Stick With Dave

Stick With Dave

Recent polls have shown that David Cameron is less popular than his party, now should he get the boot?  Many right wingers in the Tory party have been itching to get rid of the Prime Minister and up until now the PM has had the advantage of being an electoral asset to the party, but at long last he is a liability.  There is an argument to remove him, the public move seems to be swaying to the right UKIP’s popularity shows this but who would replace Cameron, Gove? May? Both these potential front-runners for the leadership are also modernisers.  And to be honest the party wants a moderniser in charge when the party fought the 2001 and 2005 elections with a right wing message we were comprehensively beaten.  Plus the Tory modernising project has not really shifted the party to the left David Cameron and the mods still believe in tax cuts and free enterprise, they have just tried to make the party more compassionate, although since coming into government they have dropped the compassionate message.  It is still fair to say that the modernising agenda is more likely to win the party a majority than running a more right wing agenda and actually, the right of the party has plenty to be pleased about.  Dave has cut immigration by a third, he has cut the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%, he has increased the personal allowance which is essentially a tax cut (it also shows some compassionate conservatism), he is tackling welfare and he is promising a referendum on the EU.  The right of the party has been well looked after under David Cameron. 

Forgetting about what Dave has and has not done policy wise removing him now at this stage of the Parliament would be damaging.  The party will have to go into a leadership contest when they should be governing, the leadership contest may well be a bloody affair revealing all the rifts in the party.  And if a moderniser wins the right may not necessarily back them and if a right winger wins the modernisers are unlikely to support him.  A Michael Gove or William Hague may well unite the party however rifts will probably appear again when the European election goes badly and the party will have had two consecutive years of infighting.  I personally think a leadership challenge would be disastrous for the party at this stage of the Parliament and it will make us look divided come election time which could be sooner than 2015 if the new leader did not hit it off with Nick Cleg.  We should stick with Dave and if he loses in 2015 let the leadership battle commence, there are plenty of quality candidates to lead us back to number 10.