Some questions to get conservatives thinking

 I've repeatedly warned conservatives that, if defining who is or isn't a conservative and what is or isn't conservatism is left to socialists, liberals and reactionaries, we will become irrelevant to politics and policy-making. Historian Robert Saunders, in criticising Roger Scruton's call for defunding of university departments lacking in intellectual diversity, set this out in a Twitter thread:

In its early years, Thatcherism teemed with ideas. The party became a magnet for historians, philosophers and economists - some converts from the radical Left - who hammered out their ideas in think tanks, discussion groups and Scruton's own journal, The Salisbury Review

Saunders asks whether the current reaction from conservatives to left-wing dominance of academia - ban it, stop it, take its money away - simply covers over the paucity of conservative thinking, especially in or near to the Conservative Party itself. Saunders isn't a conservative so my warning is relevant but his (admitted a tad jaundiced) analysis of David Cameron is very telling:

From this perspective, Cameron seems guilty not of ‘scepticism’ but of what his biographers call a ‘heroic incuriosity’. He takes no interest in the arts; has only the haziest grasp of history; and cheerfully admits that he ‘doesn’t really read novels’. Far from liberating himself from ‘ideology’, he has simply ceased to ask meaningful questions of it.

This is, without question, the defining characteristic of many modern politicians - Cameron is not unique in being spectacularly bright but incredibly shallow, just look at Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Leo Varadkar and, of course, the godfather of 'image is everything' political positioning, Tony Blair.

A while ago - when slightly angry voices on the right of politics were saying that Cameron was a 'conservative in name only' or similar, I wrote that this was far from the truth, he is absolutely a conservative:

But for Cameron – and we see this in his enthusiasm for “social action” – such an obligation to act nobly is essential to conservatism. We are defined by what we do rather than what we support. Passing laws to help the poor in Africa or to care for communities in England is not sufficient; we must act ourselves to help society. A central tenet of Cameron’s conservatism is the idea of “giving back” – we are fortunate so it behoves us to put some of that fortune back into society.

The second concept is the idea of administration. Some people see the purpose of securing political power as the way to effect change, to direct the forces of government so as to improve mankind. In Cameron’s conservatism this is not the case; the purpose of power is administration – the running of good government.

The problem is that this outlook - action and managerialism - doesn't leave a great deal of space for thought and rather focuses our preference on doers rather than thinkers - Rory Stewart rather than Jesse Norman. As Blair once put it "what matters is what works" and, in most cases, "what works" is defined as what wins us elections rather than a genuinely technocratic evidence-based polity. Our modern government looks technocratic but is far more concerned with what might be called "feels" than with substantive thinking about policy.

An illustration of this came from Will Tanner (who runs the brand new Tory think tank, Onward) in response to Liz Truss MP's suggestion that we need to reform planning and build a million new homes on what is now 'green belt' around London:

You've got to admire @trussliz' chutzpah, but our 10,000 sample megapoll last month suggested allowing development on the Green Belt would be the most unpopular housing pledge the Conservatives could take into an election, even with young people

Truss responds with a very telling comment:

We've got to move away from focus-group paralysis and deliver what will improve people's opportunities and life chances. We have to start making arguments again and not just follow.

Tanner's comment is in line with the Conservative Party of Cameron - no thinking ("how do we craft a planning system that protects, enhances even, the beauty, heritage and environment of England while allowing the housing development we need") just 'we can't do that, it isn't popular'. You don't have to agree with Truss's argument about housing development to see that setting policy by opinion poll denies the requirement to think seriously about the sort of places we want in our society. It is also a little ironic to see a politician slapping down a think-tank chief for not doing any actual thinking.

As to that conservative thinking, it is out there but not quite where you'd expect to find it. Firstly, the sort of issues that really bother people are now far less about economics than they are about sociology:

As conservatives, however, we can take advantage of not being tied to a canon to dip into a wider range of sources, to use fiction - Austen, Trollope, Tolkien and even Disraeli - as well as philosophy. Above all though, conservatives should pay more attention to sociology than economics. Most of our problems are because we haven't done this, we've allowed ourselves to be captured by the dry logic of what Deidre McCloskey calls "Max U" - maximising utility, utilitarianism, metrics, technocracy, Plato's Philosopher Kings.

So if you want to get some substance about family, community, identity and the loss of institutions, you're better off reading US sociologist Robert Putnam's "Our Kids" or Dutch geographer Harm de Blij's "The Power of Place" than dabbing your eyes at reactionary paeans to a lost bucolic England or thudding your way through "The Road to Serfdom". And taking a look at non-conservative voices at the fringes of what's usually called 'populism' like Ben Cobley, David Goodhart and Matthew Goodwin.

The questions - challenges we could call them - that emerge include:

1. How do we restore trust to society - in things like marriage, education, justice, business and finance as well as government?

2. How, in an age of individualism, LGBT rights, gay marriage and identity wars, do we rebuild families as the central building block of society?

3. How do we balance the undoubted power of free markets and new technology in promoting betterment with the human desire to sustain community?

4. How do we promote local autonomy in a world filled with outcries about 'postcode lotteries'?

5. How does personal responsibility square with the popular idea that our agency is compromised by modern marketing methods?

6. Is there still a concept of duty - to family, friends, neighbourhood and nation?

7. Can we meet the aspiration for security without compromising civil liberties, and where is the boundary beyond which acceptable social control become autocracy?

8. What are the institutions we need to meet the aspirations for secure families and strong communities?

Too much of our thinking is, as Lizz Truss noted, dominated by opinion polling and focus groups resulting in policy-making that, to use an ad man's term, "just films the brief" - we get lists of initiatives each crafted so as to ping a positive in polling or research but these lists are, taken as a whole, unsatisfying. From tweaks, up or down, to taxes through grants or incentives to tinkering bits of regulatory change, what we have doesn't present any sort of picture of what we want tomorrow's families, communities and neighbourhoods to look like - they are bereft of a vision and wholly without the sort of mission Disraeli set us, 'improve the condition of the working man'.

You don't need university departments, think tanks or learned societies to consider what a 21st century conservatism might look like and there's no point in (given the left wing bias of academia) trying to push water uphill - so feel free to take those eight questions above, add to them if you like, and start thinking about what kind of place you want to live in and how we get there.


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Some thoughts on political homelessness.

You hear it a lot, at least within places like Twitter where the chattering classes gather - , "none of the Party's represent me, I'm politically homeless". It is an odd phrase since it assumes that, to be comfortable in our ideological skin we require a political party where we can make a home.

Thinking about this for a few minutes, I concluded that this represents a desire to have a nice safe, affirmative space filled with ideological soulmates - a tribe (to borrow the popular term for such things). I further concluded that the only way to achieve such a home is, in fact, to stop any challenge or doubt and simply accept the absolute truth of your chosen ideology.

I've been a member of the Conservative Party since 1976. At no point in these 40-odd years have I ever felt that this Party provided me with a home. It's true, and I've written about it, that there are values largely shared by the political right that aren't shared by the political left (even in its most "neoliberal" Blairite form). I also know that governments of the political right also propose and enact policies that run counter to those values - the emasculation of local government, the indulgence of identity politics and the penchant for regulating behaviour come to mind as examples of this failure.

What's true is that no political party, other than one I set up myself to represent myself, can accord with the things I think are important or the policies I consider to be right. No party is considering a serious reform of the planning system, proposing to reduce the number of young men we lock up, or the devolution of hospitals to local government - all things I think should happen. And the party I'm a member of proposes a host of things this I dislike or consider stupid - from officious fussbucketing obesity plans through bans on drinking straws to pointless laws to stop people who never eat dogs from eating dogs.

Political parties - for all the ideological posturing and talk of values - are always vehicles to achieve power (this is because without power none of the things us members want to happen can happen). Whether we're speaking of Peel's Tamworth Manifesto or Disraeli's establishment of a central office (for me the real formation of the Conservative Party as a national party rather than a parliamentary faction) and the setting of a mission to improve to conditions of the working man, my Party has always been a means to get the right sort of people elected. And, for all its current posturing, that is the case with the Labour Party - the Labour Representation Committee formed by trade unions with the express purpose of sponsoring union-backed MPs and councillors.

If no political party stands a chance of exactly (or even closely) representing your views on everything and those parties exist for the purpose of securing power, then anyone who thinks about such matters has to be "politically homeless". The question isn't whether the party provides a home but rather whether there are, as folk like to tell it these days, 'red lines' that make it impossible to support a party. And, I guess, if every party has crossed your 'red lines' then you're left on your own.

I've given a lot of thought to what those 'red lines' might be in my case. Is there a point where the Conservative Party's position is far removed from mine and the particular policy or value is really important to me? I saw how Luciana Berger and Mike Gapes said they had to leave Labour because they considered it institutionally antisemitic. It seems to me that this is a principled position - you don't have to agree with them to understand that, if you consider your party irredeemably racist, leaving is an inevitable choice.

My red lines? I'm not sure. It's one of those "I'll know it when I see it" moments, either a final piece of stupid fussbucketry or yet another piece of officious immigration regulation. It could be a leader who is a reactionary rather than a conservative, taking the party back down the nativist, protectionist hole from which Disraeli pulled us in 1846. Or it could be that we finally forget that we're here to make a difference - getting power isn't the end, improving the conditions of ordinary people is the end. I've a feeling that, like Berger and Gapes, if I leave it will be about values not policy - walking out over Brexit, for example, seems shallow and unprincipled, a parliamentary tactic not a change of heart.

All I'm saying, I guess, is that political parties do not provide a home but are a means to an end. You don't have to join one, you don't have to vote for one but, if you're a member of a party you have to be happy with both the means and the ends. And leaving is mostly about the means - values, standards, leadership - not the ends.

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The Conservative Party is the party of suburbia - we should remember this and build more suburbs

I remember canvassing with my Dad in true-blue Beckenham. At one house the woman who opened the door explained here reasoning in a strong Cockney accent - "we've always voted Labour before but we was in a Labour area. Now we're in a Tory area we'll be voting Tory." Who am I to argue with such a profound argument especially since further study - not least what us direct marketers call the 'Bestseller Effect' - tells me that this sort of decision (not necessarily expressed as bluntly) really is influenced by social geography. Here's Joel Kotkin & Wendell Cox on voting in suburban 'red state; USA:

Even if the tide is turning, it’s happening slowly, and the GOP has political and cultural advantages in both Texas and Florida that will delay any turning of the tide even if they don’t finally stop it. Latinos in Texas, for instance, are considerably more GOP-leaning than their counterparts elsewhere. And surely some of the blue-state refugees won’t be inclined to support the same policies that led them to leave these states in the first place. The suburban areas that attract newcomers still tilt decisively GOP, and in 2016, turned out mostly for Trump.

The assumption (and we've seen similar arguments in the UK about millennial suburban migration) is that the left-inclined young urban vote, when it moves to suburbia to do that old-fashioned raise-a-family thing, will carry on voting left despite this likely being against their economic and social interests. Moreover, the millennials cycling out from inner-urban places are, I suspect, more likely to be conservative in outlook if not in current voting choice.

Of course, other demographic factors (not least ethnicity) are significant too - like US Republicans, the Conservatives have less support among non-white voters and, in particular, among two established and economically bettering groups - Pakistani and Bangladeshi voters. This may change but right now these groups remain overwhelmingly Labour voting despite the Conservatives having both the first Pakistani-heritage Home Secretary and the first female Muslim minister.

It's still the case, however, that the left - influenced by its inner-urban core support - is inherently anti-suburb and anti-family providing conservatives with a core message to new arrivals in suburbia. Here's Kotkin & Cox again:

Contempt for suburbia, so common among Democratic-leaning academics, planners, and media, could make appealing to these voters more difficult. Many party leaders support forced densification, anti-car strategies, and the annexation of suburbs—ideas that lack broad appeal in a country where most people live in single family homes and rely on cars and roads to conduct their lives.

If UK conservatives want to build a future base, it will be in suburbia (just like it has always been - we are the party of the suburbs). This means we've got to be brave enough to recognise that building new suburbs and more family-housing should take priority over protecting agricultural monoculture, especially in the Home Counties.

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A note on Conservative euroscepticism

There's a fairly common retort from those who still wish to remain in the EU when it's pointed out that we've had a referendum that voted to leave and parliament started that processs of leaving. It goes something like "Brexiteers had forty years of moaning about EU membership so they've no room to talk".

Now I'm sure we can probably find some few folk who, having opposed continued membership in 1976, continued to bang on about it from then onwards. Where you won't find them is in the Conservative Party. Aside from Teddy Taylor and a few unreconstructed Powellites, the Conservative Party was completely united in its support for our membership of what was then the European Economic Community (EEC). What opposition there was to membership came from the left - indeed Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, John Prescott and other enthusists for EU membership fought and lost the 1983 General Election on a platform of leaving the EEC.

In that election I was agent for John Carlisle, MP for North Luton. I think it fair to say that John was as far to the right in the party as you could get but we still included support for EEC membership in the election address. Our membership simply wasn't an issue for Conservatives.

Between this time and the 2001 general election something happened. During the selection meeting for the parliamentary candidate in Keighley, I was asked a question about the Euro. My response was that membership of the Euro should only come following a referendum but that I didn't think we'd have one. I suggested that the next referendum would be about our membership of the EU not the Euro, and that I didn't know how I would vote come that day.

The something - well somethings really - that happened between 1983 and 2001 was all about money and the approach of government. Firstly we had the debacle of the UK joining and then leaving the Exchange Rate Mechanism, then the long drawn out Maastricht Treaty ratification process, and finally we had the creation of the Euro. Tory euroscpeticism was born. But even then it wasn't about leaving but rather that Britain should be less supine in its dealings with the EU and more assertive in opposing moves leading to federalism.

It wasn't until the mid-2000s when the Better Off Out campaign was launched with support from a few Conservative MPs like Philip Davies and Douglas Carswell that we saw a group within the Conservative Party committed to leaving the EU. The long war over ERM, Maastricht and the Euro had scarred the Party and the membership placed the blame squarely on the pro-EU leadership - men such as John Major, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke.

It is important, therefore, not to rewrite history as some sort of rationalisation for seeking to overturn the decision to leave the EU. There has not been a 40 year campaign to leave - UKIP wasn't formed until 1993 and James Goldsmith's Referendum Party campaigned for a referendum on further federalism (and did very badly) in 1997. Even then the media position on membership was overwhelmingly supportive and the Conservative Party remained committed to membership albeit with a somewhat grumpy attitude to the EU.

None of this is to suggest that Remainers should shut up but rather to observe that their claim of a long media campaign supported by the right of the Conservative Party is largely untrue. The important question to ask is how the Conservative Party transformed from an enthusiast for European economic cooperation firstly into a scpetical and questioning party and then, in large part, to an advocate of leaving. If we're looking for the reason we left, it happened on 7 February 1992 when the EEC stopped being a free trade alliance and became a nascent 'superstate', the EU.

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Are Labour's grassroots just a little bit racist?

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It seems an age ago when I shared a session on Keighley's Ramadan radio with the then leader of Bradford's Labour group, Ian Greenwood. These occasions are pleasant and conversational rather than the confrontation we usually get on mainstream radio and one topic that came up was the number of candidates selected by the parties from ethnic minorities. After a little bit of to and fro Ian and I agreed that the real measure of success wasn't us selecting candidates from the Pakistani community to contest wards with a majority Pakistani population but would be us selecting non-white candidates in overwhelmingly white wards such as Tong or Ilkley.

Understand, dear reader, that this is not about positive discrimination - adopting an 'all-ethnic' shortlist in the manner of Labour's 'all-women' shortlists. Not only is this approach inequitable but it promotes division and discord. Instead I wanted decisions to be made on merit - because the person, regardless or gender, ethnicity, religion or age is the best person to be the candidate.

So I was struck by the observations from David Lammy MP on an analysis showing how few people from ethnic minorities Labour has selected for winnable seats:

Just one non-white candidate has been selected so far in the 34 seats where a sitting Labour MP is stepping down in the general election in May – the constituencies which should provide the best opportunities for the party to get new prospects elected.

By contrast, five Conservative associations among the 32 in constituencies where a sitting MP is retiring have chosen minority candidates.

And that pattern in Conservative 'safe' seats isn't new - the last election saw Nadhim Zahari, Priti Patel, Sajid Javed, Adam Afriye, Sam Gymiah, Kwasi Kwarteng, Helen Grant and Shailesh Vara elected in such seats. In contrast, Labour's non-white MPs (like David Lammy) are overwhelmingly elected to represent inner-city areas with large, even majority, non-white populations. The comparison with those Tory MPs would be Labour selected black or Asian candidates in places like Barnsley Central, Neath or Leeds East.

The Conservatives, during a period when we have be routinely accused of racism by Labour, have quietly changed our attitude to non-white candidates. This perhaps reflects that the core middle-class support within the party is no longer exclusive and sees no issue with a person's race, gender (the shortlist for the safe seat of Banbury is all female without the need for imposition) or sexuality. Don't get me wrong, we've still a fair smattering of folk who aren't so keen but they are a smaller and smaller minority of the Conservative membership.

Meanwhile Labour (or at least David Lammy) agonises about the problem and inevitably discrimination is suggested:

He warned: “The party is in danger of looking incredibly complacent. Britain’s ethnic minorities have traditionally voted Labour but Parliament is a long, long way from reflecting the nation as a whole.

“If we are failing to select enough on a regional basis over a period of time, we ought to think about black and minority shortlists, with at least one on the list.”

Mr Lammy urged party leaders to push ethnic-minority candidates if any Labour MPs stood down before May.

If the only way to get ethnic-minority candidates is to rig the game in their favour, then Labour really does have a problem. Either those bright and brainy non-white candidates are all in the Conservative Party or else Labour's grassroots are - I hesitate to say this - just a little racist.

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Why Boris Johnson should never lead the Conservative Party

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I'm a Conservative. I've been a member of the Party for nearly forty years - much longer than the current Mayor of London. And I am deeply worried that Boris Johnson may become the leader of what I see as my Party.

Let's be clear that this isn't about the Darius Guppy affair. It's not about Boris's inability to keep his trousers on and his serial infidelity. Nor is about his seeming shallowness, the jolly old Boris image all bluff and bluster, bonhomie and bounce. My concern is about what Boris Johnson has done, tried to do and proposes to do as Mayor of London. For me this is the absolute measure of the man and whether he should be allowed anywhere near the leadership of the Conservative Party.

I'm like lots of you. I love Boris, he is charismatic, exciting, different from the average politician. Boris is one of the people with the ability to make you smile, look up and listen - or at least think you're listening and not rather basking in the sunshine of the Mayor's personality. Only - dare I say it - Nigel Farage comes close to Boris Johnson in that sense of approachability. Boris is that rare sort of politician who'll get taxi drivers to peep their horns, and builders to yell his name out as he passes. And all this makes him the most dangerous sort of demogogue - someone who can persuade us to accept what we wouldn't accept from the regular sort of politician.

I also like the fact that Boris Johnson is Mayor of London and not Ken Livingstone. Boris is a much, much better Mayor of London than Ken. But then my cat would make a better Mayor of London than Ken. I like - or rather Londoners should like - the fact that Boris has managed to persuade the UK government to continue pouring nearly all of its limited infrastructure spending into London. This is pretty effective lobbying - with both Labour and Conservative led adminstrations in Westminster suckered into making London their investment priority.

The problem with Boris is simple. He likes government's bossiness all too much. This is the man who thinks it a good idea to buy some second hand water cannon to hose the unwashed and unwanted off the capital's streets. This is the politician whose first act was to impose a blanket drinking ban on the tube just to get a headline. And this is the leader who has supported bans on drinking outside pubs, curfews and the imposition of bouncers on suburban pubs.

Boris, when he got to be Mayor, looked around for a soulmate and found it in Michael Bloomberg, then the Mayor of New York. And Boris, capitivated either by Bloomberg's charm or his billions (hard to tell really), lapped up Mike's particular brand of municipal fascism, a world of bans and controls, greater police powers and the demonising of the homeless, the fatty and the smoker. This nannying fussbucketry has been embraced with enthusiasm by Boris - a man whose private behaviour belies his political desire to boss other people around about the way they live their lives.

Today the crysalis has cracked open and the complete Mayor Boris butterfly has emerged. What a splendid creature it is - a blonde, bouncy worrywart, a gaudy tousled version of Mike Bloomberg, a municipal fascist with a smiling jokey manner. Today Boris has announced proposals to ban smoking in parks and squares, minimum pricing for alcohol, controls and bans on fast food and a host of officious 'nutritional' information on restaurant menus. I'm sure that, given half a chance, Boris - channelling the Bloomberg model - will be taxing fizzy drinks, closing down street vendors and banning horse-drawn vehicles.

Once upon a time the Conservative Party was about choice, personal responsibility, tolerance and freedom. It seems this only applies - in the world of Boris Johnson - if you choose the approved lifestyles and directed behaviours of London's authorities. If you're a smoker, you're to be hounded even further to the margins of society - not for reasons of health but because Boris Johnson has decided - urged on by the health fascists - that you are not normal. And if you want to start a business selling kebabs or burgers, you'll be excluded from much of the capital's high streets by the planners.

This is not the Conservative Party I joined as a fifteen-year-old in 1976. But I am watching as privileged silver-spoon chewing men like Boris Johnson swallow the anti-choice, anti-freedom line of public health directors, chief constables, doctors and council chief executives. I am watching as the political party I have given so much to is destroyed by people who think there's something right in telling people they aren't normal because they smoke. People who want to give the police military hardware because they've lost the trust of big parts of the population.

There are still plenty of people in my party who still believe in choice, independence, freedom and personal responsibility. It's just that Boris Johnson isn't one of them. And if he - god forbid - ever leads my party, I shall have to think long and hard about whether to stay.

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"Oh them? They're trade." Thoughts on who the Conservative Party is 'for'...

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This post is a bit of a mish-mash - partly it bounces off Chris Dillow's idle considering of who the Tory Party is 'for' and partly it extends on my own musings about the continued disdain - from professionals and increasingly from public servants - for people who make their living running private businesses. A while ago I wrote about my mum having to use the 'tradesman's entrance' to deliver meals-on-wheels to the relicts of vice-admirals:

So mum delivered the dinners to these very posh ladies, so posh that, for one, mum had to go through the kitchen door. The front door was only opened for visitors and mum, for all that she was bringing the only hot meal that lady would get that day, didn't qualify as a visitor. Mum was trade. And trade used the kitchen door.

This was pretty typical of a 'certain sort' - there was something slightly grubby about the mundane business of producing and delivering the goods or services people need. And front doors weren't for that sort of thing. However, we should be more concerned by the constant drip of 'profit is bad' arguments emanating from the publicly-employed middle classes.  Partly this argument is a response to the perceived (wrongly perceived, I would judge) threat to these comfortable public servants that comes from the disruption of public monopoly - either by fiat through outsourcing and competitive tender or else through technology throwing up different approaches to the services those public monopolies deliver.

However, I was struck by this extract from an essay by Don Boudreaux about the work of Deirdre McCloskey on the reasons for capitalism's success:

Until the 17th century, those who earned their living through trade were the Rodney Dangerfields of their eras: they got no respect.  Merchants and other people operating on the supply side of commercial activities and transactions were tolerated.  But they were viewed and spoken of with contempt.  Unlike warriors who dirtied their hands honorably (namely, with blood), traders dirtied their hands dishonorably (namely, with profit).  Unlike the nobility who got their riches honorably (namely, by idly collecting land rents), merchants got their riches dishonorably (namely, by actively trading).  Unlike the clergy who won their rewards honorably (namely, by pondering the eternal), the bourgeoisie won their rewards dishonorably (namely, by responding to what Hayek later called “the particular circumstances of time and place”).

I would suggest the 'profit-is-bad' argument justifying public monopolies (and indeed justifying creating new public monopolies) still echoes what Boudreaux is saying - not simply the view that such a public monopoly in say transport systems is a better way to run those systems but that, by removing profit, the system is morally better regardless of whether the service it provides is improved.

We see, in the ever more shrill and strident verbal assaults on News Corp and the Daily Mail, another echo. Indeed, the attack on free speech implicit in the Leveson witch hunt should remind us that the target wasn't the press in general but the for-profit press and especially the part of the press making profits for Rupert Murdoch. The behaviour of The Guardian (owned by a trust) or the BBC (a public sector body) was not under scrutiny in this process because these are noble undertakings whereas Rupert and Paul are merely trade. Indeed the sneering dismissal of Rebekah Brooks on the basis of her working-class - 'trade' - roots amplifies the echoes of the time when business was grubby. Reading some pieces you can almost hear the shock at hearing Rebekah, the daughter of a 'tug-boat captain', was allowed in through the front door.

So when Chris Dillow observes in stumbling around the target audience of the Conservative party comments that:

Now, you might reply that this merely shows that Tories are the party not of big business but of economically illiterate little Englanders - hence its vulnerability to Ukip.

Even this, though, isn't wholly clear. Austerity has clobbered a lot of traditional Tory voters - older, wealthier people who have suffered from low returns on their savings. This makes me wonder whether our (OK my) longstanding prejudice is actually true. Maybe the Tories are not any longer the party of big vested interests in general.

...I am struck by the realisation that the Conservative party is 'for' (if that means much these days) people who work in the world of making goods and producing services that are sold in markets, some of which might be free and open. And the Conservative Party isn't just 'for' the owners and directors of these free enterprises but it is 'for' all the people who work in those businesses - from the boss to the tea boy, from the financier to the cleaner. In the broadest sense of the word, embracing the sneering meaning 'trade' held for many in the traditional elite and in the professions of law and medicine, the Conservative Party is 'for' trade and 'for' the people who engage in trade.

And I would like to think, against those people who literally or metaphorically make people like my Mum use the kitchen door.

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Organising for the long term and a unilateral cap on donations - how to restore Conservative 'grassroots'

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We all know that the two big UK political parties are, in terms of membership, shadows of what they were in times past. At its peak the Conservative Party had over 3 million members and the Young Conservatives were perhaps the biggest political youth movement in the democratic world.

When I joined the YCs in 1976 the cracks were already showing, the membership was declining year on year, and the national party seemed uninterested in anything but the next general election (although that election did elect Margaret Thatcher so perhaps I shouldn't complain too much). However, back then the Beckenham constituency had three separate YC branches. The main Party branch that my mum was active in was called Lawrie Park 'A' - just one polling district of a larger ward.

So when we talk about the Party's grassroots, this should be what we are thinking about. Not self-appointed campaign groups that adopt the word Grassroots to make out that somehow they're in touch with the soul of the Party. Or even groups that use words like 'Mainstream' or 'Way Forward' to try and suggest their particular faction is somehow representative of the real Party.

In truth the grassroots of the Party are no longer the membership. When I talk to Conservative voters (something I do try to do as often as possible) I get no sense that they feel part of a movement, that they belong to something. Yet these people will troop out in election after election and put their cross next to the Conservative candidate. Their motivation is less tribal than was the case when the Party had those millions of members and more self-interested: they believe that the Conservatives represent them better.

The Bow Group has become the latest in a long line of folk that have had their four-pennorth on how to restore the fortunes of the Party organisation. Thankfully, the Bow Group start with absolutely rejecting state funding for political parties, and state in stark terms the scale of the problem:

...the Conservative Party should not go down the road of state-funding for political parties, but instead should take urgent measures to reconnect with its electoral base and grassroots members. 

The Group set out '11 Steps' that the Party needs to take ranging from more dialogue through rejecting 'open primaries' and electing the Party Chairman to more tactical matters such as ending the Coalition sooner rather than later. There is, from the perspective of someone with nearly 40 years active membership, much to commend in the proposals.

However, the bit that the Bow Group miss is that, to turn round the Party as an organisation, there has to be two further things done:

1. The Party needs to invest in the long term, to have people whose job it is to think about what the organisation will look like in 20 years time and to set resources aside to put professional organisers on the ground in places where the Party needs to develop.

2. The Party should announce its intention (unilaterally if agreement with Labour can't be achieved) to stop taking donations above a certain size (say £5,000) - this would provide the incentive for the leadership to look for lots of smaller donations rather than finding a couple of billionaires to hand over a few million.

I believe that these two actions would break the grip of London on the Party, would make us pay attention outside election time to the ordinary men and women who actually plod down to the polling station to vote Conservative.

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Rebuilding urban conservatism isn't about working class voters

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There has been much talk of how the Conservative Party should muscle its way into Labour territory and become the 'Workers' Party'. It has generated a great deal of mirth amongst nice, well-educated, middle-class left-wing pundits - the sort who think being a football supporter and drinking a pint in the local gastropub qualifies them as 'working class'. The sort of people who really don't understand the extent to which the left's authoritarian streak is displayed in its ever more strident attack on working class pleasures like drinking, smoking, burger and chips or a flutter on the horses.

Oddly I really don't think that the Conservative Party has much of a problem with its working class support. We know that, back in 1979, the votes of the skilled working classes elected Margaret Thatcher and that those voters - and their children - have stuck with the party since. And we know that Conservative support amongst the 'unskilled' working class (I dislike that term but calling them DE Social Class is even more impersonal) was at or close to its highest in 2010.

So despite the admirable efforts of David Skelton and his Renewal group, there isn't all that much more scope for increasing support from these groups. Don't get me wrong, the Party is right to talk about the living wage, about the value of trade unions and about building affordable homes. Just as important there is a strong argument in saying to working class voters that the Labour Party takes them for granted, abandoning them to the worst communities, the poorest schools and the least stable jobs.

But this will not sort out the Conservative Party's long term renewal (although it will help in getting a Conservative government in 2015) because it's not those working class voters that are the Party's problem. The problem is two other groups - ethnic minorities and the urban middle class.

On the former the problem is stark - here's Tim Wigmore setting out the issue:

BME voters are 33 per cent more likely to vote for Labour than white voters – but they are seven points less likely to vote Conservative than white voters. Unless this changes dramatically, it will be a roadblock to the Tories ever winning another election.

We know that the single indication that someone won't be a Conservative voter is that they are "Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic" (BAME as the ghastly acronym goes). And we shake our heads and ask why? It's not that the Party lacks ethnic minority MPs or that those MPs don't get attention or preferment - one of them was even discussed as a possible leadership challenger. Just as importantly those ethnic minority Tory MPs represent very safe seats places like Witham, Windsor, Stratford, Bromsgrove and were selected as candidates by an overwhelmingly white membership. The Party simply doesn't look racist in these places.

Yet go into inner-city Bradford, to East London or to Leicester and people will tell you that the Tory Party isn't for them, it's out-of-touch, elitist and, most significantly, racist. Until the Party shifts this perception - and the problem is perception not fact - then it will not get the support from among those minorities it needs. The problem is visceral, fundamental and won't be sorted from the centre. The Party has to be active in those communities. We should also shift our language on immigration - right now we're on the horns of a UKIP dilemma but this isn't a long-term issue in the way that ethnic minorities not voting for us at all is a long-term issue.

The second group may seem very different - that young urban middle class, the sort of trendy, hipster vote. The kind of people who are buying £600,000 houses in Hackney. If they've that sort of money and a belief in home ownership and hard-work then shouldn't they be voting Conservative? The problem is that they're not, they're voting anything but Conservative. Why? For many of the same reasons that those ethnic minority voters don't vote Conservative - they see the Party as out-of-touch, elitist and socially repressive.

These people didn't see the legalising of same sex marriage as a triumph for a Conservative Prime Minister. They saw the debate as a few Tories forced into accepting the change while most screamed blue murder from the side.  If we are to change this we need to start talking a different language - not gimmicks about greenery or tokenistic policy platforms - but the language of community action and involvement. And we need to be on the ground in the urban places where the young urban middle class is living, in East Dulwich, in Stoke Newington, in Chapel Allerton. The sad thing is we once were in these places but have withdrawn to the suburbs further out and to rural exurbia.

Building a genuinely national party should be the aim. And that means putting resources on the ground knowing that the fruit could be eight, ten, even twenty years before it's ripe. So long as the Conservative Party combines short-term targeting with centralised message management, we will continue to decline. We do need renewal - David Skelton is right - but that renewal is as much about presence and activity as it's about policy. And the message, instead of central and controlled, must be local and specific - we should talk directly about the concerns we hear from the communities we want to support us.

It's great that there's a campaign to change the Party. What we now need is something more than a nod of partial agreement from the leadership. We need to resource the fightback, to support the few Tories on the ground in urban England and to start listening to the voices of those urban communities.

....

How the ragged troused philanthropists were right...

****

'The present system means joyless drudgery, semi-starvation, rags and premature death; and they vote for it and uphold it. Let them have what they vote for! Let them drudge and let them starve!'.

So proclaimed Frank Owen of the 'ragged trousered philanthropists' who had the audacity to vote Conservative. And thus was born the myth of the Tory working class - trained, almost dog-like, to nod to their betters and defer to their thoughts.

It always seemed that 'the left' are deeply concerned at the prospect that any 'worker' might vote for a political party other than one 'of the left' (whatever that means). After all, Tories "despise the working class", how can a member of that class vote for them?

All this explains why the Conservative politicians for whom 'the left' reserve the greatest vitriol - even hatred - are those who challenge their perspective. When Norman Tebbit, Eric Pickles, Patrick McLaughlin or even Nadine Dorries speak up the sound of left-wing hackles rising can be heard right across the nation. These people are the acme of class traitorhood, the very personification of false consciousness, the quislings of the working class.

The left is quite comfortable with David Cameron and George Osborne because they are what Tories should be: inherited wealth, top public school, Oxford, horse-riding - all the stereotypes of left-wing iconography. It makes for an easy campaign, roll out Dennis Skinner ranting about privilege, talk about 'out of touch Tory toffs' and add in images of top hats (or that over-used Bullingdon photograph - I wonder whose copyright it is, they should have made a fortune).

The problem is that it really isn't as simple as that, this class divide malarkey. For sure we can show people about the idea of surplus value with three slices of bread and a knife but that doesn't make it true nor does it put a roof over someone's head and a meal on the table. More to the point Norman, Eric and Nadine are proof that, not only does the Conservative Party not "despise the working class" but people from that class can get to powerful positions in the Party. This is not how it should be!

Today a man earning fifty or sixty thousand a year as a skilled operator working on shift is considered working class (and will most likely be a member of that working class institution Unite the Union) whereas a man earning half that amount from his fields is a rentier ("boo-hiss"). The argument to those ragged trousered ones a hundred years ago - that they should throw off those capitalist shackles - no longer stands since the ragged trousers have been replaced with designer clothes, two weeks in Tenerife and a new (-ish) Audi.

It seems the 'philanthropists' were right - invest in the free system and everyone gains. We don't know whether Owen was right (although there has been the occasional hint as to socialism's inadequacy as a system) but it doesn't matter because capitalism worked. The 'conditions of the working man' (the improvement of which Disraeli had set as the Conservative Party's mission) were raised and continue to rise.

We will continue to see the myth of the working-class Tory peddled - the idea that independence, self-reliance, hard work, decency and choice represent some sort of misplaced confidence in the capitalist system, a confidence that will fail the working man. And the belief that some syndicalist wonderland will come forth from the casting aside of capitalism.

Those values - working class Tory values - that the left rejects are in the soul of the Conservative Party. But we are, above everything, pragmatic and know that the consequence of Frank Owen's system is not Utopia but Venezuela.

...

On being a mass membership party again...

The rhetoric from Conservative Campaign HQ is ringing - get more members. The chairman, Grant Shapps MP has written to all his MP colleagues urging them to recruit more members, to get 3% of Conservative voters signed up as members.

I don't object to these injunctions although I suspect that most MPs will adopt the old Spanish colonial adage, obedezco pero no cumplo - I obey but do not comply. And why blame them. After all the number of members isn't the big deal it used to be. Election campaigns are fought out over the airwaves and election funding allows for a generous dollop of postage and paid doorstep delivery, there's no real incentive to persuade people to join the party, however much Grant Shapps may cajole.

Think about it for a second. Assuming you're not ambitious or a politics anorak, why on earth would you pay good money to join a political party? What do you get for your pleasure? Endless appeals for more money, on infrequent occasions you get to vote for the leader of the party and similarly to select a local MP or councillor. You won't be asked about policy (although you can join groups that engage in endless circular discussions about that policy) and you might get asked to buy tickets for dinners and garden parties.

If you join the RSPB they give you stuff, send you a magazine and give you free entry to their nature reserves. The same goes for other organisations - the National Trust, RHS and so forth. Joining a political party doesn't really get you anything.

If Grant Shapps wants more members at £25 he needs to offer something more and to give up on the idea that the overstretched troops on the ground have the time or inclination to respond to his urgings. Back in Campaign HQ they need to find some money to recruit members - do some old fashioned direct marketing. I don't just mean mass mailings but rather the development of an offer that might make it worthwhile for Fred Smith to hand over that £25 in exchange for a membership card.

The sad truth is that those MPs - and the young things at CCHQ - really aren't interested. Either we'll carry on with parties funded by business donations (or in Labour's case by unions) or else the politicians will, as Nick Clegg wants, dip their hands into the public purse and have state funded politics.

Progress...

****

There's still quite a lot of racism out there - I see it every day often from people who would be shocked to believe they are racist. But there's no doubt that progress - by which I mean us getting away from our debilitating obsession with the idea of race - is being made. By way of example I give you this:

Mr Afriyie, the MP for Windsor, insisted that he had "no ambition" for Mr Cameron's role but warned that the Conservatives must deliver economic growth in order to stand a chance of winning the 2015 election outright.

However, he fuelled speculation about his leadership plans by saying he was working with a "large group" of Tory MPs on his own efforts to create a "Conservative Britain".

Mr Afriyie, a millionaire businessman, is reportedly being groomed to take over as party leader if the Conservatives fail to win a majority in 2015. 

Now I find this cheering. Not because I think Adam Afriyie would be a good leader of the Conservative Party but because, amidst all the silly speculation, I haven't once seen any one bothered by the fact that he's black.

Last night I went to a dinner in Bradford where Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon was the speaker. In his speech this government minister reminded us that the Conservative front bench included 'the son of a train guard, the daughter of a mill worker and the son of a bus driver'. The Party's long established working-class credentials were polished again. Of course the sub-plot (and this being Bradford an important sub-plot) was that those three working class Tories are all Muslims with a Pakistani heritage.

So we have a black man being discussed as Party leader, three Pakistanis as ministers and (just to add to the fun) a former miner as Transport Secretary.

Progress I think...

...

State funding of politics is wrong...

****

Unite buying up constituency Labour Parties isn't an argument for state funding. Not a bit.

I heard Angela Eagle interrupting Andrew Lansley on Radio 4 but it wasn't this that struck me but that her solution to the corruption of the Labour Party by its Union paymasters isn't stopping them buying up the party wholesale but state funding.

That's right folks, rather than reforming party funding to prevent what has happened we should make it unnecessary by simply allowing the parties to dip into tax funds. Put simply this would represent the final severing of the link (and it is the thinnest and most fragile of links) between individual members and politics.

Instead of political parties having to seek active support from members, we will see - if Ms Eagle gets her way - party officials being little different from the other courtiers, from all those special advisors, members of executive boards, campaign organisers, advertising people and media manipulators. Instead of at least a pretence of the parties being accountable to individual members across the country, we will instead see parties accountable to no-one.

Right now British politics is pretty remote from the public - back in the 1950s there were perhaps as many as 4 million members of political parties (more if you included actively involved trade unionists, members of Conservative Clubs and so forth). Today the entire collection of parties can barely muster 500,000 - a number that continues to fall. Across whole swathes of Britain one or other of the two main parties has no significant presence - a few old activists long past their most effective and perhaps the occasional student anorak of ambitious pole-climber (although the latter now flock ever more thickly in central London).

That Unite feel able to buy up local Labour Parties is a symptom of this problem. Just as are the frequent squeals about major donors from the business community to all the parties. For a few million over several years an organisation or individual can purchase a disproportionate influence over policy-making machinery. 

But how does replacing that corruption with direct funding from taxes - a different form of corruption - improve matters? We get a political hierarchy that has no need at all to engage with anyone outside the 'Westminster bubble', the system would be closed to folk from provincial backwaters who haven't the time, cash or obsession to park themselves in London. Policy would be ever more London-centred, increasingly about the preferences and biases of a small cluster of courtiers attached like limpets to the grandees of politics. Grandees who, a few years previously, were those very same courtiers.

Perhaps, instead of robbing the taxpayer or sucking up to big paymasters, politicians might consider instead refusing such funding. And then walking the walk - asking for small donations and embracing the principle of democracy rather than the idea that votes are gathered by spending other people's money and boasting about it. Maybe the parties might turn their backs on big donations - whether from the wealthy institutions or rich people - and seek support locally.

There was a time when the Conservative Party had no minimum subscription - give us 50p and we gave a membership card. And those people who paid the little subs came out to coffee mornings, to dinners and to strawberry teas - raising the money for a local agent and an office, funding election campaigns and providing the voice of the Party. Now those people are gone or going. And they are not replaced with more of the same but with a coalition of political obsessives and the ambitious.

Old-fashioned party politics isn't dying out because of policy or because of bad government, it's dying out because the leaderships of the parties no longer care. The voluntary party, the local association, is a pain, an annoyance. Party conferences are grand affairs designed as media showpieces rather than as a gathering together of people from a mass party, from a movement. Everything is shiny, politicians spend time with journalists, lobbyists and clever folk from think-tanks. No time is given to the folk who've spent their own cash to come to conference; they're just a backdrop a little local colour rather than anything of importance.

State funding would make this worse. If it arrives the idea of the people influencing the state will have died. And let's face it, we don't pay taxes to fund political parties, do we?

....

Quote of the Day...

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Written as a founder member of the Norman Tebbit fan club:

“I joined the Conservative Party in 1946 and I’m not going to be pushed out by adventurers. It’s my party.”

Absolutely Norman - I'm a johnny-come-lately since I only joined in 1976 but David Cameron was still in Prep School. It's my Party too.

...

The Conservative Party's problem...

****

...capured here:

Most of all, broadly speaking, I think you’d struggle to find many people under the age of 40 who are appalled or outraged or betrayed by this, far less many who really feel insulted or punished. This may reflect my own selection biases of course but, really, I look at today’s Tory papers and wonder where and when these people are living and to whom they think the modern Tory party should be trying to appeal. Because, on the evidence of today’s papers, it sure ain’t middle-class (and metropolitan!) women.

It's not David Cameron's problem or even the parliamentary party's problem, it's a problem of our image, focus and preference. The Party's image and outlook - again this isn't a consequence of policy, ideology or strategy but one of positioning - is designed to sustain it's core. And that core, the 'Conservative Base' if you wish, is over 55, living in the South East and wealthy pockets elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of these people. They form the core constituency and customer base for the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, they don't approve of newfanged things like gay marriage and women going out to work, and they make up nearly all of the Conservative Party's 150,000 members (as an aside, when I joined the party in 1976 it had around 2 million members).

The Party has lost the support of two generations of educated young people - the bunch who finished university and started work in the 1990s and the cohort who did likewise in the 2000s. This goes a long way to explaining why the Party got less than 40% of AB voters - its traditional core support - in the 2010 General Election.

Alex Massie is right. It would be a poor do if this was just the response to giving working mums a tax break on childcare. But it isn't - the same goes for almost any policy that might look even the slightest bit socially liberal. Whether it's gay rights or racial discrimination, the knee-jerk of the conservative press - echoed by the 'party faithful' next time they meet their MP - is to say no and gibber about political correctness or traditional values.

Until this changes, the Conservative Party will decline. For sure, vacuuming up the grumpy old man vote might work as a short term strategy but in the long term all it does it annoy the hell out of 30 and 40 something voters. Voters who really don't have a choice but for mum to work - and who will welcome a little tax break on childcare.

....

The poor can't be trusted with money, can they?

****

Alec Massie is a pretty mild-mannered writer. So it is a shock to read this:

I  wonder how many poor people, far less people on welfare, Mr Shelbrooke encounters. Some, presumably. But, my, what a vile little authoritarian he is. It has evidently escaped his notice that the reason many poor people spend a disproportionate quantity of their meagre resources on gambling is that they have such limited resources in the first place. It may not be an advisable or profitable policy but it is at least an understandable one.

For that matter, cigarettes and alcohol are not necessarily luxuries. They might instead be considered small pleasures that make life a little less ghastly. Especially when you lack means.

I notice, mind you, that Mr Shelbrooke makes no comment on whether it is OK for middle-class mothers to spend their child benefit on gin.

It may well be that Mr Shelbrooke has some support in these proposals. They are just the sort of saloon bar policy – I can picture him, G+T in hand at some golf club do, holding court with ways to make the unemployed behave properly. And it is this image rather than the policy that causes the problem. It is the moralising, patronage of the ruling classes to those less fortunate. We kindly provide these indigents and unfortunates with the means to sustain themselves and they promptly toddle off and spend it on cheap lager and superkings.

I lose count of the times when I’ve described the circumstances of the poor and why this leads to – almost requires – the consumption of small pleasures: booze, fags, sex and TV are what sustains these folk in what is a crap life. But people like Mr Shelbrooke from their blazered comfort choose instead to try and order the choices of the poor since, in his view, they are unable to make such choices without his help and direction.

"When hard-working families up and down the country are forced to cut back on such non-essential, desirable, it is right that taxpayer benefits be only used for essential purposes."

This approach describes entirely the problem facing the Conservative Party. People support benefits reform – the objective of making working financially more attractive that a life on the dole is admirable and overdue. But this is not about condemning the lifestyles of the poor, it’s about the practicalities of allowing these people to live while they – hopefully – sort their lives out. Patronising and judgemental policies such as this “welfare card” idea (and other idiocies that include minimum pricing for booze) just get people’s backs up.

Put simply, it isn’t the government’s job to judge other people’s lifestyle. And when a wealthy MP does this, the ordinary person looks up, shakes his head and mutters obscenities under his breath. If people like Mr Shelbrooke want to get re-elected in their marginal Northern seats they’d do well to take heed of this and start talking instead about responsibility rather than about dictating the choices for people with the misfortune to need benefits.

....

Campaign in the North...a message for the Conservative Party

****

We often hear from London-based commentators that the Conservative Party has a problem in the North. Look, these men say, you have no councillors, no MPs and no organisation across the great cities of the North - Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle. How can you lay claim to being a national party when this pertains? And such wise men have a point.

Others tell the Party's leadership that they must have a plan for campaigning in the North. That the problem must be put right. And each time the psephological runes are read and Party managers decide that this isn't so - the solution (or rather the winning of an election) lies elsewhere.

The Tories have a 40:40 strategy for the next election. The aim is to defend their 40 most vulnerable seats and try and win 40 others to give the party a majority. So which 40 are in their sights? Normally, it’s an easy one to answer: you just look at the last election and count which seats have the most narrow Tory defeat.

If you’d done this, there would only be 9 Liberal Democrat MPs on the Tory hit list. But the Liberal Democrat vote has changed radically since the last election. So Stephen Gilbert, the PM’s political secretary,  has drawn up a new list, added in demographic factors, current polling data and consumer targeting. As a result, the  number of Liberal Democrat seats on the list more than doubled.

And of those 20 Liberal Democrat seats most aren't in the North of England - Solihull, Dorset Mid & Poole North, Wells, St Austell & Newquay, Somerton & Frome, Sutton & Cheam, St Ives, Chippenham, Cornwall North, Norwich South, Eastbourne, Taunton Deane, Eastleigh, Torbay, Cheltenham, Devon North, Carshalton & Wallington. Only Cheadle and Berwick-on-Tweed are in the North and neither are exactly typical.

There isn't going to be a plan for the North. There will be a few target seats - Bolton West, Wirral South, Halifax, maybe Morley & Outwood to annoy Ed Balls - but no plan looking beyond getting 316 MPs from anywhere. Right now the national Party's resource in the North consists of fewer than ten people working out of an office in Bradford. These people work hard and do a great job supporting campaigns from Carlisle to Grimsby and from Ellesmere Port to Ashington.

What there won't be is a strategy for the North or the redirecting of resource from London-based spin doctoring towards campaigning at the grassroots especially if those grassroots are a long way from nice London restaurants in places where people talk funny. The problem is that - as I'm sure Labour is in the South-West and Wessex - the Party is dying in the urban North. We are reaching the tipping point in Sheffield, Hull and Manchester where the situation is unrecoverable - as is undoubtedly the case in Liverpool. Worse still behind these barren places are a row of other places - Leeds, Bradford, Sunderland, Huddersfield, Salford - where only the efforts of a dedicated few folk (and the welcome collapse of Liberal Democrat aspirations) keeps the Party from the same oblivion as in those big cities.

We do need a plan but more than that we need some of the resources currently spent on sucking up to London-based journalists to be directed to the North, to supporting good quality campaign teams in these Northern cities. And this isn't just because it might help us win general elections in the future but because the alternative is to condemn Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and other Northern towns and cities to generations of corrupting single-party government from the Labour Party.

Having failed to resource - or actively support - campaigns for elected mayors, the Party now has to get back onto the ground, survey its wreakage and begin to build. We need to start campaigning against the deadening hand of the North's establishment - public sector panjandrums, Labour council leaders, trade unions and the occasional lawyer or property developer badged as "business".

What I do know is that, if we don't, there won't be a generation of Tories in Bradford to follow on from my generation. And I'm prepared to bet that the same goes for Leeds, for Hull and for Greater Manchester. It really is time for the Party to act. Further delay will be fatal for the Party in the North.

....

The Conservative Party needs to move the talent - and money - further than Millbank...

****

The Spectator reports that my Party is onto full long election footing (good of you to tell me, Dave). And this means that the talent is moving apparently:

...I now hear that talent is being moved out of Whitehall and back to Millbank to beef up the team there. Giles Kenningham, one of the most effective Tory spin doctors, is taking leave from the Department of Communities and Local Government, to head up CCHQ’s media operation following Susie Squire’s secondment to Downing Street.

Sorry to pour cold water on all this excitement but, if we're to make a difference, the talent needs to be in Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester not 400 yards down the road from Whitehall. If the Party is serious about remaining in power, it needs to start to support the grassroots.

Why you ask? Simple really - those grass roots are dying faster than the ash trees. Instead of another spin doctor how about some member recruitment, funding some agents in target constituencies, providing support to hard-pressed conservative groups - spending some of that cash from those rich donors on stopping the Party from dying.

....

Where is this anti-state rhetoric that Tim Montgomerie fears so much? I don't hear it.

****

Tim Montgomerie from his Conservative Home pulpit lays into the 'libertarians'. Not on the basis of a considered, reasoned set of arguments but on the basis of an opinion poll. Dear old Tim shows that most folk prefer this 'vision of society':

"A society where government plays a limited role in society, providing services and a safety net in hard times but where we largely rely on families, education and job creators to create a good society".

I would like to point out to Tim that this 'vision' is wholly compatible with a minarchist libertarian viewpoint. Indeed, it is a pretty good description of what most thoughtful libertarians think. So why does Tim say this?

Conservatives need to drop the anti-State rhetoric. Ensuring comfortable retirements for pensioners, benefits for the sick and assistance for genuine jobseekers shouldn’t be afterthoughts for Conservatives but central to their electoral pitch. Conservatives shouldn’t see these things as a necessary evil but as a privilege for a decent society to provide and for a decent party to enhance. When Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are as serious about blue-collar wages as the deficit and as serious about cutting taxes on the low-paid as on the propertied class, they will start winning elections again. But not until then.

I just don't get it. The debate isn't about whether we should go for some sort of Randian anarcho-capitalism - or whatever it is that Tim thinks is libertarianism. The debate is about whether the we emphasise "where government plays a limited role in society" or creating "a good society". Since I've been a member of the Conservative Party for almost as long as Tim Montgomerie has been alive, I guess I'm just about qualified to say that this debate - between small government and the desire to advance Disraeli's mission of improving the condition of the people - has always been at the heart of the Party. Once it was 'wets' versus 'dries', now it's a conversation between the standard bearers of the Thatcherite gospel, assorted sorts of libertarians and a  Macmillan (or maybe Heseltine) style activist, interventionist party.

In the end we are - and always will be - a coalition. Today the balance of that coalition has shifted. Where once the party was filled with broad-bottomed, patricians who knew better the needs and cares of the workers, today it is increasingly a place for people who reject 'know better', who dislike government by opinon poll and who believe that wanting a small state is a moral imperative. The same moral imperative that led us to vote Tory in 1979, the same moral imperative that supported council house sales and privatised utlities. The same imperative that cries out for lower taxes.

Tim talks of 'demand for government' without fully explaining what he means. Is there a demand for floors filled with policy officers? Do the public cry out for teams of equalities officers and diversity co-ordinators? Has the mob taken to the street calling for an endless production line of similar - and similarly dumb - special advisors to ministers? Has the angry man of Tunbridge Wells written to complain of how the limited supply of climate change advisors is destroying England?

We didn't demand these things. What Tim Montgomerie has done is to build a lovely libertarian straw man - based on a pretty lousy opinion poll - to enable him to argue for some sort of Tory paternalism. Or worse a version of Blairite government by opinion poll and focus group.

Every single obstacle laid by Tim before us liberals can be pushed aside by reasoned argument, by creative and different approaches to meeting needs. In the end government is the guarantor of freedom - that's what we believe in. And yes, government must concern itself with security but as was famously said many years ago:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

I'm not a libertarian, Tim. I'm a Tory. And that means freedom - free speech, free enterprise, free trade, free choice and above all the chance to live free.

...

After 37 years membership some sad thoughts on the state of the Conservative Party

****

I'm not off to Birmingham today. Or indeed on any day in the immediate future. Not because I've anything against Brum but because I really can't see the point in spending best part of a grand on a trip to the Conservative Party Conference.

And Graeme Archer, writing in the Telegraph this morning, says what I would say (if I could write as well as he does):

It’s very different from those old days in Blackpool or Brighton, when you queued politely in the tea-room, swapping canvassing stories with members of different associations. And when real policies were debated by real members in the hall, and put to the vote. I wish conference would return to the seaside, but more importantly, that it would allow its members to engage with the party again.

Perhaps there's a modicum of rose tint to Graeme's (and my) memory but he's right about the way in which members - the ordinary foot soldiers of the Party - are treated as extras in a grand show by the leaders and lobbyists. And this is a reflection of how the Party has atrophied - back in 1995 my ward had four branches now we struggle by with just the one.  Looking further back into time's mists - to 1976, I joined the Young Conservatives (none of this 'Conservative Future' dribble) and a Party with over a million members. Today the Party would be happy if it could claim 150,000 paid up supporters.

But the leadership - political, professional and (saddest of all) voluntary - don't care about this problem. So long as a few wealthy folk can be persuaded to part with a million or so each then the game carries on. And it's a game of charming the national media - getting the winning headline - not a game of securing the support of committed people across the nation. Those millions will be spent on smart young people in London offices each polishing their own careers while giving no thought about the ordinary folk they want to turn out and vote for the Conservatives come an election.

There won't be any money - part of those millions from grand benefactors - to spend on a retired colonel or two to rebuild the party in Birmingham or a team of organisers to recruit new members, open new branches and give us a fighting chance in Leeds. But the smart young things in London will point to a smattering of MPs in these places and the slightly grizzled bunch of Councillors saying; "they must do that job, build the Party in the North and Midlands - we have a strategy." And a few slightly less shiny youngsters are recruited and thrown at "target constituencies" with hardly any training and no idea about how to manage volunteers. Worse still, come 2015 those (by then more battle-hardened) campaigners will vanish as the money sucks back to London and those shiny offices manned by the latest bunch of the ambitious.

If the Party wants to be what it used to be - a mass movement of ordinary people - then it needs to rethink its offer. Not simply the policy offer - though some changes there might help - but its social and cultural offer. Above all the Party needs to make its members important - cherished even - rather than seeing them as a squabbling mob necessary only to fill up some places as Council candidates and shove a few leaflets through some doors.

Getting a vote electing the leader is great but only happens periodically - in any given year of membership we're more likely not to have a leadership election. Perhaps electing the Party Chairman might be a welcome step and would break the ghastly habit of that position being seen as another Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet roles for an ambitious MP.  But there are softer things too.

Right now, the only things I get from the National Party as an ordinary member are financial appeals. There is no acknowledgement of what I do already, no thanks, no information and no offer. I give and the bright young things in London offices get to buff up their careers in PR, media or as future MPs. Nothing comes back to the member. When my Dad stood down from Bromley Council after 36 years as a Conservative Councillor, the National Party offered no thanks for his service. Not a letter of appreciation. Not a phone call. Nothing.

And the Party is worse now than it was then. Not the local Constituency folk, they're still ordinary men and women doing their best to keep the candle lit. It's those bright young things in London offices. Most of all it's a Leadership (and not just the current one but every one since the 1980s) that cares more for sucking up to rich grandees so as to pay for the grand offices. And it's the industry of Westminster - the researchers, the special advisors, the PR men and women, the media advisors. A vast self-serving morass of London-centred ambition that simply didn't exist when I joined up.

It depresses me as I approach 40 years as a Conservative member that it is such a shadow of what is was as an organisation. It angers me that the National Party so quickly denies - even casts out - ordinary members when they get a phrase wrong or tiptoe beyond the politically correct. And it saddens me that there is no voice in the Party HQ telling them that the organisation is dying, haemorraging members and losing activists. Not because those people aren't Tories any more but because the Party refuses them a real role - makes no offer showing then they are valued and fails to thanks them for their efforts.

I will struggle on. The Party will still get my donations. We'll still use my house to raise funds for local campaigning. But my son's generation will not join up. They will see no point or purpose. In just three or four decades the greed and selfishness of the industry that is Westminster will have destroyed what was once the world's largest and most successful centre-right political party.

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