Dragged Along By The Party Line
Last week saw Conservative candidate Virginia Morris leafleting outside the Bangladeshi Mosque on Cowley Road. In Oxford East the Conservatives came third in 2001, and Morris faces an uphill struggle in securing the votes of groups here that are not traditionally associated with her party: students, ethnic minorities, and people living on the Blackbird Leys social housing estate. Nevertheless Morris does have some impressive tactics that she is using to tailor her campaign to the constituency.
The Oxford East ‘InTouch’ Conservative leaflet focuses on the issues of choice in education, more police and tougher prison sentences and, of course, tax. These are issues that Morris believes can swing votes in her favour from disaffected labour voters. There are many small businesses in Cowley, and Morris hopes that her low tax message will win the support of their owners.
Asked how the Tories’ hard-line approach on immigration goes down in the area, she toed the party line, defending caps on both asylum seekers and immigrants. However she was keen to emphasise the negative effects of “uncontrolled” immigration on the illegal immigrants themselves, rather than on the people of middle England, this in contrast to Michael Howard’s language in the national campaign.
While Morris briefly flashes the immigration leaflet that she claimed to have distributed in the area recently, it is clear she does not believe that the immigration issue is a particularly salient one. This Conservative candidate donned a headscarf while seeking the support of Muslim men outside the Cowley Road mosque, though many of them told The Oxford Student that their minds were already made up, often in favour of the Liberal Democrats.
It would be fair to say that, despite the gesture of her headscarf, Morris did not seem at ease with campaigning at the mosque – she was reluctant to approach people without introduction, admitting that she feared causing offence – it could be suggested that in her campaigning Morris lacks that most vital of political ingredients: the common touch.
What does Morris have to offer students in Oxford East? She was quick to flag up the Tory policy of “scrapping tuition fees”, to be funded through “cuts in bureaucracy”. She also mentioned the policy of “allowing an extension of student loans from £3,000 a year to £5,000 “with interest rates lower than for credit cards”. However when pressed she did admit that students would still be faced with a commercial interest rate of eight per cent.
Asked about the other candidates for the constituency, Morris would only say that despite his reputation as a “hot-head”, a vote for Andrew Smith is still a vote for Tony Blair. She also acknowledged the likelihood of potential Conservative votes being siphoned off by UKIP, but again described a vote for UKIP as “a vote for labour”.
Unfortunately what Morris seems to forget is that, in this Labour-Lib Dem marginal, the conservatives are in the same position, with a vote for them also likely to be a vote for Blair and a Labour government.
28th Apr 2005