We will repeat Thatcher’s landslide: PM

THE Conservatives will reclaim the centre ground of politics and win a Margaret Thatcher-style landslide at the 2020 election, David Cameron has predicted.

The Prime Minister said the Tories were well placed to hit popularity levels not seen since the Eighties.

He said the party’s vote share could rise from 37 per cent in May to 43 per cent as people were put off by the Labour Party’s lurch to the Left under Jeremy Corbyn.

But he warned this would be possible only if the Tories avoided more Right-wing policies.

Mr Cameron told an audience at the Blenheim Literary Festival in his Oxfordshire constituency: “We have got to respond to what is happening by saying, ‘ We are not going to charge off to the Right because they charged off to the Left’.”

He went on: “If we deliver the economic security that we have spoken about, solve the entrenched social problems in our country and don’t rush off to the Right, but govern for the whole of the country, then the strength of this party as the party of Government for 2020 and 2025 will be very strong.”

He said he could not see any reason why the Tories could not get to 40 or 43 per cent at the next election, as Baroness Thatcher did, “if we can demonstrate – particularly if Labour charges off to the Left – that we are there for everybody”.

In 1979, the then Mrs Thatcher led the Tories to a 44-seat Commons majority, with 44 per cent of the vote.