A lot of students this month will not even consider voting Conservative on 6th May. The reason is not because they have scrutinized the policies, or because they were impressed by Nick Clegg’s level eyebrows on the telly, or even because they come from a die-hard Labour or Lib-Dem family and won’t betray their tribe. It’s because of what David Willetts described as the “Bridget Jones Test”:

“In 1997 Helen Fielding’s character Bridget Jones summed up the public mood: “Labour stands for the principle of sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela, as opposed to braying bossy men … going to the Ritz in Paris then telling all the presenters off on the Today programme.” The Tories have still not passed what David Willetts calls “the Bridget Jones test” — although now it’s Belize rather than the Ritz. The point, as Bridget says, is that “you are supposed to vote for the principle of the thing, not the itsy bitsy detail about this per cent and that per cent”. (Rachel Sylvester, The Times, 30/03/2010)

David Cameron, Steve Hilton and various PR men who are good with colours (in the literal sense, all though I’m sure many more Tories are good-with-colours than Peter Tatchell or Gaurdian editors would have you believe) have gone some way towards passing the Test, but in the minds of many younger people – an important part of whose self-definition is being ‘liberated’, ‘modern’ and so on – Conservatives are still Nasty, Out of Touch and Old Fashioned. This makes an important difference in the last-minute thoughts that go through people’s minds in the ballot box. However well they have weighed up the pros and cons, however they may distrust Labour and the Liberal Democrats, they may still not be able to bring themselves to vote Conservative. People are not perfectly rational: they are not rational when they buy, not rational when they choose mates, and not rational when they vote.

The impression is that it’s abnormal for young people to vote Conservative. Conservatives aren’t cool. As young people we can help undermine this impression in easy ways, perhaps just enough to swing a few votes. Besides vote-winning, however, the way in which students remember the 2010 General Election will partly determine the party-political prejudices they hold in the future, and those which they pass on to their children (which they will have when they grow up, whatever sexy alternative lifestyles they are looking forward to at 21). If they don’t remember any of their friends casually enunciating their support for the Conservative Party (as a perfectly ordinary and reasonable thing to do), then an election victory will be remembered as ‘stolen’ by ‘middle England’ (or whichever mythological beast stands in), and Labour/Lib-Dems will be perceived as the ‘rightful rulers’ from 2010-2015.

We need to show by example that young people can be Conservatives too, but not in an enthusiastic “look how committed I am to the Conservative Party” way. Being politically involved relegates you from a representative cool young person to a politics dweeb. If you are seen as the latter, it really does not matter which party you are representing: your opinion is not to be related to, it is to be derided as ‘keen’, ‘hacky’ etc. What needs to be created is the impression that being young and conservative/Conservative is not special but ordinary; not the result of extra political awareness, but just casual concern for the future of the country.

So I advise subtle drips of Conservative support. No-one likes or will listen to an Enthusiast.

(1) Don’t change your Facebook photo to a “Vote for Change” logo; do join a (party, not single-issue) Conservative group and blanket-invite all your Facebook friends. Think of the difference between these options: profile-pic changes are used in other circumstances when you are really keen about something (e.g. it is a play you are directing or a bop you are hosting), but Facebook users invite each other all the time to all sorts of groups from the deeply important to the totally banal..

(2) Don’t knock up round your college, but perhaps call a couple of your non-political friends on May 5th; only give them a spiel if they ask for it (and give up if they get testy).

(3) Canvass if you like around Cambridge (I think it will probably be a good thing for Nick Hillman to get a higher share, in the long run), but don’t talk about it with non-hack students. On that note, you need to keep in your mind the distinction between ‘non-political students’ who are a minority group of foreign students or the philosophically uninterested, ‘political students’ who like most people care about the world, and ‘hacks’. The target group here is the second. By ‘hacks’ I mean active members of political societies, writers for Varsity and the other paper, JCR presidents, vice-presidents, women’s and green officers (but not necessarily anyone else on the JCR)…you know the type. They will have made up their mind and you can all happily discuss NI increases and the feeling you got from the residents of Market Ward last saturday, if that’s what you’re into.

(4) Closer to the time I am going to write another blog on election-day strategy. Those of you who know me will know that I am averse to many of the ways in which young people normally get attention from passers-by. But I promise I can come up with something fun we can do in town which will be both fun and effective (rather than alienating). Currently it involves face-paint; I am wondering whether I can in good conscience stretch to sportswear, but probably won’t be able to. There might be Union Flags and/or Party Colour Jelly. At any rate I shall try to strike a balance that makes us look young and fun without being at all ‘trendy’ or self-consciously ‘modern’.