My homeland’s magazine, The Economist, has opened fire on the U.S. Republicans today. It accuses the party of being “fratricidal, increasingly extreme on many issues and woefully short of ideas”. I will leave it to others more informed about the GOP to respond to the specific attacks, but I am worried about The Economist’s key recommendation to Americans. The red-topped magazine concludes with these words: “Only with the accession of the centrist David Cameron in 2005 did the party begin to recover as he set about changing its rhetoric.”
There is much in Cameronism to be recommended, but there are at least as many dangers. I’ve just completed an analysis of the failure of David Cameron’s woeful election campaign. Over the course of twelve months the new prime minister saw a 20 percent lead in the opinion polls cut by more than half. Every pundit expected him to win a majority, but he didn’t. He didn’t because he failed to enthuse voters with his milk-and-water policies. He played far too safe. Numbers compiled by The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson illustrate the historical weakness of Cameronism. The numbers are the winning percentages of the national vote secured by Tory prime ministers over the last century:
1885, Robert Cecil: 43.5
1886, Robert Cecil: 51.1
1895, Robert Cecil: 49.0
1900, Robert Cecil: 50.3
1922, Andrew Bonar Law: 38.5
1924, Stanley Baldwin: 46.8
1935, Stanley Baldwin: 47.8
1951, Winston Churchill: 48.3
1955, Anthony Eden: 49.7
1959, Harold Macmillan: 49.4
1970, Edward Heath: 46.4
1979, Margaret Thatcher: 43.9
1983, Margaret Thatcher: 42.8
1987, Margaret Thatcher: 42.2
1992, John Major: 41.9
2010, David Cameron: 36.1
My full analysis of Cameron’s woeful election campaign is here. Whenever he promised tax cuts and other traditional right-wing policies, his opinion-poll rating improved. The Economist won’t tell you that. I just did.
– Tim Montgomerie is editor of ConservativeHome.com.