Conservatives must not repeat the mistakes of 1992

Over the few days since the election one part of the left, and nearly all the intelligentsia, have been beating their breasts and asking "how did we get this so wrong?"

Meanwhile another part of the left has been giving a working demonstration of exactly how, by going on protests, occasionally violent, against the election results, attempting to charge Conservative voters extra in coffee shops and garden centres, complaining vocally about how stupid or greedy millions of voters are, and thus illustrating why no Conservative-inclined person with any sense would reveal those views.

The Sun put it very well here:

But it is really important that Conservatives in general (and Conservative MPs in particular) recognise that we are in no way magically immune from making the same kind of mistake the Left has made and which is rightly being skewered in this Sun Editorial.

In fact the last time far too many Tories made just this sort of mistake was immediately after an election with many parallels to the one we have just had - in 1992.

* We had just been re-elected with a small overall majority in a general election everyone had expected us to lose.

* The election was a personal triumph for a Conservative Prime Minister who was far more popular with the country than his party was, but who was less popular with the hardliners on his own backbenches, and one or two in his own government, who thought him too moderate.

* Following that election the Labour leader resigned and everyone thought the Labour party was out of it for a decade.

* A major issue of controversy, though it was more important to the political class and certain sections of political opinion than to most voters, was what our attitude should be towards the European Union.

Any of that sound familiar?

So we convinced ourselves, even after "Black Wednesday" destroyed our reputation for economic competence, that the voters would always come back to us, got complacent, and started providing our own opposition. We became, in Michael Portillo's words, "Pub Bores" on the subject of Europe, and the news programmes were full of Conservative MPs slagging one another off to cameras on College Green. John Major somehow lasted the course through superhuman efforts but any serious planning for the long-term future of the country was made almost impossible as his government had to spend almost all its' time fighting for survival and staggering from one rebellion to the next.

The price we paid for it was three shattering defeats: the price the country paid was ten years of Blair and three of Brown, the Iraq invasion, Gold reserves sold off cheaply, higher unemployment, a banking crisis, and a doubled national debt which on optimistic projections will take thirty years to pay back.

And it is worth noting that the actual result of the efforts of Tory rebels who tried to force John Major in a more Eurosceptic direction at any price was a Labour government which gave back half the British EU rebate, surrendered the British opt-out from the "Social Chapter" and signed the Lisbon treaty without the promised referendum.

We don't have to make those mistakes, and I don't believe we will. For a start, we have a clear gameplan on Europe - to get the best deal we can and then put it to an In-Out referendum. The entire party is on board with that strategy so far, though I take for granted there will be Conservatives on both sides of the referendum campaign.

But remember, people

1) Don't assume Labour is out of it. They have come back before when people thought they were dead (just as we have).

2) Don't get complacent. We have no God-given right to the support of the British people and must not take them for granted.

And most important of all, we still have a host of enemies and cannot afford to spend time fighting our friends, so don't forget Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment

"Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Conservative."