Are the Tories Falling Apart?

The British general election campaign hasn’t even started yet, but already the wheels seem to be coming off the Conservative campaign. They’d hoped to swing voters in marginal seats by pouring in lots of money, much of it donated by Lord Ashcroft. But the protracted revelations about the peer’s nom-dom tax status and his relations with Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague have now made him more of a liability than an asset. The party has also got unwisely close to the Young Britons’ Foundation, whose head espouses US neo-con views about the ‘disaster’ of the NHS and people’s right to carry a gun. Meanwhile, Lord Tebbit has said that Tory activists should be free to vote and even campaign for UKIP’s Nigel Farage, who is standing against the Speaker, John Bercow. And one of David Cameron’s neighbouring MPs has made the claim (now furiously denied) that Samantha Cameron may have voted for Tony Blair. Any one of these things might not be too damaging, but as the gaffes and indiscretions come thick and fast, the party is being made to look undisciplined and foolish. And we still don’t know what David Cameron stands for, other than vague ‘change’.