For all his manifesto mistakes, his core take is correct. The key people in elections are who he has always said they are: lower middle-class, provincial, home-owning voters.
We must design a conservatism that appeals to both.
There are many seats in London that are also C1/C2 heavy: it is just that they are outer London seats.
C1/C2 voters are hugely important in raw numerical terms. They make up 52 per cent of the electorate in England.
Other than saying, “the state should stay out of things”, they haven’t had much to say. This must change. They need to set out how they’d do things better.
If she tries to work through populist edicts and diktats, she will fail. And if the Right argues that a few tax cuts for the richest will solve our problems, this will be no better.
Those looking to find what she really stands for may one day get an answer. But the point for the here and now is: she seeks to dominate the mainstream.
But the two halves of any putative progressive alliance are divided. The intelligentsia may be against Brexit, but the working class is enthusiastically for it.
The core of their beliefs is that elite expertise is preferred and believed superior to messier concepts such as the market or democracy.
Low aspirational parenting and teaching are key problems.
May and Hammond are right to prioritise the working class, but an attack on small traders and self-starters is only going to alienate them – and many more besides.
“This Government has a plan, not simply to manage our withdrawal from the European Union, but to take this opportunity to fundamentally change Britain for the better.”
A fundamental clash between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism is taking place – and it cuts across Left and Right.
Only one per cent of Tory MPs were once manual workers. For a party that considers itself to be the champion of the Just About Managing, this is not good enough.