"You would think that after a week of such concentrated endeavour to revitalise democracy the punters would have been more gracious than to relegate Dave to 37 per cent".
[....]
Of course, it is probably that notorious asteroid in the political constellation, a rogue poll. Dave could be up on 42 per cent within a week. If he is not, we shall know the great Modernisation Project is working its magic – the famous Francis Maude formula: lose 25 per cent to gain 50 per cent. This poll may simply represent stage one of that sophisticated operation.
Basically it aims to cleanse the Conservative Party of serious Eurosceptics, people who actually want to halt immigration rather than administer it, social conservatives, religious believers, tax cutters, patriots, opponents of demented Middle East Wars, rural dwellers, man-made climate change sceptics and anybody who did not go to Eton, unless they are Liberal Democrat, republican wimmin. Considering the proportion of the British population which that programme seeks to exclude, it can only be described as heroically disinterested.
A less principled demagogue than Dave might have been tempted to offer a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and, if that did not do the business, another on In/Out of the EU; a moratorium on immigration along with repatriation of illegals; the repeal of all Labour’s oppressive PC statutes; withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan; a neutral investigation of the facts behind the climate change hysteria without committing any money to the anti-carbon black hole; and the right of constituencies to select their own candidates.
The objection to that agenda is that it would have given Dave a 500-seat majority which, to a fastidious Whig such as Cameron, is suggestive of mob rule or, as we used to call it, democracy.
[....]
What would be true to say is that we are furious at being betrayed, bitterly contemptuous of this charlatan Blair Mark 2 and will vote tactically against him at every opportunity. In short, we hate his guts. This may be a rogue poll, but it still indicates the fragility of a Conservative poll lead that excludes genuine Conservatives"
Amen to that!
