Word: labours
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Labour's missteps and infighting account for some of this success. The rest is down to Cameron: his reinvention of his cantankerous party and his reinvention of himself as an avatar of the modern age. "David is comfortable with Britain as it is today," says shadow-cabinet member David Willetts. "It's essential for making the party more electable that you're not trying to re-create Britain...
That's why there's such a buzz around the tall, sleek figure bestriding the podium in Loughborough. The town won't need much of a push to switch allegiance from Labour to Tory and neither will the country. A general election isn't due until spring 2010, and Cameron's 20-point lead in the opinion polls could yet sag if fate gifts Labour a game-changing event or an economic miracle. But for anyone who recalls the animosity toward the Tories that ushered Labour into power in 1997 and helped keep it there for more than a decade...
Cameron doesn't deny his past, but he's keen not to dwell on it either, even though the politics of envy - once a potent weapon for Labour - has lost traction. That was the cheering message Tories could take from their May by-election victory in Crewe and Nantwich, a constituency in northwest England. Edward Timpson, heir to a shoe-repair chain, won easily there, despite a negative campaign that burlesqued him as a "Tory toff." Likewise, concludes Iain Dale, a Conservative blogger and the publisher of Total Politics magazine, Cameron's background is no longer an electoral liability...
Nasty to Nice The Tories are the traditional party of privilege, Labour the champions of the working class. But Margaret Thatcher, a radical Conservative, kicked against the establishment that tried to block her ascent; her policies appealed to aspirational working-class voters. Her successor, John Major, who came from a very modest background, nicely epitomized Thatcher's success. Blair, educated like Cameron at a private school and Oxford, won three terms as the leader of New Labour, a party as geared to middle-class interests as to workers' rights...
Compassion and empathy were the last qualities associated with the Conservative Party when Cameron launched his leadership campaign. Labour had been able to capitalize on the benefits of harsh economic reforms pushed through by Thatcher while continuing to blame their human cost on her. In opposition, the Tories floundered, running through three successive leaders who all tried and failed to woo voters with populist, right-wing rhetoric...