THE CONSERVATIVES will need to win a historically large majority in next year’s House of Commons elections to have the authority necessary to take extremely difficult spending decisions, party leader David Cameron said yesterday.
Speaking in Manchester on the opening day of the Conservatives’ annual conference, Mr Cameron told thousands of delegates: “This is such a big week for us.”
Highlighting the challenges ahead, he said Britain’s deficit – which next year will top 14 per cent of gross national product – was “a clear and present danger” which was being ignored by prime minister Gordon Brown.
“To win the next election, we have to win more seats than we have done at any time in the last 70 years,” said Mr Cameron, adding that he needed “a strong and positive mandate for the changes our country needs”.
Today shadow chancellor George Osborne is expected to detail some of the spending cuts that the Tories would make if elected, in addition to ones already mentioned such as scrapping the national identity card scheme.
Urging delegates to avoid complacency, Tory chairman Eric Pickles said some believed “that the election is already in the bag and all we have to do is sit back and enjoy the view. Be under no illusion. The general election is not in the bag. We still have a mountain to climb. To form the next government, we need to gain 117 seats – something not achieved by the Conservative Party since 1931,” he said.
The current boundary drawings work against the Conservatives. In 2001, for instance, Labour won 412 seats, compared with the Tories’ 166, even though Labour won just nine points more of the popular vote.
The Conservatives under John Major won by 7.5 percentage points in 1992 – but had just a 21-seat Commons majority, holding 336 seats, compared to Labour’s 271. Labour would still hold an overall majority if both parties got the same number of votes.
The Tories need to win by approximately four points to draw level with Labour in seats, and by nine points to enjoy a House of Commons majority, according to the Electoral Reform Society.
However, the Conservatives have pledged to lay down new rules to govern the next boundary review to ensure that every MP is elected by approximately the same number of voters.
Under the Boundary Commission’s current rules, most MPs are elected by between 63,000 to 77,000 voters – though there are exceptions in rural areas in Scotland, where the number of electors is far lower, and urban constituencies where the figure is higher.
The Tories have proposed to set an average of 77,000 per seat, with only a 5 per cent margin – which would force the frequent redrawing of constituencies to cope with population changes and break county and local government boundaries.
The number of MPs should also be cut at the election after next, according to the Conservatives: “The world’s largest democracy, India, currently makes do with 5,454 MPs,” said George Young, Shadow Leader of the House.
“Next year, we’ll have 20 per cent more, but still be only one-twentieth of their population.”
The Tories also unveiled a jobs plan, publicly supported by companies such as Microsoft, Asda, McDonald’s and others, to put 300,000 young people into apprenticeships and training.
Former education secretary Lord Ken Baker said major colleges backed his plan to set up 12 university technical colleges to recruit 14-year-old students to serve as Britain’s “next generation of engineers and scientists”.
