David Cameron's Woes

Tonight, at the London School of Economics, Sussex politics lecturer Tim Bale will be launching his new book on "The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron" with a talk entitled "Doldrums to Downing Street? The Conservative Party's long Journey from Opposition to the Brink of Office". It is meant to be an upbeat sounding title, charting the Tory Party's doldrum years when it looked like a near permanent opposition, to its revitalisation under David Cameron. It couldn't, however, come at a more unsettling time for Mr. Cameron. Not only has he made some mis-steps recently, but his party's poll showing looks ever more fragile. And as the polling numbers go down, so the heat from his right-wing critics is being turned up. As Tim Bale prepares to tell his audience why David Cameron has come nearest since Margaret Thatcher to getting the Tories elected, Simon Heffer in the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Adam Smith Institute, are all busy laying into the very same Mr. Cameron for his less than radical economic policies. Even Tim Bale himself, in a piece for the Guardian, opined that Mr. Cameron might be reverting to a bit of populism to shore up the Tories' traditional media base, and thus alienate the liberal middle classes. Who would be a Conservative leader?

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