Lower taxes still the mantra for most Tory MPs

In a famous speech in 2006 David Cameron said that he could explain his priorities in three letters: NHS. It was an audacious claim and it helped to define his brand of progressive conservatism. But, as some new polling by Populus shows, it wasn't remotely true as a description of the Conservative party as a whole.

In a column in the Times today Daniel Finkelstein mentioned some unpublished Populus figures showing that Tory MPs are far more worried about cutting taxes than they are about public services. I've been on to Populus and they've kindly sent me the figures. They have a panel of MPs who take part in surveys and they asked them recently to describe in a few words, as if to "an intelligent person from another country", what their party stood for. Populus has crunched the results and weighted them (to allow for the fact that some MPs mentioned more than one idea) to produce a table showing which values matter most to each party. And it shows that the key Tory belief — comprising 26% of the total response — was "smaller state and lower taxes".

That might not seem very surprising. But, given that Cameron has just announced that cutting taxes is no longer his party's main priority, it's still worth noting.

Here are the Tory results in full:

Smaller state and lower taxes - 26%

Freedom - 21%

Responsibility - 13%

Patriotism - 7%

Opportunity - 7%

Family - 7%

Strong defence - 7%

Free markets - 7%

Law and order - 3%

Sound money - 2%

Public services - 1%

Compassion - 1%

Does this mean that progressive conservatism is phoney? Not necessarily, because even if there are only six senior Tories who believe in it, they seem to be the ones who are in charge. But it does suggest that Cameron should be wary of pushing his party too far.

The responses for Labour are quite predictable. For the record, here they are:

Equality of opportunity - 19%

Social justice - 19%

Fairness for all - 14%

Strong public services - 14%

Working people - 12%

Reducing poverty - 7%

Enabling state - 5%

Inclusion - 3%

Internationalism - 3%

The many, not the few - 3%

Welfare - 2%