Sure- fire way to a Tory win
THERE are times in this life when if you really want to succeed you have to take a decision based on absolute ruthlessness and the hardest person with whom to be ruthless is yourself. The Conservatives are approaching such a decision and I think they are going to flunk it because they do not have that self- denying toughness.
Look at it like this. Draw an imaginary vertical line downwards through the political parties. Left of that line are the centre- Left running through to the hard- Left. On the other side of the line are the centre- Right and the hard- Right.
The first category contains Labour ( now running neck and neck with the Tories) plus the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, Scots Nats and Greens who, in the House of Commons, will unify against the Tories and could well form a threeparty coalition to keep them out of office. Right of the centre line are only two parties: the Tories and Ukip, whom the Tory leadership loathes and will not even talk to.
But this election is going to be won or lost in the marginals and a polling guru has identified 80 – 40 held but only just by the Tories and 40 held by a variety of opponents but by very slim majorities and once all Conservative seats.
The Tories must hold their 40 and win back the 40 they once held.
The polls and the precedents show quite clearly that if the centre- Right is united behind one candidate it will sweep to victory as its opponents divide and lose. Because we have the firstpast-the- post system in this country and never forget it.
There is much media talk about how many seats Ukip might get: two, six, even 10. It doesn’t matter a damn, it is completely irrelevant. The only vital figure is: how many seats will the Ukip vote- share cost the Tories? My estimate is 30 at least and thus the entire election.
If the Tories really want to win then Ukip has to stand aside in those 80 marginals where the Tory is either the incumbent or the challenger. But that means a “clear run” concordat.
Tory chairman Grant Shapps, acting on David Cameron’s explicit orders, has ruled any such co- operation as unthinkable. But there could be a way. It is called tactical voting. It means where you have not a cat in hell’s chance you stand aside and let the one who might win have a clear run, so long as he is not your enemy. Tory HQ seems absolutely determined to make Ukip its enemy in order not to offend the Tory Party’s Left ( ie, pro- EU) wing.
BUT there is a new phenomenon in the field. To widespread amazement Ukip ( according to the polls, the only guide we have) seems to be taking huge chunks out of the Labour vote in their once- safe seats in the Midlands and North. Where Labour holds the seat but Ukip is now the primary challenger the Tories could withdraw in, say, six or eight. In exchange for a guaranteed clear run in the vital 80.
Pro- EU Tory MPs would object but then they have a question to answer: would they prefer to be in office or in opposition? And Headshed would also have a question: do you want to hate or do you want to win?
But this is getting clearer by the day. If Ukip takes only 10 per cent of the traditional Tory vote across the board it’s Miliband for Downing Street.