What Future For Labour?

Saturday, 25 September, 2010 in Elections, Labour Party, Publications

By Lord Ashcroft

For many years after its 1997 defeat the Conservative Party failed to understand what had happened to it. Too many Conservatives believed not only that the voters had made a terrible mistake, but that the voters themselves would come to realise this and flood back in remorse. Meanwhile, the Tories just needed to stick to their guns. History records the success of this theory in the results of the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

I thought it would be interesting to find out whether the Labour Party is about to make the same mistake. Why does the Labour movement think it lost, and what does it think it needs to do to win again? And how does its view compare with that of swing voters, who supported Labour in previous elections but did not vote for Gordon Brown?

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Minority Verdict

Sunday, 19 September, 2010 in Conservative Party, Elections, Publications

By Lord Ashcroft

The result of the 2010 general election was closer than many people expected. Certainly it was closer than Conservatives hoped it would be. With 306 seats in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party was 20 seats short of the overall majority that looked all but assured only weeks before polling day. Minority Verdict: The Conservative Party, The Voters And The 2010 General Election attempts to explain why the Tories did as well as they did in May, and why they did no better. The book also gives an account of my involvement in the party’s target seats campaign, and my view of David Cameron’s decision to form a coalition government.

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