K. has a “strong” government under their parliamentary system while the US has a “weak” government (defined in parliamentary terms) under our tripartite, checked and balanced system. Pat failed to mention that Cameron also increased the taxes on the banks and the wealthy.
The last presidential candidate who spoke honestly about the deficit was Walter Mondale in 1984. He said that he was going to raise taxes and cut spending. He lost in 49 out of the 50 states.
The words of Alexander Fraser Tytler bear repeating:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
The United States spends 40% MORE than it earns and will continue to do so whilst the earth orbits the sun as there is zero political will in either major party to cut the endless spending. The question then becomes – what happens when the rest of the world stops lending U.S the money and or demands a much higher interest rate for it.
The United States of Argentina – Yes we will.
It is a regrettable truth that the convulsions facing the United States are largely a consequence of America’s declining role in the world. Having been top dog for so many years, it is very difficult to accept that history is moving on, something that we Brits know better than most.
Err. NO. you have it wrong.
David Cameron is a left wing socialist in Conservative clothes. His allegiance lies with his supreme masters at the EU. On the one hand he makes severe cuts to public services and with the other he is now handing over in excess of £20.8 million of taxpayers money to the European Union A DAY.
Remember, the majority of British Taxpayers want OUT OF THE EU.
Kelly,
I agree with you that he shouldn’t be placating the EU and that we’d be better of out, but he’s hardly a socialist. That word gets thrown about too easily these days.
[...] of The American Conservative magazine – yes my favourite too – labelled Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’. (h/t Freddy Gray of the [...]
Cameron and the National Coaltion Government are doing a good thing with some permenant cuts – like linking benefit increases to a lower measure of inflation, capping maximum welfare payouts etc. The US is spending more than it gets in but even by 2020 if things went on as they are now the debt as a % of GDP would be c. 75% – high but not ruinous. Not ruinous if action was taken on entitlements. Social Security is not broke for another 30 years and if the surpluses were actually invested then it would be safe a lot longer. The annual cost of living increase (COLA) needs to be inflation minus 1%, the retirmement ages needs to increase and maybe a slight increase in payroll taxes. Of course this won`t happen but we can hope.
As Pat said in the Uk there is an adult conversation about spending and taxes. Also a willingness to look at defence spending – why does the US need to spend as much as the rest of the world. Especially when some of the rets of the world are allies like Australia, Canada, the UK etc.
Cameron is no libertarian, or tea party tory
Cutting the budget deficit would’ve had to have been done by even Labour to avoid financial ruin – Keynesian economics relies on making money during growth – Labour ran us into debt even during the period of growth, we couldn’t rely on more debt to get us out of the debt
The Cameron cuts are totally necessary, and actually pretty small – spending will continue to rise in this parliament, mostly in line with inflation, but it’s not really being cut – the rises in spending were cut
Maybe he is a small state conservative…maybe
This doesn’t do enough to put Cameron in context. Yes he’s cutting deeply, but even when he’s finished UK public spending will still be about 41% of gdp. That compares to about 36% for the US at the moment.
So the UK is retrenching, but it will still have a much more socialised system than the US in most areas of public life – particularly in health care where the state will remain the primary provider of services.
Hardly the tea party manifesto – and culturally both the UK’s government and its people lack the slightly paranoid fear of the state that is sometimes found in the tea party. The British tend to regard their public servants as well-meaning but ineffectual rather than the potential vanguard of a fascist state.
I am a Brit. Cameron has not yet done the second part of the Tea Party non Keynesian remedy – he has not cut taxes. Without massive tax cuts on wealth creation (both payroll and sales taxes) we (the private sector) will not be able to access the capital and create the jobs to take up those poor soild laid off from government employment.
Sorry mate you’ve got this one seriously wrong, Cameron is a self proclaimed Progressive with a left of centre partner in govt, The Liberal Democrats. Also his opinion of the Tea Party is less than flattering.
The cuts he is making take the public payroll back to 2005 levels, largely with natural wastage and a very generous redundancy package. Before the election he was talking about ‘sharing the fruits os growth’ and quoting Saul Alinsky as a model of his Big Society programme. The truth is he has been hit with the sour reality that he had no choice but to cut public spending. Given a free hand he would be expanding the state and channeling even more money to the EU.
[...] by the Coalition Government’s cuts agenda that he has affectionately labelled Dave the “Tea Party Tory”. ““Before the Tea Party philosophy is ever even tested in America, it will have succeeded, [...]
Indeed; the tru Conservatives ask “what cuts?”
Cameron has yet to prove he is a Conservative in the old sence, ( Right Wing) or a One Nation Tory. I feel that his past experiences give him compassion, ( his young son who was disabled died last year) and that his politics are focussed on Britain, as a whole. He is smart enough to know that thew City and the Banks remain toxic politically and that London is not the Centre of the World any longer. Cameron seems to understand “real politique” the actual use of power and does not seem to worry about who is in front of the cameras today.
He is impeccibly polite, masters his opponents easily in the House of Commons and has it all yet to play for. If we achieve growth in 2011 too, then we could really see action. If he really wants to shrink the State and re empower the individual and communities, many will support him. It is only Brown’s Socialist State Public Sector ( votes for hire) which will be loudest in denouncing him.
Tarquin – there are actual real cuts, not just keeping in line with inflation since benefits for example will be inflation -1%. The total Govt expenditure in 2014/15 is around $40billion more but with inflation and increased debt interest payments being more than that.
I agree that the British lack the paranoia found in some parts of the US.
The UK is less socialised in some areas such as utilities. I live in NC now and we have one power supplier, 3 phone companies and 1 water company. UK choice is much better. Banks are also much more competitive in the UK.
Pat Buchanan is playing to a strictly American audience.
He says Cameron is making cuts, trying to balance the budget and reduce the debt.
That sounds good to tea party activists – who really don’t care about foreign policy.
You think Cameron, the EU tryanny loving, Big Socialist Society creating, unfit to lick Thatcher’s feet wannabe progressive is a tea party consevative?
You think he’s making cuts and not increasing government speanding in real terms? You think he’s telling the truth when he says we have a defecit of £890 billion while conveniently keeping the other £6+ trillion, that’s TRILLION, conveniently off the books just like his socialist predecessors did?
Dream on.
If we have any kind of tea party on these benighted shores it is called UKIP. The United Kingdom Independence Party. They understand what conservatism is. The blue socialist Tories have forgotten how to be conservative which is why the Tories had to form a coalition government because UKIP cost them three million vital votes. All the Cameroons want to do is dip their snouts into the generous EU trough while shafting everyone else with outrageous EU laws and taxes. He breaks “cast iron” promises and people are waking up to what he really is – a despicable traitor of the first order.
The way Cameron is going he will lead us into a double dip recession. Yes, he’s making cuts but he’s cutting in all the wrong places. He is plugging mouse holes but he is refusing to cull the herd of elephants crowding the room. I hope they stomp the idiot flat.
Cameron is not cutting overall expenditure, he is slowing the rate of growth; he has to be seen to be doing something in order to keep Sterling’s credibility. He describes himself as a progressive (akin to a Fabian). He copied many of Obama’s election gimmicks. His campaign was supported by Anita Dunn, not noted for her outspoken tea party loyalty. He has broken every pledge made that he would reduce the influence of the post democratic EU superstate in British affairs. He has ‘changed’ his mind on imposing some sort of immigration policy. Just as in the States we have red or blue progressives, but no real political choice. You have been misled, Mr Buchanan.
Cameron is most definately NOT a Tea Party Tory. His “cuts” are actually nothing more then a reduction in the rate of growth of the state. He’s even ringfenced the budgets of some of the most wasteful departments in Whitehall (Education, Health and Foreign Aid) while taking a hatchet to targets like Defence, policing and prisons*.
Hell! Despite the fact most of his party’s supporters are decidedly anti-eu, he even rolls over and takes it like a cell block b***h when that cursed, supra-national organisation summarily raises its membership fees.
The only thing Cameron and the Tea Partiers have in common is two legs and a heart beat. Hell! He makes Obama look like a swivel-eyed, head-banging Thatcherite.
*The Justice Secretary (a decidedly limp and wet example of a Tory) wants to let thousands of cons out of gaol early.
Oh, and I forgot to add – he’s raising taxes as well, including those green taxes which were supposedly calculated just to cover the costs of cleaning up the environment.
Except the fact being overlooked is that Government Spending in the UK is and will continue to go UP.
The coalition’s plans are for a slow down in the rate of state expansion, not a reversal of the expansion itself.
The coalition government will be spending more each year than the previous year over each and every one of the next 5 years according to their own plans.
@LML
HA ha ha ha HA HA ha ha
*ahem*
Ha ha ha ha
a UKIP Troll who fears a double dip recession when we’ve just seen the largest rise in Q3 growth in 10 years 0.8%
and those so called ‘lost’ UKIP votes did NOT cost the tories the election. If you had half a brain you’d realise it was the rigging of the electorial boundries and the failure of the Conservatives to get their Big Society idea across in place of something that would’ve won more votes.
Mike
From what I see government expenditure in 2015 will be 92billion higher than this year – broadly in line with inflation, as reported widely by several sources
Yes there will be real term cuts to areas such as benefits and defence – but we’re talking overall government expenditure here
Sorry Patrick, and I do hate to burst your bubble, but Cameron is never going to cut hard enough, nor deep enough.
He is the “heir to Blair”. He is best described as being Blue Labour.
The three main political parties are fighting over the minutae of the “middle ground” and have been for some time in the UK.
Cameron finds his hands tied. The federal impositions placed upon the UK by Europe make it difficult to make widespread reforms to our economy.
The incumbents of Westminster are merely tickling the edges of the current debt problem. Cutting the deficit is one thing, but that still means that there is a deficit. The government will still be spending more than it receives in tax revenues. The national debt will continue to accumulate and the taxpayers of the UK will be forever paying more and more tax to service the debt.
There is a close relative of the Tea Party in the UK. It is called UKIP. Cameron is far too much of a social democrat to be anywhere near being capable of taking the hard, tough financial decisions that are required now in order to prevent further generations of Brits being hamstrung by national debt.
LML – another way of looking at it would be to say that the British public have no appetite for the kind of conservatism you appear to advocate. Cameron changed tack because he had to win an election in a very moderate country. That’s democracy.
UKIP are a political failure because they represent a strange, paranoid, segment of society which is obsessed with Europe. In that sense, they represent the same paranoid style that characterises the fringes of the tea party.
The UKIP were ignored by the state broadcaster during elections (BBC covered green party more than UKIP ) and had minimal financial resources. The first past the post system meant many voted tactically to oust the rotten ruling party candidates.
The UKIP would seek a popular mandate for continued EU membership, this is an anathema to the ruling progressives, as the people would probably make the ‘wrong’ choice. The Dutch and the French set a dangerous precident when they voted ‘no’ to the EU constitution, since rammed home as a ‘treaty’. A popular affront to communitarian progress (such as this) will not be allowed to recur.
The UKIP allows vocal climate change denialism amongst their senior ranks.
The US has a brilliant constitution to guarantee individual freedom, I congratulate the public spirited tea party Yanks with the vision and energy to seek to enforce it. There is zero chance of this agenda being forwarded under Cameron’s progressive politics.
The difference in the overall level of taxation between the US and the UK is almost entirely accounted for by Britain’s socialist national health service. Cameron is passionately committed to this state run organisation which acts as a monstrous organ of government power. It is so inefficient that health outcomes in the UK are broadly similar to other European countries and rather better than the US at about half the US expenditure and between two thirds and three quarters of the expenditure in most Western European countries. You must under no circumstances follow the example of this man. It will destroy everything for which the US is admired around the globe.
Longbow13 – I suppose you are one of those people who believed Cameron’s guff and voted for him like a good little Big Society progressive. Well you got what you asked for.
I expect you are also one of those people that screams “UKIP troll! over at ConservativeHome when anyone dares to actually suggest that the Tories, under Cameron, are a nothing more than von Rumpuy’s meat puppets. Which they are.
And for your information, I WAS a paid up member of the Conservative party for many years. I am still a paid up member of a conservative party but it isn’t the Tory party. Cameron isn’t a Tory, not be a country mile. A bunch of the electorate feel the same way which is why he can’t form a majority government.
Poor you, you’ll just have to suck it up, won’t you.
Diddums!
Billy the Fish
Cameron didn’t win the election, he barely scraped ahead. His popularity evaporated when his reneged on his “cast iron” promise to hold a referendum on the EU.
The EU question isn’t “fringe politics”. It affects everything we do. And if it’s paranoid to ask why our sovereignty has been sold from under us without a mandate from the British people then I’m more than happy to be paranoid.
I tell you what, let’s put it to a vote…
Longbow,
I guess you’re partly right, UKIP cost the Tories 1 million votes, but there were probably two million more voters who probably would have voted Tory who sayed at home on Polling Day.
I guess they weren’t the ones taken in by the biggest lie from before the election put about by some Tories, the one that went:
“Don’t worry about Dave’s drift to the left, that’s just crap he’s spouting to woo LibDem oters. Just wait until after the election; that’s when he’ll show he’s a real Tory.”
Now add to those two million the many other millions who were conned but have now realised it. Dave has a big probllem next time.
@Longbow, stupid people always laugh at arguments they don’t get. The 0.8% rise in GDP in no way means that we can be complacent about a double dip.
If you had half a brain you’d accept that nobody really knows what is going to happen to the economy over the next few years and one is certainly not confident enough to laugh at people whose predictions differ from one’s own by a few percent. Most people would agree that the west as a whole is dancing on ice. In the UK, the Chancellor has told people not to stamp so hard but whether that’s enough to stop us all falling through is anybody’s guess.
UKIP and the Tea Party want us to get off the ice altogether but that’s not very popular as it’s still great on the ice. Both are therefore very unlikely to be successful in their campaigns. It remains a fact, however, that the UKIP did indeed get millions of votes at the last election (although the precise electoral impact of that is debatable) and Cameron consistently failed to get enough support to form a government either in the opinion polls or on the big day. Similarly, the Tea Party has driven a large part of Republican rennaissance in the last couple of years but it is unlikely to be enough to force real change on Capitol Hill.
Are there any democracies left in the West? That is, are we, the taxpayers, the workers, capable of removing our governments or reforming them? In Britain, Cameron thought not, which is why he supported increases in public spending before the financial crisis. In Greece there are more people on the public payroll than there are paying taxes. They have no way of democratically extricating themselves from their predicament. They have only two alternatives: violent rebellion or accepting Franco-German tutelege.
King Charles I in Britain, paid vast sums to people via sinecures and other bribes in return for their support. It was an intrinsically unstable arrangement as there were never enough bribes to go round. He was opposed in the civil war by people who rejected the bribes altogether and instead sought a better from of government, parliamentary democracy. In time, though, that too became corrupt and greedy and the American war of independence was the result (effectively a second English civil war fought over almost identical issues as the first – representation in return for taxation).
Today, across the west, we again have a situation where corrupt politicians have captured the government by paying large numbers of their supporters, again through welfare payments and government non-jobs or sinecures. Once again the link between taxation and representation has been broken. Obama would never have been elected without the votes of the beneficiaries of government largess, for example. Like their predecessors, these recipients are likely to fight to keep their privileges, calling them their ‘rights’ (just like the Cavaliers of Charles I). No matter how successful the Tea Party is, it’s hard to see how they can prevail in a system that effectively disenfranchises them. How on earth are we going to reverse this peacefully?
It’s a strange logic which says that Cameron necessarily lost because he wasn’t right wing enough. i don’t rule out the possibility, but I think the evidence points in a different direction:
1. The Tories got pummelled in 2005 when they ran with a really quite right wing manifesto.
2. Yes the Tories might have lost some votes to UKIP, but I’m willing to bet this was mostly in seats which the conservatives held anyway. The bigger issue was almost certainly that the Tories did not capture the centre ground, which did not want big cuts and is only just coming round to the idea.
3. The UK’s electoral system meant that the Conservatives needed a very big swing for an overall majority – a coalition was always a likely outcome.
I agree that Europe is an important issue, although I don’t feel very strongly about it. And neither do my countrymen according to the polling data.
Scary Biscuits – I find it hard to see how you can argue that the Tea Party is disenfranchised. This is a movement that sprang up from nowhere little more than a year ago, but which has nonetheless managed to get select several of its own candidates to run in the midterms, while securing financial and celebrity backing and massive media exposure. We will have tea party representatives in congress in a month’s time.
That’s not being disenfranchised – it’s a democratic system working as it should.
I am afraid that David Cameron is as Tory as Mr. Blair. He is a Fabian superstate sympathizer through and through, and has very badly fallen short of expectations and the promises he has made.
His ‘cuts’ are not ‘cuts’ at all, not least because they are more or less the same as Labour’s projected cuts should they have won the election.
If there is any party in Britain that has any measure of true Burkean Conservatism it is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Only they might, I suspect, be entitled to hold the title of ‘Tea Party Tories’.
Sorry Patrick, and I do hate to burst your bubble, but Cameron is never going to cut hard enough, nor deep enough.
He is the “heir to Blair”. He is best described as being Blue Labour.
The three main political parties are fighting over the minutae of the “middle ground” and have been for some time in the UK.
Cameron finds his hands tied. The federal impositions placed upon the UK by Europe make it difficult to make widespread reforms to our economy.
The incumbents of Westminster are merely tickling the edges of the current debt problem. Cutting the deficit is one thing, but that still means that there is a deficit. The government will still be spending more than it receives in tax revenues. The national debt will continue to accumulate and the taxpayers of the UK will be forever paying more and more tax to service the debt.
There is a close relative of the Tea Party in the UK. It is called UKIP. Cameron is far too much of a social democrat to be anywhere near being capable of taking the hard, tough financial decisions that are required now in order to prevent further generations of Brits being hamstrung by national debt.
UKIP Burkean? Have you ever actually read any of Burke’s writing?
Billy,
I’d dispute whether the 2005 Tory Manifesto was “right wing”; confused is the term I’d probably use. Yes, Michael Howard did start talking about things like immigration but only later in the campaign and on a very ad hoc basis. There clearly was no cohesive plan behind the words. He convinced nobody and ended up looking like the worst kind of opportunist.
You also have to remember that in 2005 the Tories were up against NuLabour under Blair and with its reputation pretty much unsullied*.
In 2010 Gordon Brown and Labour were about as popular as a pork pie vendor in a mosque. By my guess they were headed for a pummelling of 1983 standards and indeed, the Labour vote met those expectations, as did the LibDem vote and the various nationalist persuasions. The exceptions were the Tories and the fringe.
On the fringe the Greens and the BNP picked up significant votes, presumably from Labour. UKIP got their famous 1 million, which most commentators attribute to defecting conservative voters. The problem is this still leavesabout 2 million would be Tory voters unaccounted for.
Some, like some Labour supporters, might just have been disgusted by the expenses scandal and stayed at homefor that reason, but I got the feeling many of those people actually voted on a “get the buggers out” basis (turn out was up remember). So why did the bulk of the missing 2 million conservative voters stay at home?
Not because the party was too right wing, that’s for sure. If it was they could have switched to the LibDems or even Labour. The only other solution is that they thought the party was too left-wing. Given that their only realistic alternative, UKIP, still has credibility issues, it’snot hard to believe these people felt they had no alternative but to stay at home and register a protest abstension.
*Okay the 1 million anti-war protesters weren’t happy with Tony, but they weren’t going to vote Tory either and in the end didn’t even vote LibDem.