Why Can't The Tories Narrow The Gap?

Earlier this week a veteran Labour MEP expressed his disillusionment with the party by defecting to the Conservatives. Yet, despite clear signs of growing dissatisfaction with the government, the public remain steadfastly reluctant to do the same.

Judging by the voting intention figures in our poll for The Times published last week [Political Attitudes in Great Britain], Labour is still escaping the partisan consequences of an increasingly tarnished public image. Satisfaction with the government has fallen by almost a third since November (from 52% satisfied to 37%), and with Mr Blair just as steeply (from 64% to 46%). It is plain that the Mittal Affair, the Sixsmith-Moore contretemps and similar high profile embarrassments have damaged the public's view of Labour, and just 22% of the public now think this government is "less sleazy" than that of John Major, while 18% think it more sleazy. Yet the Tory share of the vote remains almost static.

One reason the Tories are not picking up disillusioned Blair voters is that they are not perceived as offering a better alternative on the issues that are worrying them - for all Iain Duncan Smith's recent efforts, the Tories are not the natural party of good public services. The issue of most concern to the public remains the health service. An extraordinary 72% named the NHS as one of the most important issues facing the country in the February poll, almost as high as the combined total for the next three issues. "Looking ahead to the next general election", 71% say that that health care will be an important determinant of their vote whereas no other issue scores above the 48% who picked education.

Q Looking ahead to the next General Election, which, if any of these issues do you think will be very important to you in helping you decide which party to vote for?

Source: MORI/The Times Base: 1,069 British 18+, 21-26 February 2002

We can track the Tories' failure to establish themselves as a credible alternative through our test of "best party on key issues", asking the public to choose which party has the best policy in each of the 16 fields in the list; Labour beat the Tories on every one of the sixteen measures - even on defence, where the Tories can usually muster at least a single victory.

What is immediately striking from the figures is how complete the Tories' lack of progress has been since this time last year. Looking at the six issues named by the greatest numbers of the public as important to their vote, there is just one - public transport - where more of the public think that Mr Duncan Smith's party has the best policy than thought a year ago that Mr Hague's did. On none of the six issues can they muster the support of even a quarter of the public.

Q I am going to read out a list of problems facing Britain today. I would like you to tell me whether you think the Conservative party, the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats has the best policies on each problem.

Source: MORI/The Times

The picture is almost as bleak if we restrict the analysis of each issue to those who say it would be very important to their vote. In this case the Tories are narrowly ahead on Europe (by 36% to 29% of those who think Europe is important), level pegging on law and order, and are also ahead among the tiny numbers worried about trade unions and the constitution; but most of the main issues remain vote losers for them.

However Labour is not escaping entirely unscathed - on both health care and education, the two public services of most concern to voters, Labour has lost four points in support; but the switch has been not to the Conservatives. Nor has it been towards "no party is best" or "don't know", the natural first stop for those who believed in party's policies but became disillusioned with them. The beneficiaries have been the Liberal Democrats, perhaps boosted by the extra attention paid to their policies during a general election campaign..

This may seem to reinforce the apparently widespread impression that those who are most disillusioned are Blair's critics from the left rather than the right, "Old Labour" heartland voters rather than the middle England middle ground that Blair captured from the Tories in 1997. This is a beguiling explanation. After all, the middle class taxpayers who vote Labour to improve public services will want to believe that they can be improved without huge hikes in spending and therefore taxes, and many of those who were once Thatcher or Major voters will not see the same degree of threat in the government's emphasis on further private sector involvement in public services which so outrages the left and the public sector unions.

But it doesn't seem to be nearly as simple as that, as we find if we look the changes in best party on key issues over the last year broken down by social class.

Here it is important to remember that in the year between the two polls there has been a general election, and an election - even one so poorly attended and disdainfully dismissed as last year's - can have a very important effect in increasing public awareness of the parties' policies on various issues.

The ABs we would expect to be generally best informed about and most interested in politics, and perhaps for that reason we would expect their views to be affected least by the election. However, even among the ABs it is probably fair to say that awareness of the Liberal Democrats and their policies is lower than for the main two parties, and the election may have highlighted the distinctive Lib Dem policies. On health care, and even more on education (on which the Lib Dems particularly concentrated their efforts during the election), there has been a huge AB swing in preferences from Labour to Lib Dems; the number of ABs picking the LibDems on education has almost doubled in a year, and on healthcare the increase was not far short. In fact the Lib Dems are now preferred to the Tories among ABs on both issues. But far fewer have swung to the Lib Dems among other classes. So the improvement in the overall Lib Dem ratings on these issues is unlikely to reflect Old Labour heartland disillusionment with too centrist a Labour government.

Q I am going to read out a list of problems facing Britain today. I would like you to tell me whether you think the Conservative party, the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats has the best policies on each problem.

Source: MORI/The Times Base: c. 200 AB British 18+ in each survey