Cameron: from Birmingham bounce to Clacton calamity?

A week ago David Cameron was in clover: the Tory press were delighted with his Birmingham conference speech, and a YouGov poll was about to be released showing the Tories had overtaken Labour for the first time in more than two years.

Today, the “bounce” the PM enjoyed as a result of his tax-cutting pledges is already history: YouGov has Labour back in front by a point, enough to cost about 50 Tory MPs their jobs next May and give Labour a small majority in the Commons.

This is not a one-off: yesterday's YouGov poll had Labiour two points ahead. In short, the Birmingham speech was not the game-changer Cameron needed.

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And, today in Clacton, the Tories face being trounced by Ukip in the by-election caused by the defection of local MP Douglas Carswell. Local polling shows Carswell enjoying leads over the Tory candidate of 44 per cent (Survation in the Daily Mail) and 32 per cent (Lord Ashcroft).

Although it will come as no surprise, the election of Ukip’s first Westminster MP will be a shock to the system and a severe blow to Cameron’s hopes of keeping his job next May.

Meanwhile, the derision heaped on Ed Miliband for the “I forgot to mention the deficit” lapse in his party conference speech may ease a little if the polls are right about today’s other by-election – in the Greater Manchester constituency of Heywood and Middleton.

Both Survation and Lord Ashcroft suggest Labour should keep the seat with an increased share of the vote.

Survation has Labour climbing ten per cent since the 2010 general election to 50 per cent and Ukip jumping from just three per cent to 31 per cent. The Tory vote has more than halved at 13 per cent while the Lib Dems, down at four per cent, will be battling to avoid another by-election lost deposit.

[6]Lord Ashcroft’s polling also points to a decent Labour lead in Heywood and Middleton, though slightly lower on 47 per cent while the Tories and Lib Dems are slightly higher on 16 per cent and five per cent respectively.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage turned up in Heywood and Middleton this week to insist he was still in with a chance and to refute a Labour campaign theme that Ukip favour privatisation of the NHS. Unfortunately for Farage, the last time he talked up his party’s chances in a safe Labour seat, at Manchester Wythenshawe back in February, the pollsters were proved right.

Neither Heywood and Middleton nor Clacton are among the 100 or so key marginal seats where the May 2015 general election will be won or lost. Clacton Tories, with Carswell as candidate, got more than 50 per cent of the local vote in 2010. In Heywood and Middleton, Labour’s Jim Dobbin, whose death caused today’s by-election, enjoyed a 6,000 majority.

But if the opinion polls are anywhere near accurate, the by-elections are likely to emphasise Cameron’s need for a game-changer. That’s because the results are expected to show that Ukip attracts more Tory voters than it does Labour.

This is at the heart of Cameron’s problems, as Paul Goodman of the Tory activists’ website Conservative Home observed before the party conference.

“For all the trouble that Nigel Farage’s party is causing Labour, it is causing more for the Tories,” Goodman said, “since more of its support is coming from the party’s former supporters than from Labour ones. If more Conservative MPs defect to Ukip, and former Left-wing Liberal Democrats stick with Mr. Miliband, David Cameron can kiss goodbye to a return to Downing Street.”

Some Tory voters in Clacton, interviewed for radio vox pops in recent days, have said they will vote for Carswell in today’s by-election because they like him, but return to the Tory fold come the general election.

However, Matthew Goodwin of Nottingham University is not convinced that, nationally, there will be many switchers from Ukip back to the Tories. He believes Ukip’s core voters are not EU-obsessed old Tories but white working-class men struggling on “stagnant incomes” who feel “left behind” by a fast changing society.

“It is remarkable to hear Conservatives now talk of neutralising Ukip by stressing the economic recovery,” Goodwin wrote in The Guardian last week. “Ukip’s left-behind voters are the least likely of all to have felt the recovery or feel it in the future.

“Pessimistic and insecure, they are voters who struggled long before the crisis and then got hit the hardest by recession and austerity. They do not share Cameron’s optimism about the economy. Why would they?”

This gloomy prognosis explains why a leadership election next year is clearly on Tory minds: witness the intense interest at the Birmingham conference in the contrasting speeches of Boris Johnson and Theresa May.

If they delved into their party’s post-war history, Tory party members might conclude that they shouldn’t wait until after the election.

For an overall majority next May, Cameron needs to get more votes than in 2010. But the last time a Tory government in office increased its vote between general elections was in 1955 – under a new leader, Sir Anthony Eden. And the last time the Tories achieved an overall majority at a general election was in 1992 – under new leader John Major.

A new leader is, after all, the ultimate game-changer.