Can Conservatives win on Europe?… Or in 2015?
Last night some Mole Valley, Epsom & Ewell CF committee members went to an event at the HG Wells Centre in Woking. The two special guest speakers were Dan Hannan MEP and Tim Montgomerie, founder of arguably the most influential Tory blog, Conservative Home.
Although the event was titled, “Can Conservatives win on Europe?” this topic was not discussed to a great extent. I was quite pleased by this as I’m not a fan of Europe. It is however clear that Hannan would welcome an in-out referendum.
The main point that I drew from the evening was that the Conservative Party needs to re-brand itself before the 2015 election campaign. We’ve lost the moral high-ground. The Tory party is not viewed as the party for ordinary people. As my father said earlier, “they’re for toffs”.
What we need to emphasise is what I’m going to call “three pillar Conservatism”. Here is an important statistic: if families stay together, work and educate themselves they have a 96% chance of avoiding poverty. Family, work, education. These are the three things that we, as Conservatives, stand for and we need to make this clear to the electorate.
It’s a long road to 2015 and there is a lot of work to be done. I haven’t yet lost hope of winning an outright majority but if this dream is to be realised we need to lay the foundations now.
