Calamity Dave needs a professional team

Conservative Home held a fringe meeting at the Conference; topic under discussion was why had the party not received the thumping majority it should have done in May:

The dissection of what went wrong, from the panel of political hacks and an audience of defeated candidates, was clinical - and would not have made comfortable listening for Mr Cameron and his team.

It was nothing to do with policy being too left or right wing, and everything to do with presentation or, as Tim Montgomerie argued, a lack of "basic professionalism" at the top of the party.

Montgomerie connected it with a lack of coherence when broadcasting the party's message (and specifically the concept of The Big Society).

That lack of professionalism and lack of coherence has again been apparent this week in relation to three topics in particular: their attitude towards their party colleagues in Northern Ireland (which I've covered ad infinitum on here), the Scottish Independence Referendum fiasco and finally, the plans to cut higher rate taxpayers' child benefit.

The Referendum could be summarised as Cameron throwing down the gauntlet to Salmond, shouting:
"Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough"
...and then shortly afterwards:
"er...I'll take that glove back if I may, nobody's noticed have they?"
Certain Scottish Labour leaders have been shown the door for less.
Firstly, it was an attitude towards the Referendum totally at odds with the one consistently expressed by the Scottish Conservatives. Secondly, it was a constitutional non-sequiter, it isn't in Salmond's or, indeed, the Scottish parliament's power to call such a referendum. His backroom team hadn't done their research on both counts; on both counts, an unprofessional attitude was again too clearly apparent.

Similarly, the whole child benefit furore is an example of how not to make important policy announcements. "Poorly executed, poorly conveyed" has been one of the more charitable descriptions. Did nobody sit down with a sheet of A4 (as opposed to the back of a cigarette packet) and pen before hand and predict possible public and press reaction, potentially damaging loopholes and most importantly, work out a contigency plan to deal all the possible resulting scenarios? If not, why not? Again, isn't that exactly what the backroom team are being paid for?

The Conservative plans and policies on both the Union and changing the UK's society as a whole are ones I can, for the very most part, say I wholeheartedly agree with...but project management is 9/10 of actually achieving a project's target.
A lot of tightening up is required in that regard and soon.