A 'YouGov' poll with some interesting clues

Yet another poll has been published on the forthcoming fortunes of the main political parties, this time a YouGov poll for the Daily Mailygraph.

You will be flabbergasted to learn that the Tories are doing quite well, and...the Tories intend to do well at the election by targeting target seats.

A little clue for the pollsters: they are called target seats for a reason. They are marginal, and hence target seats, and they are targeted, because of small majorities for the opposing party thus making them winnable.

It's kinda been an electoral strategy for, ooh, I don't know, the last couple of hundred years.

Bunch of pricks.

However, there are some interesting clues in the poll which reveal much about a) the state of the Tory Party, and b) the state of modern Britain.

You may have noticed lately that Cameron's Tories increasingly peg their chances of winning by triangulating traditional and new Labour policies and appearing more socially democratic than the party of the centre-left. The other day we heard about Cameron's wooing of the fatuous and despicable 'mumsnet' outfit (a collection of nasty, embittered gossiping wenches who spend their lives bemoaning the fact that they don't get enough 'entitlements'. I.e. other peoples' hard earned money).

Two days ago the Torygraph reported on some inane utterings by a major Cameron adviser called Philip Blond, nicknamed the 'Red Tory'. This adviser is telling Cameron to 'break up' the big supermarkets, impose anti market policies and interfere in the workings of big business. Apparently this qualifies as 'fresh thinking'. Even though this sort of thing started to become popular about 70 years ago, with a current revival in statist Keynesian ideas coming to the fore under our very own PM Gordon Brown.

But here's an extract from the Torygraph piece on the poll, which contains two noteworthy messages.

"Although the poll will please the Conservatives, it also points to some significant Tory vulnerabilities. Some 61 per cent of marginal voters say the Tory plan to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1million shows they “mainly want to help the rich, not ordinary people”.

The results also suggest that while marginal voters are increasingly disillusioned with Labour, they are not yet fully convinced by the Tories on many key issues: only 26 per cent think education would improve under a Conservative government. For the NHS the figure is 22 per cent, and only 19 per cent think that the Tories would cut crime."

So let us look at that first bit, shall we? 61% (that's quite a lot) of 'marginal voters' (so people who voted for New Labour but might be swayed this time) are unhappy about the Tory IHT proposal because it shows they want to 'help' the rich and not 'ordinary' people.

"Wa-hay! We're the Basildon Clowns and we want to help 'ordinary people', just like Maggie here! Guffaw Guffaw!"

This says pretty much everything you need to know about our brainwashed nation. Out there, there is a large number of people who think that the role of government is to take wealth away from people in order to 'help' those who are deemed worthy. To not take tax, according to these people, is tantamount to taking away from worthy folk.

To not take money by way of an inheritance tax from rich(er) people, means that 'ordinary' people are somehow hard done by.

The underlying assumptions inherent within these received norms and ideas are breathtakingly irksome and worrying. Firstly, who are 'ordinary' people, and what is it that they want exactly from a government that taxes the estates of dead people? Secondly, what moral or other claim do 'ordinary' people have in this case? And why is the Tory IHT plan any kind of statement about that party's intent regarding 'helping' people?

None of this makes any sense. It only begins to materially piece together as a narrative, if you pop the old social democratic specs on and go wading through the righteous jungles of quasi Marxist freedom, machete in hand, ready to catch anyone who looks like they have a bit of money in the old 'sky rocket'.

So long as people think in terms of what the government can do for them, rather than what they can do for themselves and their families, this country is screwed.

We will never, ever, get anywhere as a nation state, so long as people think in these terms. The reasons people do think in these terms are varied and many, though one major factor is the fact that people aren't generally that bright, are easily open to influence from above, and are all too willing to pass the buck when the going gets tough. I'd also add that most people aren't very political and therefore do not see the consequences of handing over vast amounts of power to the State.

A second clue in the piece lies in the final paragraph, which says that the Tories are failing to convince the floaters of their ability in the key areas of health, education and crime.

In this, they are quite right in their fears. The Tories will be utterly useless on these, and most other areas, and almost certainly no different or better than Labour. Why would they be better? Their ideas are tame, they are substantively the same as Labour and their solutions are authoritarian, not libertarian.

What the marginal voters do not realise, is that until they connect the first assumption (that they deserve 'help' from the state) to the second assumption (the opposition party won't improve anything) nothing will ever change.

Politics cannot be something other people do on your behalf - it is something that, if it is to work, must properly involve us all at all times.