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

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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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They say Caesar was ambitious...but did the state fund his party?

It has been a bad week for my love of politics and all who sail in her. Not for the usual, “what on earth are they on about now” stuff but for two other reasons:

1. A “draft” report proposes the state funding of political parties
2. I went to the cinema - with anticipation – to watch “Ides of March”

The first of these two things makes me angry and the second depressed. And it all comes back to the perennial cynicism about the process of politics – the seeming inevitability that everyone is there for personal advancement, that no one is honourable and that only the state can be relied on.

The report proposes:

The cash, worth up to £100 million over a five-year parliament, would be used to compensate parties for a loss of income as a result of a £50,000 cap on individual donations, it was reportedly proposed.

The Conservatives are expected to lose out from the cap, arguing that it will result in the party losing up to a third of its income from donors.

But the Liberal Democrats have much to gain from the new arrangements as they have less independent income than the other two parties.

Note here the automatic attention to winners and losers under such a system. There isn’t any discussion as to whether the taxpayer should be paying for the running of political parties. Which brings us to the justification for the state taking over – that political parties can be bought and sold by wealthy individuals.  After all, the Labour Party isn’t really any bigger than, say, Manchester City or Chelsea and very rich folk bought them up!

This rather brings me to the “Ides of March” (in which Caesar is corrupted and compromised rather than simply stabbed a few times) and the manner of American politics. We are used to the characterisation of American politics as dominated by the money – much larger sums than we see in Britain – and take the cynicism of films like “Ides of March” as given even when we don’t fully understand the actual processes of Yankee politics.

The problem is that the bureaucrats employed by the political elite to look at the funding of the political elite are not going to ask the big question. So I will:

In a country where we elect an individual to represent us (we call that person an MP, in the USA it’s a congressman, senator or president) why is it felt necessary to institutionalise party politics?

That is what state funding brings you – a rigid, unchanging and sterile system controlled by faceless party apparatchiks. Nobody is likely to propose a system whereby – for example – national, party-focused campaigns are forbidden during election times and all the money is constrained within the limits set by the Electoral Commission for spending in a local constituency.

Such an approach has two advantages – firstly the campaign is conducted locally rather than on the back of a sloganised, sound bite ridden, national campaign; and secondly the possibility for party capture by the wealthy is reduced since campaigning is affordable locally. However, this rather hobbles the central party machines – which explains why it’s never proposed by those given their paid job by the political elite.

It seems depressingly inevitable that the party bosses will get their state funding:

Near the top of the tottering pile in the government's too-difficult tray lurks the question of paying for politics. From time to time another committee is sent off, like Noah's dove, to search for a solution that will be both acceptable to the public and reasonably equitable to the parties. In the next few weeks the latest attempt at an answer will be revealed. As we report today, some degree of state funding will be part of the mix. 

And as a result the corrupting Westminster bubble will no longer be a force of nature but will be an institution of the state.

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Westminster and the homeless - how UK Uncut are completely wrong and misleading

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The latest UK Uncut fib relates to Westminster Council's proposals to "fine the homeless":

Westminster city council, the richest and most powerful council in the UK, is proposing a new bye-law to ban rough sleeping and “soup runs” in the Victoria area of London. The proposed new bye-law will make it an offence punishable by a fine to “sleep or lie down”, “deposit materials used as bedding” and to “give out, or permit another to give out, food for free”.

Clearly this is the work of Evil Tories as they crush the poor and vulnerable? How very dare they!

But when you look briefly into the matter it doesn't quite seem that way at all:

Westminster Council wants to pass a byelaw to stop rough sleeping and soup runs on Westminster Cathedral piazza and the surrounding area.

Westminster Council announced yesterday it has launched a consultation on the proposals with residents, businesses, local day centres and hostels and the voluntary sector.

If it gets a positive response from this, it will ask the Communities and Local Government department to pass a byelaw. It wants this in place by October.

Westminster Council estimates up to 100 people at a time congregate around the piazza while food is being given out and said people travel into the area to receive food hand-outs. The council has said vulnerable adults will be asked to leave the area before being subjected to any enforcement.

So why is the Council doing this? Here's a representative of homeless charity St Mungo's on the subject:

‘While we recognize the compassion involved in providing food to vulnerable people, those in distress and rough sleeping need services that will support them off the streets for good and give them the opportunity for longer term better housing, health and work as they move on with their lives.’

And, for good measure the Chief Executive of another homeless charity, Thames Reach:

‘Street handouts do little to help people make the step away from rough sleeping. Instead they frequently prevent people from facing up to the reality of the harmful lifestyle they have adopted.

‘The Westminster Cathedral piazza and surrounding area has been the focus for soup run activity and rough sleeping for many years and this has inevitably had a detrimental impact on the lives of people living and working in the immediate vicinity.’

So it seems that, in truth Westminster are working alongside homeless charities to try and deliver better support to rough sleepers!

So UK Uncut lied?

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