Losing It: The Conservative Party and the 2024 General Election by Michael A. Ashcroft

This short review appears in the current Liberator - that's issue 427. You can download it for free from the magazine's website.

Losing It: The Conservative Party and the 2024 General Election

Michael A. Ashcroft

Biteback Publishing, 2024, £10 pbk

There are two people inside Lord Ashcroft. One is Mr Hyde, who co-wrote what was intended to be a damaging biography of David Cameron. It contained a baseless story about a pig’s head, which useful idiots among the online left, as Hyde had no doubt intended, spread far and wide.

But Losing It is written by the impartial psephologist Dr Jekyll. It contains the fruits of two large opinion polls Ashcroft funded just after last year’s general election, and of 24 focus groups conducted with people who voted Conservative in 2019 but switched to another party in 2024.  

Having studied all this data, Ashcroft puts forward three principal reasons for the Conservatives defeat: it’s hard for any party to keep winning after 14 years in power; the coalition of voters Boris Johnson put together to win in 2019 was, like its architect, always likely to prove unstable; and the Conservative administration became – “to use a technical term from political science” – a total shambles.

It was this last point, he argues, that turned a likely defeat into a rout where the party lost half its vote and two-thirds of its MPs. The Conservatives forfeited the trust of voters because “senior Tories seemed to be playing out a soap opera for their own amusement, rather than tackling the country’s mounting problems”.

Ashcroft goes on to present the findings from his polls, interspersing the tables and charts with quotations from focus group participants. Liberal Democrat readers will find that someone voting for us in 2024 was most likely to be motivated by a wish to keep another party out (no wonder we can struggle under PR), and that the one factor on which we lead the other parties among voters as a whole is having our heart in the right place. This left me feeling at once pleased and a little patronised.

So we must thank Dr Jekyll for Losing It, even as we wonder what advantage Mr Hyde hopes its publication will bring in his internal Conservative Party politicking.

Jonathan Calder

When Isabel Oakeshott met the KGB

Embed from Getty Images

A Twitter follower sent me the link to a Guardian profile of Isabel Oakeshott from June 2018. At the time it was published, her most recent book was Call Me Dave, a biography of David Cameron that was written with Lord Ashcroft and serialised in the Daily Mail.

The Guardian profile reminds us:

In the book Oakeshott and Ashcroft describe attempting to contact 'current Kremlin and KGB' individuals for information on the then prime minister, before being summoned to a five-star hotel in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi to meet a 'very high-level source' and going on to meet figures at the Russian parliament.

After reporting the critical views of anonymous Russian security sources on Cameron, Oakeshott and Ashcroft suggest it was possible that Cameron should have adopted a 'more sophisticated and pragmatic stance' towards Russia and it could have had extra long-term benefits.

The more you read this passage, the more bizarre it becomes. The book we really need to be written is the one on relations between British right-wingers and the Russian state.

Final meetings at the Duma with @LordAshcroft pic.twitter.com/MNo0sTfpIg

— Isabel Oakeshott (@IsabelOakeshott) May 15, 2015

Six of the Best 466

Stephen Tall looks at Lord Ashcroft's poll of Lib Dem/Tory marginals on Liberal Democrat Voice.

"I suspect ... this is the symptom of an underlying disease - that the media exists entirely within a Westminster bubble. Mr Collins thinks the deficit is a "real" problem not because there's empirical or theoretical evidence that it is, but simply because the groupthink of Very Serious People says so." Stumbling and Mumbling introduces us to the useful concept of 'bubblethink'.

Europe's domination of the Ryder Cup means the event is losing popularity in America, explains Art Spander for Bleacher Report.

Internet Curtains visits the north Nottingham suburbs of Bulwell, Highbury Vale and Basford.

"These North Country witches have no need for fancy, expensive props and familiars, instead relying on their ‘Woolworth’s broomstick and a tabby cat’." The Downstairs Lounge celebrates the genius of Jake Thackray.

A Guiding Life attended the recent revival of Arts Fresco here in Market Harborough.

Six of the Best 445

Mark Pack looks at the lessons of Lord Ashcroft's poll of Conservative-Liberal Democrat marginals.

"The Labour party's capitulation on social security for the young is not an appropriate response to the modern world, but a dangerous step into the past," says Stuart Weir on Open Democracy.

Jennie Rigg enjoyed her day at the Headingley test match.

While Stumbling and Mumbling ponders the use of nightwatchmen in cricket and much else in "Liam Plunkett and the tragedy of social science".

"Charlie Chaplin was famous in a way that no one had been before; arguably, no one has been as famous since. At the peak of his popularity, his mustachioed screen persona, the Tramp, was said to be the most recognized image in the world." On A.V. Club, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky asks why Charlie Chaplin still matters a century on.

Graham Dukes, on The Grey Hares blog, writes about his part in the early years of the railway preservation movement. "As soon as my academic duties allowed I hastened to Towyn and found myself stepping into the office of Wharf Station, unchanged for the better part of a century. Tom Rolt himself was there, struggling patiently with a Victorian ticket stamping machine."

David Cameron and Lord Ashcroft's tax status

We are told that David Cameron found out only about a month ago that Lord Ashcroft was non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. Before then, it would seem to follow, he believed that Ashcroft paid tax in the UK on all his earnings.

So how do we explain what Cameron said in December of last year? Then he told the BBC's Politics Show:

Lord Ashcroft's tax status is a matter between him and the Inland Revenue. What I can say and what he has said is that the undertakings he gave at the time of being made a peer are undertakings that he is meeting.

But if Cameron believed Ashcroft was paying tax like everybody else in December, why didn't he simply say he was? This quotation reads like a carefully prepared form of words.

If David Cameron did not know Lord Ashcroft's true tax status in December, it sounds as though that was because he had been careful not to find it out.

Cartoon: Lord Ashcroft and Belize

Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News.

House Points: Lord Ashcroft and the Conservatives

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News. It is largely derived from earlier postings on this blog. Follow the latter link and you will find that Lord Ashcroft's quotation about Belize is still in place on his website.

Economical truths

The most telling thing about the Ashcroft affair is the indignities that senior shadow cabinet members put themselves through to avoid giving a straight answer to questions about his tax status.

Here is William Hague being interviewed by Andrew Marr in November of last year:

Hague: My conclusion having asked him is that he fulfilled the obligations
that were imposed on him at the time that he became a peer.

Marr: So does he pay taxes in the UK?

Hague: Well that, well that, I imagine that was the obligation that was imposed on him.

Try Caroline Spelman on The Daily Politics a few months before that:

Interviewer: So is he resident in the UK and paying taxes here?

Spelman: A donation has to be made by an individual who is... who pays tax in the United Kingdom.

Or David Cameron on the same programme just before Christmas:

Lord Ashcroft's tax status is a matter between him and the Inland Revenue. What I can say and what he has said is that the undertakings he gave at the time of being made a peer are undertakings that he is meeting.

Put these together and they offer a master class in giving a misleading impression without telling an outright lie.

And they are still at it. On Monday Michael Gove told Channel 4 News : “The position of Lord Ashcroft is that he is not the major donor to the Conservative party. He’s given less than one per cent, I think, this year.”

It’s not much of a defence to the charge that you have sold your soul to say that you did not get much for it. It makes the Tories’ look like Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus, who sold his soul to Mephistopheles and got no more than a bit of slapstick in Rome and a quick shufti at Helen of Troy in return.

But the truth is that Ashcroft has been the largest donor to the Conservative Party since David Cameron became its leader.

House Points is nothing if not fair, so we are allowing Lord Ashcroft the last word. Visit his website and you will find this sentence given prominence: “If home is where the heart is, then Belize is my home.”

Now Lord Ashcroft makes Tory bloggers look silly too

The attempt to defend Lord Ashcroft does not just make Conservative politicians look undignified. It does strange things to Conservative bloggers too.

Here is Iain Dale writing last night:

I'll take note of Alan Johnson's comments when he has proved his own patriotism. I'm not even going to mention the ways in which his own government sells British interests at every available opportunity. That would be like kicking a kitten.

No, Mr Johnson.

When you've raised millions of pounds for CrimeStoppers, when you've donated your collection of VCs to the nation, when you've given huge amounts of money to Help for Heroes, and countless other charities then I'll listen to you talk about patriotism.

Michael Ashcroft has done all those things. To label him 'unpatriotic' is a sick joke by a man who ought to know better.

It's all a bit overwrought. And the logic behind it seems to be that you cannot be a patriot unless you are a millionaire.

Still, let's be fair and leave the last word to Lord Ashcroft himself.

Visit his website and you will find these words prominently displayed:

"If home is where the heart is, then Belize is my home."

Lord Ashcroft: The Tories sold themselves cheaply

The really damaging thing about the Ashcroft affair is not that the Tories have received substantial funding from someone who is not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. It is that senior shadow cabinet members have spent years squirming to find words that disguise this fact but do not involve telling an outright lie.

Some examples:

William Hague: My conclusion having asked him is that he fulfilled the obligations that were imposed on him at the time that he became a peer.

Interviewer: So is he resident in the UK and paying taxes here?
Caroline Spelman: A donation has to be made by an individual who is, who pays, tax in the United Kingdom.

David Cameron: Lord Ashcroft's tax status is a matter between him and the Inland Revenue. What I can say and what he has said is that the undertakings he gave at the time of being made a peer are undertakings that he is meeting.

Sir George Young: It's an undertaking which he gave to another body, and that body has been asked for documents. I don't know what those documents contain. We have to wait for the freedom of information process to complete its course. I'm sorry, but I just can't shed any light on this.

All these quotation are taken from an article published in the Guardian last month.

And they bring the judgement of David Cameron and his senior colleagues into serious question. They make it look as though they have been bought - "like a banana republic," as Chris Huhne put it.

Conservative bloggers have defended the party's acceptance of money from Lord Ashcroft on the grounds that his funding has not been that significant. Here is Iain Dale, for instance:

Since David Cameron became leader, less than five per cent of cash and in-kind donations have come from Bearwood Corporate Services, a company in which Lord Ashcroft has an interest. Since Q1 2006, Bearwood has donated £4,131,995 in cash and in-kind out of a total £90,723,018 donated to the Conservative Party in the same period (Electoral Commission register).

But saying that you did not get that much for it is an odd way of defending yourself against the charge that you have sold your good name.

This whole affair can be put down to a combination of inexperience and arrogance, which may well prove to be the besetting sins of Cameron and his circle.

Why don't the Tories come clean on Lord Ashcroft's tax status?

Sir George Young has always seemed one of the more decent Conservatives. I felt sorry for him when Michael Martin was hoisted into the Speaker's chair ahead of him because of unthinking backbench determination that a Labour House should have a Labour Speaker.

But his performance on the Today programme this morning, where he twisted and turned every way to avoid giving a straight answer on Lord Ashcroft's tax status, was embarrassing. It will be hard to regard him in the same light after that.

The Guardian website has a transcript of this interview, together with excerpts from several others in which senior Tories have been similarly evasive on the subject.

If he is paying tax, they would surely say so. But these clumsy attempts to avoid the question are only making journalists more intrigued. So if an admission that Lord Ashcroft is not paying UK tax does eventually come, the Conservatives have ensured that it will receive maximum publicity.

I am genuinely puzzled by their approach.