So are the Tories even trying to win anymore?

Howard going on and on about immigrants seems about as logical as William Hague's "Save the Pound" campaign. Is Howard trying for the worst ever Tory result? If this is the kind of nonsense Blair is running against, he deserves another landslide.

... the damage the Tories did during the Thatcher and Major administrations, and likely doesn't want a repeat of that. However, Blair becomes a bigger asshole day by day, so it may be an election for New Labour to lose.

it would make or break the mad-eyed king

... but after putting one million pounds into Blair's past campaign, I would guess he's got some "investment" in Blair. I suppose a lot of it depends on how much Blair's government puts pressure on the BBC to privatize. That's what Murdoch wants--a privatized BBC that he can then buy out.

and they simply have no idea why most British voters dislike them so much. They need to figure that out first before they can have any chance of returning to government.

In my opinion, they would need to model themselves onto a European-style Christian Democratic party. This is unlikely any time soon, due to the type of people in the Tory Party at the moment. The Tories still think that by appealing to base-instincts - especially xenophobia that it's the only way they can get back into power. What the Tories don't grasp are that although many people can be whipped up into xenophobic behaviour, the people still rank issues such as the economy, health care and education much higher than immigration and the Euro.

The average age of membership of the Tory party is 69 years old. I think that says a lot.

... and remade the Labour Party in the image of a European ChristDem party - though, as is the way with British politics, it's to the right of them. Nicolas Sarcozy, regarded as a "hard-liner" in Chirac's party, would be pretty mainstream in the Bliarite Junta.

The reason the Tories have never gone through a ChristDem metamorphosis is that the ChristDem movement was essentially a Catholic reaction to the rise of Socialism - hence the softer social side while preserving the unassailable position of God, His Church and His Loyal Capitalists intact. The Church of England, however, took a much harder-line, poor-law, rich-man-in-his-castle-poor-man-at-his-gate view of things and it and the Tory party were pretty much joined at the hip - hence the famous description of the C of E as "The Tory Party at prayer." Nowadays the C of E tries to come on all tambourines and touchy-feely in a desperate attempt to preserve members but you only have to talk to some of its Parish Priests to see that plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

BTW, I'm not underestimating the playing of the race/immigration card by either the Party of the Night or the Bliar Brigade. Immigration usually tends to get the vox pops popping only in areas with a high "immigrant" - i.e. non-WASP - minority. But by confounding the issues of immigration, asylum-seeking, HIV and TB and fear of turbanned ruffians and leering slavs with snow on their boots, they could be creating a Swift Boat Vets for Mendacity roll here ...

Hold on to your hats. It's gonna be a bumpy ride ...

The Skin

They asked 500 people "Do you support ideas that immigration should have tighter controls?", and over 80% said 'yes'. They asked a separate 500 "Do you support Conservative ideas that immigration should have tighter controls?", and the support droped by about 20 points.

So, that doesn't mean that going on about immigration is a non-starter for the Tories - there's plenty of low-level xenophobia in Britain than Howard can try to appeal to, and Labour is trying to pander to some of it too. But it shows either that the Tories have an image problem that puts a certain section off from anything associated with them; or that the Tories have gone too far, and the drop in support is because 20% know the Conservative specifics, and don't like them.

I think their problem is that Blair has taken over the 'reasonable' right wing policies, and packages them attractively. Blair really does come across as a compassionate conservative, in his domestic policies. Pro-business, with nods to 'family values' (this set of 'pledges' nearly all frame things in terms of families), but with enough redistribution to not look like a selfish bastard. The Tories got away with being uber-capitalists in the 80s and early 90s because we were persuaded that the country needed 'strong medicine' to fix its economy. As it became clear that this involved the Tories' friends becoming obscenely rich, people started becoming ashamed of admitting they voted Tory - and when the pound collapsed, they switched to Labour. So far, people aren't ashamed, by and large, to say they vote Labour. While some people are getting horribly rich under them, they don't show it off as much as they did in the 80s. So I think Blair will get back in.