Team Cameron needs to get its act together

Eric Pickles, the Tory Party Chairman, has given an interview to ConservativeHome, a blog that likes to do whatever it can to narrow the Tory lead in the polls.  Pickles asserts:

I want to be forgotten as party chairman. I want to be the guy that was there when Cameron had his great success, that's what I want. The really successful party chairmen are the ones you don't really remember.

What bunkum.  I am none too sure that Woolton, Hogg, Butler, Thorneycroft, Tebbit, Baker, Patten etc would agree.  The Chairman should be leading the charge in the media.  Pickles with his ‘non-toff’ image was given the job for that very reason.

As Iain Martin says, ‘The Tories should be baseball batting this government’.  He goes on:

I am astonished by the complacency in parts of the Tory operation. It's a subject I'll address in greater depth another time, but too many prominent Conservatives seem to lack fire in the belly. Health scandals such as that in Stafford come and go (and were you aware of the Tories making much of a noise about an outrage that cost 400 lives?) There's another NHS scandal this morning - again, where are the Tories? Gordon Brown cost the taxpayers anything up to £80 billion with his cronyism and botched deal-making forcing a merger between Lloyds and HBOS. Have the Tories noticed? Are any of them even a bit annoyed on behalf of the public? Pass.

Spot on.

Add to this, Steve Richard's perceptive piece in The Indy, where he warns that the Tory approach to policy may leave them exposed:

Making speeches about tone are important, and I can see why Mr Cameron seeks to clear the ground in his speeches over these few weeks. But he will need to cover the ground with some detail after that, or else the confusion over the past 48 hours will arise again – and there is a limit to how many confused messages voters will tolerate when it comes to tax and spend.

There is an an air of complacency or that is the perception of the Tory camp at present.  They need to do some head-banging and get their act together.  With quotes like that from Pickles and Clarke’s slip at the weekend, Brown, Mandy and Co will have such fun at the Tories expense to detract from the mess that Labour has created.