Is Lynton Crosby destroying the Conservative Party?

At my hotel in Scotland last weekend I was served by a Russian, a Pole, and a Romanian, among others. The staff wore badges with flags on to indicate their mother tongue or nationality. This example of cosmopolitanism was on display in Inverness in the Highlands, not cool, multicultural London. I flinched in particular when the nice young Romanian woman took our order smilingly. Had she seen British press coverage in the run-up to the European elections? Did she know what some people had been saying about her fellow countrymen and women? Had she felt personally attacked?

Around the same time I had also been reading an interesting post on Conservative Home by the re-elected Camden Councilor Andrew Marshall.

He was describing his experiences of canvassing in North London and seeing central and eastern European voters arriving at polling stations carrying Labour party leaflets. And he wondered whether his party had done enough – or anything, really – to appeal to these new voters.

“The general sense from the media is that our party is ‘anti-European’ which can be seen as ‘anti-immigrant’,” Marshall wrote. And then in a strikingly candid passage he added:

“We know that, once fixed, political orientation can have a long shelf life. Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s formed a view of the Conservative party that persists today, as did Bengali immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s… unless our share of ethnic minority voters goes up, we will be doomed by demography, and we seem in danger of losing these new immigrants as well.”

Hold tight, comes the message from Conservative HQ. The Ukip vote will crumble – although a ComRes poll last week suggested that as many as 86% of Ukip voters could stay loyal to the party in May next year.

Relax, the keep calm tendency at CCHQ urges: economic recovery will inevitably drive supporters back into the Tory camp. But there has been little sign of this so far, even after a year of better economic news. The Tories remain “becalmed” at around 32%, according to the nation’s most experienced reader of polls, Sir Robert (Bob) Worcester.

Why might this be so? Recovery takes time to be felt. Many may still be sceptical or nervous about their own prospects. Further away from the vigorous London economy the view may not be quite so hopeful.

But there is possibly another factor at play. Central to the government’s pitch on the economy is the claim that new jobs have been created faster and in larger number than many anticipated. On closer scrutiny it seems that a large proportion of this jobs growth – almost half in fact – has been down to the rise in self-employment.

The political analyst Ian Warren has produced some data which suggest that the self-employed, once a rich source of votes for the Conservatives, have switched to Ukip in large numbers. So maybe this recovery is going to produce far fewer votes for the Conservatives than those invariably “upbeat”, “optimistic” sources in the Tory camp seem to think.

The Tories last won a majority in 1992. They have struggled to gain support in large enough numbers ever since. In the run-up to the 2001 election the party veered to the right, with William Hague’s infamous “foreign land”, “save the pound” and “I will give you back your country” rhetoric. In 2005, the last Lynton Crosby-inspired election campaign, the party flirted with some unpleasant messages on immigration. That short term dash for votes may have had unfortunate long term consequences. The Spectator blogger Alex Massie has observed: “The 2005 election campaign did tremendous damage to the Conservative party’s ambition to repeat its 20th century success in the 21st century”.

Now Crosby is in charge again. But the marching orders have been a bit confused. Keep quiet about Ukip! Ok, do mention them, but not too often. Talk about the “long term economic plan”. And don’t worry about the flatlining voting intention numbers. That will change. Eventually. Those Ukippers will come back. Probably. The fact that a Ukip win on Thursday in Newark, while still unlikely, cannot be ruled out suggests that Crosbyism isn’t working, not yet anyway. (The Newark Tories may turn out to be saved by the strong campaign being fought by Labour’s candidate Michael Payne. Only the Lib Dems will be squeezed on Thursday.)

The mistakes of 2005 are being made again. In a short term lunge for votes the Tories are making themselves unattractive to many and unelectable in the long term. Mr Crosby will be handsomely rewarded for his services. But what lies in store for his client? I’m not sure that sunny, smiling, upbeat optimism is entirely well founded.