The brand is not a broken bottle: it's a busted flush

Todays's Times carries an interesting article by Daniel Finkelstein (left), an excellent writer and a man who is usually an astute analyst and observer of the political scene.

The article is headed: "Keep plugging away. The brand is a winner. Tories think that the job of changing their party’s image is complete. It isn’t - and complacency could be fatal."

The link is here -

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article7055713.ece

I have picked up on Mr Finkelstein's concluding paragraph and have commented on-line.

"The voters are out there to give the Tories a landslide, but the party needs to help them over the finish line. They just need to show a bit of (Coca-Cola) bottle."

If I were still a Tory (I gave up on the party in 1999), I would like to think that Mr Finkelstein was right in his analysis. From canvassing as an independent in South East Cambridgeshire, I know for a fact that there is widespread dismay at the possibility of that crowd getting back again. There is little doubt that the blessed Margaret inspired many (though she also annoyed many), but her successors as leaders of the party - and Cameron is really no different - have lost the plot of the people and they are losing the election. There is no inspiration and very little difference from the other parties' principal policies on the economy and the wasteful war in Afghanistan: all there is is harking back to hereditary peers and hunting with hounds, combined now with the on-going stench of the Ashcroft sleaze.

Led by the Bullingdon boys, the Tories are like the Bourbons: they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The brand is not a broken bottle: it's a busted flush.