Conservative Party Vice-Chairman, Lord Ashcroft, discusses how the Conservative Party is gearing up for victory at the next General Election
At the 1992 election Labour achieved a national swing from the Conservatives of 2.1%. Had this relatively modest swing been uniform across the country – the same in every constituency – John Major’s government would have been returned with a majority of 70 seats. In the event the majority was 21.
In 2005, we reduced Labour’s majority in parliament by more than would have been the case if our national 3.1% swing in terms of vote share had been replicated throughout Britain – but despite the government’s difficulties a Conservative government was not a sufficiently attractive proposition to bring us victory.
The lesson is that having broad national appeal is the most important factor in winning general elections, but that in a tight race organisation and targeting can make a decisive difference. As Labour’s polling guru Philip Gould observed in his leaked memo to Gordon Brown, reported at the beginning of August: “Our majority of 66 falls to between 40 and 50 if boundary changes are taken into account. The seats we must hold to secure our majority are highly marginal and almost any swing against us would knock them over”. He went on to advocate a “shock and awe” strategy to increase Labour’s overall national vote share, but the fight on the ground in marginal constituencies will be intense. Labour will fight tooth and nail to hold onto their Commons majority; whatever the twists and turns of the national campaign, it is in 120 or so constituencies across Britain that the result will ultimately be determined.
That is why we are building the most professional, the best resourced and what I am sure will prove to be the most effective target seats campaign the Conservative party has ever seen. Michael Howard laid the groundwork for this in 2005, reinvigorating our organisation and running a campaign which, despite shortcomings which I have described at length elsewhere, left us within striking distance of winning back many of the seats we need to remove Labour’s majority (there are 94 seats which would fall to us with a swing of 5%; remarkably, 16 of these require a swing of less than 1%).
David Cameron is transforming the Conservative party and putting us back in touch with the millions of people who may never have considered voting for us but who should be our supporters. My job is to ensure that our campaign on the ground matches his drive and energy – and puts him in Number 10..
Previous campaigns have also provided valuable lessons which we are already acting upon. First, we have adopted a strategy of smarter targeting. One of the lessons of 2005 was that targeting 180 seats at once is not really targeting at all. I believe our target list in 2005 was so long that we spent valuable resources in constituencies we were never in reality going to win, and in doing so failed to gain neighbouring seats with smaller majorities by a matter of a few hundred votes. Our aim of winning the next general election with a good working majority requires us to win a lot of seats – but by constantly monitoring progress in different types of constituencies across the country we are able to ensure resources are directed to the right place at the right time.
Secondly, we are offering candidates in our key constituencies more support. As well as financial help and support from our professional field campaigning staff around the country, together with a dedicated team at CCHQ, target seat candidates are assigned mentors among sitting MPs, and non-target constituencies are encouraged to ensure our target seat candidates have the people they need on the ground. We are also developing a secure website offering advice, campaign material and a valuable means of exchanging ideas and sharing best practice, so that candidates are not left busily re-inventing the wheel in isolation.
Thirdly, our campaign in target seats is less prescriptive in the past. Rather than following instructions from the centre candidates are asked to produce ambitious annual campaign plans setting out what they intend to do to win their seat, and to assemble dedicated campaign teams to implement them. Candidates then receive financial support for the best ideas, ensuring that there is an incentive for them to be bold and creative, and that activity is tailored to local circumstances, not imposed in a one-size-fits-all approach from the centre.
Alongside more support and less prescription goes the fourth pillar of our strategy, which is greater accountability. As well as producing detailed campaign plans before they can qualify for financial support, candidates are set quarterly targets on a range of performance indicators, and held to account for the delivery of their campaign plan.
Finally we are producing better intelligence to help focus our campaigns both nationally and in the battleground. I am a great believer in the power of polling and opinion research – provided, of course, that it is used intelligently. An important part of the polling programme that I am overseeing involves combining voting intention data from opinion polls with detailed demographic and behavioural analysis, such as information on lifestyles and media consumption habits, to help us identify and reach – not just seat by seat but street by street – the voters we need to return us to government.
We are also taking a more nuanced approach to the battleground as a whole. A good example of this is the party’s so called ‘Northern problem’. Of course it is true that we have not recently done as well in the North of England as we should, or as we once did – as David Cameron said when he launched Campaign North in January, in 1970 we had 62 seats in the North and today we have 19. But it is a lot more complicated than that. “The North” is by no means a homogeneous block of constituencies and we understand that it cannot be treated a single entity. The point was neatly highlighted by the results of the May local elections, in which we achieved some very impressive results in South Ribble, Blackpool, Wyre and Ribble Valley, but actually lost councillors in Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford. We will not make the mistake of sounding as though we think the North starts at Watford, or that it is a semi-autonomous republic where they do things differently – just as David Cameron has focused on ensuring the Conservative party is more in touch with modern Britain, so we are dedicated to understanding fully how we are seen in different places and why – not just in the North of England but across the country.
To return to my initial point, the targeting strategy is designed to maximise our share of the vote in key marginal constituencies; it is not a substitute for improving the party’s overall brand. I know some people hate the idea of talking about politics in terms of brands because they think it means the triumph of marketing over substance, but that is a mistake. What I mean is that at the last election people’s overall perception of the Conservative party – our brand – had become so negative that they were not willing to trust us or believe that we were on their side, even if on the face of it they agreed with many of our policies.
David Cameron understands the lessons of our three consecutive defeats. He is transforming the Conservative party and putting us back in touch with the millions of people who may never have considered voting for us but who should be our supporters. My job is to ensure that our campaign on the ground matches his drive and energy – and puts him in Number 10.