We say again that there is a danger of Conservative expectations getting ahead of the electoral facts.
It seems strange to think of Thatcher’s last triumph as the twilight of a Tory century, but that is how it now appears to electoral history.
The shock over the overall result has distracted us from how remarkable some of each party’s gains really were.
During the 1980s, the electoral function of the SDP/Alliance was to help the Conservatives win. This does not necessarily hold true 30 or so years on.
A further graft from the remnants of Labour and the LibDems might be the best way of preserving the Union and providing an alternative government to the SNP.
The Tory campaign in 1966 was not a success, but neither was it a complete failure. Heath’s warnings of economic troubles ahead were vindicated as early as July.
Thatcher’s biographer captures the extreme precariousness of her position even as she confounded the Left and scored some of her greatest triumphs.
Most produce results that are more or less what a reader of opinion polls and other electoral data might have anticipated a few months in advance.
7.3. 25-35. 1992. And – last but not least – 9.
He was the last custodian of a lost Tory tradition of professional party organisation which maintained the Conservatives as a national institution.