When I was invited to blog “Can Cameron Crack It?” I was in two minds over what the organisers meant by ‘crack it’. What I think they meant, was can David Cameron break out of the straightjacket of 31-35% in the polls to win an election. At least I hope it was. With five speakers like Simon Heffer, Peter Kellner, Shami Chakrabarti, Nick Clegg and Ed Vaizey it was a pretty sure bet that there would be a variety of views. And so it proved. Kirsty Lang, who chaired the event, posed the question, what is the centre ground nowadays? The politician who answers this question is the one who will most likely win the next election.

The first speaker was Cameron’s arch-nemesis Simon Heffer, Associate Editor of The Daily Telegraph. Simon is a man who has never knowingly said anything nice about David Cameron and he certainly didn’t disappoint here. He too thought there was more than one interpretation of the question posed. He said the Conservative Party was in very bad shape, but thought it still possible to win an election from that position. From a psephological viewpoint Cameron had a huge mountain to climb. The Party didn’t have an organisation in large parts of the country and was irrelevant in many areas. The party membership had been alienated by the leadership. He asserted that if you lived in Manchester or Birmingham and tried to join the party you’d be referred to London. The May elections had not been the triumph Cameron had described. The results were good in the Tory heartlands but not elsewhere. To describe Chester as being in the North was ridiculous, he said.

Heffer went on to discuss Gordon Brown and thought he would be a ruthless and formidable opponent. He said that the Labour party has been fighting itself over the last two years. They have become battle hardened. They will now turn their battle training onto the opposition. Brown’s political experience and ruthlessness will come to the fore. Brown had not waited 10 years to be PM to hold office for only a year or two. Heffer reckoned the Conservative Party won’t know what has hit it. Brown will demonstrate a clarity and severity of purpose, not seen at the Treasury.

Heffer thought that Ming Campbell was finished and that the Lib Dems would be transformed if Nick Clegg became their leader as he has a lot in common with Tory voters.

In a Freudian slip Heffer said he had been a constant critic of David Cameron “since he became Prime Minister”. He said it was true up to a point that the Thatcher opposition hadn’t come up with many policies, but the RIGHT APPROACH document made clear there woud be a smaller state. There had been no such clear statement of aims from David Cameron. The Tooting speech had been a wish list, not a philosophy. Heffer believed that if you were still committed to spending £600 billion of public money you are still running a country based on state control. The problem was that if you cut it, you are accused of cutting hospitals. The Conservatives should have a proper audit of the public sector as there had to be room to cut spending and tax.

Heffer believes that it remains Cameron’s instinctive desire to spit in the face of hardcore voters. If he upsets them they won’t vote for him or campaign for his candidates. He predicts the imminent implosion of Tory grassroots. He said if there was a choice between an imitation or a real Labour Party, people will vote for the real one. David Cameron does not grasp what it takes to get country behind him. Mrs Thatcher won three elections on 42-44% of the vote.

In short, Simon Heffer believed that David Cameron won’t crack it because he wants to be all things to all men.

Next up was YouGov’s Peter Kellner, who talked primarily about the polling evidence. He said that the electoral mountain Cameron has to climb is huge. He said the Tories gained 12 seats through boundary changes but still need a lead of two million voters to be the largest party. Even then, they would not have a majority. He showed a slide which demonstrated that on each of the five occasions since the war that an opposition has won an election they have each had more than 50% in mid term polls, which then slipped back to around 42-44%. Cameron has never got above 40% in the polls. However, what Peter Kellner didn’t tell the audience was that we now have a three party politics and it is almost impossible for any opposition to get to 50%. Kellner concluded by saying that the Conservatives are a mile off where they need to be.

Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman was not a happy man when he began to speak. He had just learned of Ming Campbell’s discussions with Gordon Brown and he was not a happy man.

He started by saying that if he had still be working in PR he would have been “pretty impressed” by what Cameron has done in terms of rebranding. Content, ideology and political direction remained ill-defined. Clegg reckoned the major danger for David Cameron was the perception that he doesn’t possess authenticity. He said there was plenty of anecdotal evidence that there is an appetite for authenticity after ten years of spin. The rebranding is only skin deep and Cameron’s challenge is to shed that image.

Clegg also alleged that there is a perception that David Cameron and his party are two separate things living in parallel universes. The Grammar schools episode demonstrated this. He said that the attitudes of MPs and members to lifestyle issues are at odds with the news image. Tory activists have been persuaded that David Cameron is necessary to win but they haven’t understood him at all.

There are regional limitations to Cameron’s appeal according to Clegg. The local election results were very poor indeed with no progress in northern cities. The Conservatives had gone backwards in metropolitan heartlands.

Clegg went on to ask if David Cameron is in fact bewitched by Blair. He holds him up as paragon of political success. If you become conflated with Blair you associate yourself with the past. Blair & Cameron have one thing in common. They define themselves by what they are up against in their own party. It is difficult to define what they are for. Cameron is asking roughly the right questions. What do we do after ten years of very big government? Less top down, government, but Clegg says he was unclear what he means by society. He asked what would replace the state if you roll it back? Cameron appears to believe that voluntary organisations would step in but he said he had heard little about real local autonomy and local democracy. Cameron’s major intellectual task is to define himself and his party.

Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty, started her talk by praising the Conservatives, and David Cameron in particular, for their unequivocal opposition to ID cards. She reckoned it was not just PR and she believed Cameron was totally genuine. It was one of the few very clear policy commitment he has issued. She said she was very grateful for his opposition to anti terror policies, especially his opposition to holding people for ninety days without charge. She said some of his remarks about criminality and young people have been brave. She applauded attempts at encouraging more women to be candidates and more diversity. These were progressive and constructive steps.

However, the good news stopped there. Shami Chakrabarti then contrasted these issues with the populist trashing of the Human Rights Act. She agreed with Simon Heffer that if you try to achieve trust from people, then they have to know about your philosophy. She believes David Cameron is not an ideological person. The 1980s was an ideological decade and perhaps a bit of ideology would not go amiss now, she said. “You can have a sensible debate with someone who believes something. I just don’t know what David Cameron’s underlying principles are yet. Does it represent ambivalence or does it mean he hasn’t emerged yet (like a butterfly)?”. She said that people would be telling Gordon Brown that the way to beat Cameron is to go hard to the right on security and terror. What will Cameron’s reaction be? He has to set out his philosophical stall, she said.

She said that to lead a broad church party is a hard job. There are historical tensions to manage. It is a difficult circle to square but not impossible.

Shami Chakrabarti says she often speaks to Tory audiences and gets a surprisingly warm reception. They are intrinsically polite, but ideas of rights, freedoms and rule of law can unite all people, let alone Conservatives, after ten years of the most authoritarian government in living memory.

She said that a lot of what happens in Government is not what you planned in your manifesto. Events happen. At those moments people have to trust you to be the person who makes those life and death decisions on behalf of the country. They need to get a measure of you as a person in order to be able to trust you to take those decisions.

It was left to the final speaker, Tory MP Ed Vaizey to defend the honour of his leader. He said that David Cameron had set out his stall very clearly when he ran for the leadership. He said he would move the Party back to the centre ground and he has done a pretty impressive job of it. Cameron has attracted more support from a far wider range of people than the Conservatives have managed to do for years.

Vaizey said that people attack Cameron for his lack of policies but this is to ignore the policies that have been announced. The position on tuition fees was confused before 2005. The party had ducked it. David Cameron then made it clear tuition fees will remain. He has put economic stability ahead of tax cuts. According to Vaizey this is a sensible position as it demonstrates you will be competent and sensible in government. Localism and accountability are at the forefront of Tory ideas, as evidenced by elected police commissioners. The environment is another obvious issue where David Cameron has made the running according to Vaizey. It’s not about winning easy votes. The idea that it is about spin is rubbish,

Vaizey then took on Simon Heffer’s assertion that Cameron likes spitting in the eye of hardcore Tory voter. He said he considered himself to be a hardcore Tory voter and that he hadn’t been spat at. Cameron was reaching out to the disillusioned Tory voter. He said it was a myth that there is a band of Tory voters waiting at home to vote. There is an army sitting at home waiting for a decent Tory leadership to attract them back.

I’m not sure might new insight was gained from any of the panellists, to be honest. They all trotted out their rehearsed lines to one extent or another. Perhaps Shami Chakrabarti was the most interesting speaker. She had no political allegiance to promote and seemed to give an honest opinion. With Nick Clegg you got the feeling he felt he had to be critical of Cameron because it was expected of him and Ed Vaizey was the same but in reverse, if you see what I mean! Peter Kellner’s polling evidence was flimsy to say the least and Simon Heffer did. Well, he did what Simon Heffer does – attack Cameron from start to finish. At the end I felt we could have done with a little more dispassionate analysis from people with fewer axes to grind.

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