TO ME:
Thanks for this.

You are right that the immediate priority for our Party is to tackle factors other than disparities in the electoral quota!! Anyway, it is unlikely that the Government would agree to the necessary legal changes to equalise the boundaries. The current Boundary Review will probably add some seats to Conservative numbers and reduce the Labour total, but we believe that a full equalisation would be fairer and could be done so that up to date information is used at all stages of the Review.

As the Labour Government becomes less convincing, the most important challenges for Conservatives are to show that we are a credible alternative government with relevant modern policies and to excite the electorate with our ideas. A proper revival is the priority. This will improve Conservative turnout and lead to voters changing allegiance.

The current distribution of votes suggests that we must do more to target our campaigning.

Anti-Conservative tactical voting is lessening and when the electorate decides to throw out Labour, their voting tactics will change.

We are making progress in Wales, where we have 3 new MPs and came close in several seats. In Scotland, we are very close in a handful of seats. You are right that we need to do much better in the major industrial cities, but we are encouraged by results to think that we are capable of this.

You mention voter registration. Under-registration has been a perennial problem in the cities. There has been no improvement in the past 10 years. The councils in these areas have simply failed to pursue an active campaign of registration. Modern datamatching techniques coupled with doorstep canvassing are the answer. These techniques have worked in Australia, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

However, there have been criticisms of over-registration too. Councils have failed speedily to remove those who have left, died or been registered incorrectly. This is an invitation to fraud. In addition to an active canvass, we also need individual voter registration to improve accuracy. It is impossible to tell what the overall effect on numbers would be of actively campaigning for registrations, whilst improving accuracy. In Northern Ireland, the registations were 94% of census. Individual registration and active canvassing techniques mean that the register there is very accurate with 92% of census now registered.

Yours sincerely,
Oliver Heald

TO HIM:
Oliver,

Thanks once again for the reply. As you seem to have admirably moved on from the original fallacy I don't have much else to say, so hopefully this should be brief.

There are a couple of quick points I'd like to raise, however.

You mentioned that you've made progress in Wales and that things are looking up in Scotland. Now, it would be crude to suggest that this little fillip is due to fairer Tory representation via the Assembly and Scottish Parliament, so I won't. However, any talk of 'progress' has to be checked with the fact that those three Welsh seats (two of which have Kate Moss-esque majorities) cost about 100,000 votes each, as opposed to the 20-odd thousand Labour get their seats for. As for Scotland, one MP for the 370,000 Scottish Tories also seems a little harsh. But enough of that, we're in danger of getting bogged down in stats again. No one needs that.

The more pertinent point is not to do with the Conservative voters in the parts of the UK located in Jeremy Clarkson's microwave; it's about the chaps that want a career in the Party. What do you do if you're an ambitious Conservative who happens to live in Wales and doesn't want to hawk his sorry ass round the country in search of a more electorally-verdant pasture? Stick on some Bryn Terfel and moan about the rain most likely.

Which is a shame, because one thing that would surely help the Conservatives win back power where most people still see a blue rosette as a subtler version of horns and a tail, is some sort of local voice emanating from Party HQ.

Anyways, that'll do for now, thanks again for the correspondence, it's much appreciated. I look forward to our softly-spoken friend Mr Cameron exciting the electorate into a hung parliament on a 5 per cent lead in the blue vote.

Best of luck,

Paul Davies