I have a paper out today from the Centre for Policy Studies. You can download it here. I've got a few pieces on it in the pipeline, which I'll post, but in the meanwhile this is the press release, which is a pretty accurate summary:

LIBERTY!

How Conservatives can win the support of ex-New Labour voters

As the Blair experiment draws to an end, how can the Conservative Party persuade disillusioned New Labour voters to vote Conservative at the 2009 General Election?, asks Stephen Pollard in From Labour to…?, published today Friday 19 August 2005 by the Centre for Policy Studies.

Pollard, a Labour voter and early supporter of Tony Blair, criticises the Conservative Party 2005 election campaign as being both “unsavoury and stupid”: unsavoury because of its “nudge, nudge, wink, wink, we hate them too stance on immigration”; and stupid because it lost further support from the crucial AB social group.

Yet there is hope. Pollard suggests that:

The Conservative Party has it within itself to create a coalition of support which would bring together the bedrock of voters who have stuck with it in the past three defeats, its once natural AB supporters, disaffected Labour supporters and Blairites, and Cs and Ds who were Thatcher’s Tories but have long since given up on the Party. And the key mechanism which can support that coalition is… genuine public sector reform, based on equality of access, and buttressed by individual liberty.

Conservatives must be bold in advocating reform of the public sector, challenging perceptions that it is the selfish party. It must make the case that vouchers in education and health are intended primarily to help the poor. It must demonstrate that it does not want to “slash and burn” the public sector but to take power from the producers and give it to parents and patients – for the benefit of all, not just the rich. And what more powerful sign of its commitment to the public services than a pledge that, where there is a choice between a public and a private service, Conservative Ministers will always use the public service?

And the Conservatives should reinforce their commitment to helping the poor by proposing the introduction of a flat tax. A flat tax could lift 10 million people out of the income tax system (below average earners would gain most from such a move); its simplicity would be a boost for the economy; and, unlike the present system, it would be easy to grasp.

A single thread runs through Pollard’s recommendations: liberty. The liberty for the individual to decide where and how children are educated and where, when and how patients are treated in the NHS. The liberty to go about his business without fear of assault; the liberty of the individual not to carry ID cards; the liberty of self-government.

Pollard concludes that these policies and approach could persuade those who presently shy away from the Conservative Party, but who nonetheless share the principles of liberty and free markets, that it should be their political home.