First, while it may play well at dinner parties in SW1 in the short-term, it is a recipe for electoral suicide. Social change is a long-term game, and one that plays itself out over generations. More to the point, it is not even certain that the Conservative Party could win this game; by the time that it attracts the kinds of voters Parris likes, it might have been out of power for a long time. Look at the east coast, from the Humber Estuary to Portsmouth. As Ian Warren notes, at the last election the Tories won 32 of these 38 seats, depending heavily on the same elderly, nostalgic and left-behind white voters who Parris now urges them to ignore. Were the centre-Right to follow his advice, it would not only lose its east flank but also jeopardise its entire blue-collar vote at a time when it is simultaneously failing to win over the young and minority voters who Parris presumably sees as the future.