of centre-left Liberal Democrat voters, a reverse of the SDP effect 30 years ago. Johnson's challenge will be to lead a party that is fishing for voters in an ever shallower pool. Forty-two percent say they will never vote Conservative , against 30% for Labour. Only 58% say they might be prepared to vote Tory, versus 70% for Labour. Research shows that swing voters broadly support social democrat views on the crucial questions of tax and spend, the size of the public sector and the provision of public services. They express little appetite for Johnson's brand of small-state conservatism. In other parts of the country, anti-Toryism in has become what Owen Jones describes as a kind of "folk hatred" , fuelled by memories of mass unemployment and deindustrialisation under Margaret Thatcher. Will these views have mellowed after five years of Conservative austerity, recession and stagnation? Possibly not. Before the 2010 election, Mervyn King warned that the party that won, and implemented its austerity programme, would render itself unelectable for a generation thereafter. King hadn't reckoned with the political effects a double-dip recession "made in Downing Street" on top of this. And remember that most of George Osborne's cuts are still to come. Will the ambition and personality of one Old Etonian be enough to defy long-term political trends, erase five years of pain from voters' minds and convince them to elect a Conservative majority in 2015 for the first time in 23 years? Nothing's impossible, but let's not underestimate the