Cameron's (Partly) New Look Tories

Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome.uk offers a shrewd assessment of how conservatism and modernism interact in today's Cameron Tories.

Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome.uk offers a shrewd assessment of how conservatism and modernism interact in today's Cameron Tories:

On the one hand:

Traditional Tory messages have twice rescued the party. Twice in recent years the Cameron project has got into difficulties. Once in the autumn of 2007 when Gordon Brown enjoyed a 'honeymoon' after he first became Prime Minister and in February and March of this year. In both periods a slide in Tory popularity was reversed by promises to cut taxes. In 2007 it was a promise to abolish inheritance tax for all but millionaires. In the last two weeks it has been a promise to stop nearly all of a £6bn 'jobs tax', planned by Labour.

On the other:

Without the 'modernisation' of the Conservative brand voters might not have listened to the tax cutting message. In underlining the importance of the two tax cuts (above) I don't mean to imply that David Cameron's modernisation of the Conservative Party (sometimes called 'decontamination') wasn't important. The changes that David Cameron has made to the Conservative Party - protecting funding for the National Health Service... developing an agenda for the poor... emphasising green issues... greater candidate diversity - mean that more people are willing to listen to the Conservative Party than when it was narrowly interested in just a few issues.