How to rip apart the Conservative Party

YET another bad-news poll will be included in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph, concluding that, two months after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, David Cameron is still facing a landslide defeat.

The YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph has put the Labour Party on 41% and the Conservative Party on 33%, an outlook which the article claims means that Gordon Brown faces a 100-seat majority in the House of Commons if he was to call a snap election.

So at the end of Cameron’s bad few months (he is, after all, fighting back), I think a look back is required to demonstrate how to rip the Conservative Party apart.

First, you need a leader who has revitalised the Conservative image. One who has moved towards the centreground of British Politics, where elections are won, and who will refuse to lurch back to the right to appease his core vote.

Second, you need to wait for a big enough controversy to unfold in front of your eyes. You wait patiently; hoping, praying. And then, by some stroke of miracle, it happens. Your leader has admitted he will not build new Grammar Schools.

Immediately the ball is set in motion. The left-wing media are the first to grab hold of the story. They claim that the popular leader has lurched left, take the statement out of context, implying the abolition of Grammar Schools, and wait for the fish to bite.

Admittedly, the right-wing media are very willing. They check the facts, realise it’s not quite true, but see their chance to send the Party back to the right, where it belongs, one way or another. They quote to anonymous sources from within the Party, saying that many traditional voters, members and MPs are not happy.

The left-wing media retaliate, claiming, under large banner headlines, that the Tories are beginning to form a rift, and though it hasn’t happened yet, they know their headlines will prompt it to happen.

A front-bench Tory spokesman resigns, fuelling further speculation in the right-wing media. The whips are out in force, trying to sew together the seams of a rip that never existed while the Party leadership continues on message, whilst trying to convince the public that the media’s message was not their message, but that it was misunderstood.

But it is all consequential. The damage is done. The Party leader has lost an important battle and a genuine rip has appeared within the Party.

Dejected, the leader flies out to Rwanda to speak to their Parliament and let the dust settle.

Meanwhile his Constituency lies half under water, the controversy begins to flare up and the process begins again.