Tory MPs, including a minister, have openly urged David Cameron to adopt more traditional Conservative policies in response to his party's drubbing at the polls. Gerald Howarth, a defence minister, said that Cameron should accept that Tory voters do not approve of gay marriage. Bernard Jenkin, a backbencher, said Cameron should resist Lib Dem obsessions like Lords reform.
This is a variation of Dennis Healey's celebrated observation that the first thing to do when in a hole is to stop digging, and of the constant suggestions when the Labour party under Michael Foot had been decisively rejected by the electorate ('the longest suicide note in history') that it was because voters found the party insufficiently 'left wing' and wanted from it more of what they had voted against.
For some voters that will of course be the case (UKIP have made some gains - probably included in agriculturally dependent communities, which also seem to like suicide notes), but it was the lamented Tony Blair who decisively demonstrated that elections are won in that 'middle ground'.
