DOMINIC SANDBROOK: Dave's fatal flaw. At the heart of so many of the Tories' problems lies Cameron's and Osborne's utter inability to grasp the values and aspirations of the middle classes
By Dominic Sandbrook for the Daily Mail
Published: 02:08, 16 April 2016 | Updated: 03:15, 16 April 2016
As political historians are fond of saying, the Conservative Party is a coalition. Upper-class patricians and self-made entrepreneurs, ardent traditionalists and passionate reformers, Roundheads and Cavaliers — its major figures have often been very uneasy bedfellows.
Sometimes, as the increasingly poisonous Brexit debate suggests, the fault lines can seem dangerously unstable.
But if there is one thing that, in modern times, has always bound the Tories together, then it is their shared commitment to middle-class values.
I say ‘middle-class values’, but they are not confined to one social group.
All over the country, millions of people, whatever their background, believe in the importance of aspiration and ambition, of striving and saving, so that they can do the right thing by their children — not least after their deaths.
The most successful Conservative prime ministers, from Benjamin Disraeli and Stanley Baldwin to Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher, have always understood this.
In 1975, one newspaper cartoonist drew Mrs Thatcher as a knight in shining armour: ‘St Joan Margaret de Finchley, Saviour of the Middle Classes’. And the Grantham grammar-school girl never failed to live up to her billing — which is why the British people rewarded her with a record three election victories.
Whether David Cameron really shares her commitment, however, is rather more dubious. Ever since he became Tory leader, 11 years ago, critics have wondered whether this patrician Old Etonian, the descendant of William IV, the son-in-law of a baronet, really understands the ambitions and anxieties of the ordinary British family.
More dave here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3542904/Dave-s-fatal-flaw-heart-Tories-problems-lies-Cameron-s-Osborne-s-utter-inability-grasp-values-aspirations-middle-classes-writes-Dominic-Sandbrook.html