ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Party Board's decision on MEP selection

"The Board of the Conservative Party has reached a decision in principle on the method for selection of candidates for the European Parliament for the 2009 election. Sitting MEPs who have been re-selected following a procedure similar to that laid down in the Party’s constitution for Westminster MPs will be placed in ranking order by party members in a postal ballot. Members will also be asked to place additional candidates in ranking order.

In the wholly exceptional circumstances that there will be no sitting MEPs who are women seeking re-election, and for this selection process only, the top position in each region below any reselected sitting MEPs will be occupied by the woman candidate who gets the most votes in the postal ballot. Detailed arrangements will be developed in the coming weeks."

Deputy Editor

ConservativeHome will be unveiling its campaign response to this decision tomorrow lunchtime.

All MEP candidates will be required to commit to leaving EPP

Last night a high level Conservative source contacted ConservativeHome with a 'clarification' of the procedures via which the next slate of regional list MEPs will be selected (if agreed by the Party Board this coming Monday).  These are the crucial facts:

• Only MEPs who irrevocably commit to David Cameron's EPP exit commitment will be entitled to stand again as MEPs;
• Incumbent MEPs will then be assessed by a college of regional Association Chairmen and others (large Associations will have extra representatives on this college) as to whether they should continue as candidates in the top places of regional lists;
• If the college rejects incumbent MEPs they will not be permitted to stand at all;**
• Rank-and-file members will then have an opportunity to re-rank those MEPs who are approved as candidates but only within the top slots*;
• Any retiring MEPs will be replaced by women candidates*;
• Members will then be able to propose rankings for other MEP candidates for the slots outside the top places.

* If, for example, a region has four Tory MEPs and one is retiring, the college will decide if the three existing MEPs should continue to occupy the top three places on the list. If all three are allowed to continue all members will then decide the number 1, 2 or 3 ranking of each candidate.  A woman must then be selected for slot four.  All members will decide which candidates - of any gender - fill slots five and below.

**Our source has contacted us with a slight correction - the regional college won't be able to stop them standing as non-priority candidates.

Campaign to protect members' rights yields first results

The lobbying effort against the plan to protect incumbent MEPs is beginning to bear some fruit.  Jeremy Middleton has assured one ConservativeHome correspondent that he will be voting to protect members' rights with regard to the selection of all MEPs.  Thank you Jeremy.  He will be one party board member that won't be vulnerable to a challenge in next year's Board elections.  Emma Pidding has an out of office message on her email system and it warns that she won't be in the office until after Monday's crucial vote.  Hmmm.  No comment has yet been received from Charles Barwell.

MPs Francis Maude, Richard Ottaway, Michael Spicer, Graham Stuart and John Whittingdale all have seats on the Board and some readers might like to lobby them.

This effort to protect incumbent MEPs is, of course, only the latest example of the party leadership's attempt to dilute party democracy.  There was the attempt to strip members of the vote in the election of party leader and the aborted plan from the Party Board to substantially restrict the autonomy of local Associations.  The A-list process has been characterised by restrictions on local candidates, half-women shortlists and, in some constituencies, the exclusion of all members from the decisive final stage of selections.  In unguarded comments to ToryRadio, John Maples gave the 'we-know-best' game away a few weeks ago when he said that he - if he was selection 'dictator' - he could pick better candidates than local members.  Earlier this week we had the Dyke debacle and the behind-closed-doors attempt to impose a non-Tory candidate on London Conservatives. 

The scheme to protect incumbent MEPs and the proposed introduction of the Conservative Party's first all-women shortlist fits neatly into a two year pattern of the party leadership distrusting people if those people are Conservative members.  If we do not continue to fight the centralising instincts of the party leadership we will cease to be a fully democratic party and the party's claim to want localism for the nation at large will look pretty thin.

Links to excellent letters from MEP Watch and CF Chairman Mark Clarke are pasted below.

"Be the change"

How well does this semi-parodic catchphrase used by some CCHQers match up when it comes to Party democracy? Charles Moore in this week's Spectator:

"Meanwhile, the Conservative party continues its devotion to openness, localism and modernised democracy in everything except its own organisation. The party has a little-known body called the National European Forum which has come up with a plan to deny party members the right to choose their candidates for the European Parliament. It wants ‘regional selection colleges’ (dominated, naturally, by Europhiles) to vet existing MEPs before they can stay on the list of candidates for the next elections. All new candidates would be nominated by the central party organisation. The current system of regional hustings would be abolished, and so ‘one member, one vote’, a quite widely known democratic concept, but one which has had only a brief and fragile life in the Conservative party, would be no more."

According to our polling 78% of Party members are against a system discriminating in favour of incumbent MEPs, instead believing that:

"They should face a vote in which all Tory members in their European Parliamentary regions can participate."

Aside from the party democracy issue, underlying this debate is a battle for the soul of the Conservative delegation in Brussels - the closer the MEPs are to Party members, the more eurosceptic they will be.

A number of MEPs gave their opinions to ConservativeHome on this important internal issue back in January (to the great displeasure of certain people). Also worth reading are the thoughts of Francis Maude and Chris Heaton-Harris MEP on which there are many comments, and Tim Montgomerie's recent (and as yet unreplied to) open letter to David Cameron urging intervention.

Deputy Editor

5pm update - The press office have acknowledged the open letter:

"At the moment we have nothing to announce in this area but we will certainly make sure that you are included in any briefing when we have something to report."

An open letter to David Cameron on MEP selection

"Dear David,

You will know that ConservativeHome successfully helped to lead opposition to Michael Howard's attempts to scrap party members' right to elect his successor.  Given how members voted in the last leadership election I'm sure you will agree that members are wiser than many of their critics suggest!

I am writing to ask you to protect members' democratic rights in the selection of our next slate of European Parliamentary candidates.  I understand that the Party Board is about to consider a paper from the National European Forum.  The NEF has, I am told, recommended that a college of Association Chairmen, Area officers and other selected high-ups form new regional electoral colleges.  These colleges will then assess whether sitting MEPs have done enough to retain their top-of-the-list rankings.  These electoral colleges may even have the power to re-order MEPs - overturning the democratic ranking that all party members gave to MEP candidates before the last European elections.

I do not know if members will have any say in choosing and ranking candidates who are not incumbents but I hope that you will publicly intervene in defence of the principle of party democracy.  78% of party members want to keep their say in ranking MEP candidates.  As a candidate in the last leadership election you understandably felt it improper to state a position on the nature of the process although I was grateful that some of your key lieutenants - including Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey - felt able to support party democracy.  I would encourage you to publicly recommend to the Party Board that there is no dilution of party democracy in the selection of European candidates.  It may be right that some changes are made to the process but the franchise should not be restricted.

On a practical level, although there might be political difficulties if certain unpopular candidates react badly to being ranked less highly there may be greater dangers, in this internet age, if Conservative candidates at the next European Parliamentary Elections are out-of-touch with the grassroots' Euroscepticism.

With very best wishes,

Tim

Tim Montgomerie
Editor of ConservativeHome.com"

Related link: Francis Maude wants your views on European candidate selection

Letwin says the party still needs to change

Oliver Letwin was on GMTV this morning, saying that the Party still had a lot of work to do in being open to women and ethnic minorities. Responding to grassroots unrest in Mercer's constituency, Letwin asserted that the Conservative Party was comprised of its voters as well as its members, and that they should be in sync with eachother.

Whilst admitting that Patrick Mercer's comments weren't racist, he still cited them as showing that more needed to be done to "change" the Party:

"I think we recognise that change isn't something that happens overnight, that it takes a lot of work. We're certainly not complacent about it. There's been much change, not just in the sense of sounding different, but when we've had decisions to make we've made them very often differently. We haven't engaged in a certain kind of politics that there's been a temptation to engage in. We've tried to ensure that every time we talk about something, we talk about it in a certain tone of voice and with a view to the long-term, which is a different kind of opposition. There's much change going on but I accept, yes, there's more work to do."

As far as the above can be understood, it seems the straw man of the "nasty wing of the Conservative Party" is rearing its head again - so it is no wonder that commentators like Andrew Rawnsley analyse the Mercer sacking thus:

"David Cameron sent a tough and clear message about his ability to act and his abhorrence of racism when he sacked Patrick Mercer. His harder and wider struggle is to convince watching voters that his modernising message is not merely a smiling mask on a Tory party that continues to harbour a lot of nastiness."

National Convention elections 2007

The nominations for the National Convention's elected positions have been finalised. Successful nominees also sit on the Party Board ex officio.

Current Chairman Don Porter CBE, a Deputy Chairman of the Party and former President of the Convention, has for the second time been the only person to apply for the Chairmanship and has therefore been reselected by default.

The Presidency of the Convention was again uncontested, this time with Simon Mort - a Vice President this year - being automatically selected. There are four nominees for the three Vice Presidential positions: Charles Barwell, Jeremy Middleton, Emma Pidding and Richard Robinson, a regular contributor to ConservativeHome. Ballots will be sent out this week and there will be a hustings at the Convention's AGM held at Spring Forum. The only other time the Convention meets is at the main Party conference.

Bruce Anderson smears Conservative members

I'm not sure how often Bruce Anderson gets up from the lunch tables of London's finest restaurants and actually meets grassroots Conservatives but my guess is not very often.  Trying to explain David Cameron's modest opinion poll lead he decides to blame Conservative Party members for the party's troubles in his Monday column for The Independent.  He compares activists to "perverts" who hold fantasies within a "locked room" in their brains.  90% of Tories apparently believe in the following:

"In their dreams, Britain is no longer in the EU. The coloured population of these islands is less than a tenth of its present total. Instead of being allowed into government, the leaders of the IRA were shot. Every town has a grammar school: every schoolmaster a cane. The death penalty has been restored and crime is under firm control. The state is only spending a quarter of the nation's income. Margaret Thatcher is still Prime Minister.  If you were to make a speech advocating all that to 100 Tory activists, 10 would disagree. Thirty would cheer. Another 30 would agree but keep quiet. They want to be councillors and there might be a spy reporting to Central Office. The final 30 would also have agreed, after one more drink. But Mr Cameron would be firmly among the 10."

Such a description of the average Conservative activist is incredibly unfair.  There are some Conservative members who object to multiracial Britain but a diminishing few.  When I go to Tory gatherings I find people much, much more likely to talk about schools'n'hospitals than hanging'n'flogging.  Conservative activists are selecting more diverse candidates and they are actively involved in community action.  It is true that most Conservative activists want a smaller state, a tough approach to terrorism and strong discipline in schools but the Tory cause is not helped by painting the party workers as extremists.  It just isn't true.  I'm think of using the next ConservativeHome survey to survey Tory views on global development, human rights and care of the elderly.  Any suggestions for questions would be welcome...

Northern regions to get more autonomy from CCHQ

The Conservative Party is changing the way it is organised so that the Northern regions have more autonomy to set budgets and organise campaigns - albeit "within the Party’s overall national strategy". The regions (North West, the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber) will have volunteer Project Directors working alongside each Regional Chairman and Director.

Encouragingly, Northerners will also have more of a voice in the Party with the creation of a Northern Board, similar to the Party Board, and a Deputy Chairman position with responsibility for the North. This is important as there is a common, and somewhat justified, perception of the Party being led by "metropolitan elites". The appointed positions announced tomorrow will be:

Chairman of the Northern Board: William Hague

Vice-Chairman of the Board: Sir David Trippier (former MP for Rossendale & Darwen)

Deputy Chairman of the Party (North), and North East Project Director: Michael Bates (former MP for Langbaurgh)

North West Project Director: Richard Topham (Chairman of a luxury house-building company)

Yorkshire and the Humber Project Director: Graham Stuart MP (who is also on the Party Board)

These developments have been some time in the making, but come just after the Party's "Northern problem" was highlighted by a poll in Yorkshire.

Chairman of the Party Francis Maude will write about the initiative for ConservativeHome later today.

Deputy Editor

How should we select MEPs?

The results of the question posed in December's ConservativeHome survey are as follows (Party members' answers only):

How should sitting MEPs who wish to be reselected, be ranked for the next European Parliamentary Elections?

Option 1: 78%
They should face a vote in which all Tory members in their European Parliamentary regions can participate.

Option 2: 16%
A potentially divisive vote of all members should be avoided and the decision should be passed to the regional officers of the Conservative Party.

Option 3: 6%
Other

We framed this question with Francis Maude's open response to ConservativeHome in mind, in which he asked how a "divisive and acrimonious" selection process could be avoided (you may want to read over the multitude of comments on that thread again).

As Conservative MEPs went back to their offices yesterday, ConservativeHome asked them for their thoughts on how we should select/ re-select candidates for the next European Parliamentary elections, bearing in mind the above results. 

Chris Heaton-Harris, who was Chief Whip during the last round of selections, has set out the debate on today's YourPlatform.

Jonathan Evans' response has been published in the Seats and Candidates section as it raises an important related issue. We will then publish a pdf file aggregating all of the responses. A few MEPs are still on holiday so couldn't share their opinion in time, and John Bowis is ill - we wish him a speedy recovery!

Click continue to see how the others responded...

Deputy Editor

Conservatives Abroad

Conservatives Abroad have officially launched their smooth new website today, which is hoped will help to engage with the ex-pat community around the world.

200,000 people are leaving Blighty for places like Australia and Spain every year, and the IPPR estimates that ex-pats now account for 10% of all British citizens. They are a huge consituency to tap into.

Few Conservative organisations need to utilise the internet as much as CA, so it's great to see the website has both a members' forum and a blog.

Deputy Editor

Now, can we please stop stereotyping the Tory grassroots?

I guess there must be shock all around the Commons' tea-room this morning.  Witham Tories did what, reportedly, a number of Conservative MPs thought very unlikely... they didn't choose a middle-aged, white male but a young, Asian female - Priti Patel.  Ali Miraj did himself no favours by recently adding to the tired media slur on the Tory grassroots.  It is, of course, true that there is unacceptable prejudice within some Conservative Associations but that is increasingly exceptional.

Again and again Tory members defy the pigeon-holing by all too many MPs and journalists.  Three of the safer Tory seats in the country have all chosen ethnic minority candidates in recent years.   Windsor chose Adam Afriyie, Cambridgeshire NW chose Shailesh Vara and now Witham has chosen the highly able (and decidely Eurosceptic) Priti Patel.   Before the last election the heartland seat of Arundel and South Downs chose the openly gay Nick Herbert.  In the current selection process we have seen the openly gay David Golds adopted.  Alan Duncan has not been ostracised for 'coming out'... his constituency has been very supportive and he is, of course, now in the shadow cabinet.

Criticism of the Tory membership is understandable when it comes from the media but is unacceptable when it comes from Conservative candidates and MPs.  The dismissive attitude reached its peak (trough?) when Michael Howard led an attempt to disenfranchise grassroots members in the choice of party leader.  Fortunately that attempt was defeated and members voted for the apparently modernising, rather than the more traditionalist candidate.

Unfortunately the we-know-better attitude lives on in CCHQ.  The attempts to restrict the freedoms of local association to choose Westminster and European candidates goes on.  We can only hope that the party leadership that champions localism for the rest of the country will soon champion it for its own members, too.

Related link: Tory members deserve a little more respect from Tory MPs

Richard Ottaway, Graham Stuart and John Whittingdale elected to Party Board

This is good news for the right of the party who had hoped to see Whittingdale elected.  It is also some confirmation for Richard Ottaway's hopes to succeed Sir Michael Spicer as Chairman of the 1922 Committee.  Christopher Chope's failure to win a seat is a similarly significant knock to his 1922 ambitions.

For background see this Guardian story.

Tory members deserve a little more respect from Tory MPs

I debated with John Bercow on this morning's Radio 4 Week in Westminster programme.  The debate was about tax and you can listen again by clicking here at any time over the next seven days.

I admire John in many ways - not least for the role he has played in encouraging our party to champion the world's poorest and most neglected people (especially Darfur) - but his attitude to the rank-and-file Tory membership is disappointing and all too typical of many Conservative MPs.  We grassroots members shouldn't quickly forget that two-thirds of Tory MPs voted to stop us - the members who selected them - from having any direct say in the election of party leader.  In the WiW interview Mr Bercow conceded that he was not preoccupied with the views of Tory members - who accounted for a "tiny" proportion of the electorate.  What matters he said was not what Tory members thought but the people who weren't voting Conservative.  He went on to say that it was vital that Tories did not appear "like a bunch of fire-breathing dragons preaching the mantra -  the moral case for low taxation".  That's a classic case of demonising your opponents without really engaging with their argument.

I have some questions for Mr Bercow about his attitude to Tory members:

• Did you win your Buckinghamshire seat because of your innate qualities or because you stood on the Conservative platform?  Who has kept the Conservative Party alive over the last few years?  Isn't it in large part the members who fundraise, deliver leaflets and help run councils?
• Who is more representative of modern Britain and more in touch with its hopes and fears?  The male-dominated parliamentary party - heavily concentrated in southern and rural Britain and mainly from legal, financial and political backgrounds?  Or is it the rank-and-file party membership?   Although it is older and wealthier than the country at large aren't the grassroots at least exposed to the real world in ways in which MPs with their protected pensions are not?
• Are there any polls that suggest that Tory members have very different views from the voters at large?  Didn't a recent ICM/ Sunday Telegraph poll actually suggest that, if anything, Tory supporters were more inclined to support economic stability over tax cuts than all voters? 

I don't seek to increase tensions between members and parliamentarians -  most of our MPs are excellent representatives of the Conservative cause - but a little more respect for members would be welcome.

Conservatives have "died off" in the North

Research of political party memberships conducted by the liberal Unlock Democracy campaign shows how uneven Conservative Party membership is across the country.

Approximately 20% of Conservative Associations have less than 100 members, with many northern Associations having less than 50 members, whilst 97% of constituencies have more than 100 Labour Party members.

Quite encouragingly however, the Conservatives are better off when it comes to money - the percentages of party associations with less than £5000 (just 7p per elector) were: 34% Conservative, 50% Labour, 73% Liberal Democrat.

Some efforts have been made to revive the Party structurally in the North - Liverpool and Manchester have voted to amalgamate their respective city associations and Shadow Cabinet members have been assigned to oversee mostly northern cities.

The lack of northern candidates on the A list is undoubtedly a problem, although David Cameron has denied that candidates aren't applying in the North. The proportion may be equal to how many there are on the candidates list but if we have to have a list that prioritises certain candidates then being local or at least regional is a far more important quality in the eyes of the electorate than skin colour or gender.

In terms of national party workers and active members, the Party is still overwhelmingly southern English. If this should be changed somehow, how?

Deputy Editor

Conservative members must retain right to rank MEPs

An open letter to Francis Maude from Tim Montgomerie, Editor of ConservativeHome.com:

"Dear Francis,

I do not expect an immediate answer to this letter - I realise you have a very busy week ahead of you - but sometime after Bournemouth Conference it would be good to hear that members will retain full rights to rank the party's candidates for the next European Parliamentary elections.

My understanding is that sitting MEPs do not have to be tested in the preliminary rounds of the selection process and have an automatic right to go through to the final selection meeting at which party members vote on their position on the regional list.  This current position is, I believe, fair and should be retained in some similar form.

I am concerned to learn again, however, that some MEPs - on the more integrationist wing of the party - are campaigning to have their incumbency further protected.  They fear that the party's more Eurosceptic members will want to replace them with candidates more in tune with the party's stance on, for example, the euro and constitution.  These MEPs want their existing ranking on the list to be retained unless it is overturned.  And they do not want this decision to be taken by grassroots members but by regional officers.

I would like reassurance that grassroots members will still have the right to rank sitting MEPs against new final round applicants.  There may be some need to change the method of selection but the aim should be to widen the franchise and not to narrow it.  For example, the current method of ranking the MEPs at a meeting of grassroots activists could be replaced by a postal ballot of all grassroots members.  This ballot could take place after a public hustings and could be enriched by internet-based cross-examination of the candidates.

I look forward to your reply and wish you a very successful week in Bournemouth.

Best wishes,

Tim

PS I'd like to take this public opportunity to thank you for providing ConservativeHome and other bloggers with a stand at Bournemouth.  During your chairmanship the party has become the most willing to embrace the new media and I'm sure that will benefit the party in the years to come."

Related links:

• Tory MEP helps write report calling for greater 'European dimension' to education
• Europhile MEPs seek end to hustings
• An open letter to Francis Maude about the London Mayoralty process.

Tory membership down to 247,394*

David Cameron, Spring Forum 2006: "We’ve signed up 20,000 new members – at a time when other parties are losing support."

According to the BBC at the time of David Cameron's election there were 253,600 Tory members.

For the 2000 ballot - during William Hague's leadership - membership equalled 302,443.

* Based on participation in the Built to Last referendum.

4pm update: CCHQ has just issued this statement: “There is a three month eligibility rule to vote in ballots, so the large number of new members who have joined since our local election success in May will not have had the opportunity to vote.  In addition, the Conservative Party has a decentralised membership system, and we rely on constituency associations to provide updated membership data to the centre.  Associations are most active at updating their membership records in September to ensure that their membership data is able to be transferred on to the new register of electors which is published at the end of the year. Registered Party membership is therefore higher in the autumn than it is during the summer.  Conservatives continue to have more members than the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats combined.” 

Only one-third of Associations respond to membership enquiries

That is the disturbing finding of a CCHQ memo - leaked to The Observer.  The Observer's Gaby Hinsliff gives no indication of the size of the sample but she reports that a "'cold-calling' survey', in which party workers emailed local constituencies pretending to be members of the public interested in joining, found that only a third even got a response after the first attempt."  (The findings fit with the PS you'll find at the bottom of this post about Abigail Kay's repeated difficulties with joining the Tory Party).

The leaked report - overseen by party board member Simon Mort - was written to explore the alleged slowness of the party grassroots to buy into the leader's style and policy agenda.  The memo contains this explanation of the difference between direct marketing and branding:

"'You're at a party and see an attractive person across the room. You go over and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed" - that's known as direct marketing... You're at a party and see an attractive person across the room, they walk over to you and say "Hi, I hear you're fantastic in bed" - that's known as branding.'"

CCHQ isn't yet fit for purpose

Last Friday I wrote one of ConservativeHome's most controversial posts - 'Is CCHQ fit for purpose?'.  It did not go down well at CCHQ and I received a couple of angry phone calls (which were relatively easy to deal with) and a handful of 'I'm hurt' phone calls (which I never find so easy).  On the other side of the debate, however, I cannot remember a post that received quite so many spontaneous emails from ConservativeHome readers agreeing with everything that I had written.  Friday morning's specific ConservativeHome complaint about the discourtesy of not telling the 'untopped-up' about their B-list status certainly appeared vindicated by that day's events:

(1) Four hours after I had posted my complaint CCHQ emailed all candidates telling them that if they hadn't received a letter they weren't on the top-up (progress); and
(2) CCHQ told the press of the delay to the primary process before the declared London primary applicants (confirmation of the discourtesy problem). 

CCHQ/ CCO has never been loved by grassroots members, of course, and I certainly do not blame the current Chairman and his team for all of the CCHQ's weaknesses (although the problems of the A-list and the Mayoralty primary process are certainly the current regime's responsibility - as I said on yesterday's Newsnight).  CCHQ is like a supertanker that has been off course for a long time.  It isn't going to be turned around quickly and last Friday my telephone conversations with members of the CCHQ team revealed a number of important appointments and initiatives that should improve HQ's effectiveness.  Francis Maude has promised to explain those appointments and initiatives to ConservativeHome readers once they are underway.

My bottom line is that CCHQ is - at the time of writing - a weak institution.  I know that is the view of the Leader's office.  A senior member of that team has complained that you pull the CCHQ levers but no action results.  CCHQ being weak in year one of a parliament is bearable if it is strengthened and made 'fit for purpose' by years three and four, in particular. 

PS A letter to today's Daily Mail (click on image below to enlarge) highlighted another CCHQ weakness - a sloppy approach to membership recruitment and retention.  Jeremy Middleton is currently spearheading a copmprehensive review of membership policy and so this may be another area which won't be a problem soon... but, as with all of the other weaknesses I highlighted last week, noone should be under any illusions as to the mountain of hard work that needs to put the CCHQ supertanker on course for victory.

It's election season for CF members

Nominations have opened for Conservative Future's annual election of a National Chairman, six members of the National Management Executive, and forty four Area Chairmen.

Likely issues to come up (again) in the campaign will be:

• Whether CF should retain its unified structure or revert to two or three specialised organisations
• How it can be a "truly national" organisation and less London-centric
• The best ways of facilitating campaigning and socialising, and which should take priority
• Whether it should diversify its funding base, with more budget power going to the NME
• The turnout of the election and the extent to which ballot papers are sent to members

The responsibilities of the NME are currently devolved into the six portfolios of: Deputy Chairman & Communication, Local Government & Campaigning, Areas & Regions,  Student Affairs, Events, and E-Campaigning. The race for Chairman so far looks like a face-off between Caroline Hunt and Mark Clarke, but there will probably be others who throw their hat in the ring. Most of the Area Chairman nominations will go uncontested.
4:40pm update: Andrew Young, current NME member for e-campaigning, will also be standing for Chair.

August 14th - Nominations close
August 21st - Ballot papers sent out
September 2nd - Hustings in Manchester
September 8th - Hustings in London
September 15th - Ballot papers returned and results are declared

The successful candidates will not actually serve a full year as next year the process is being moved forward to June in a bid to avoid holidays and changes in student addresses.

Deputy Editor

Europhile MEPs seek end to hustings

This week's EPP announcement has produced deep despondency amongst the Conservative Party's Eurosceptic MEPs.  They feel betrayed by David Cameron and William Hague but ConservativeHome understands that it is unlikely that they will form a new group outside of the EPP.  Some members of the Polish Law and Justice Party would certainly welcome such a new group.  The L&JP feels more humilated than betrayed.  Yesterday's Warsaw newspapers carried stories about the way the party of Margaret Thatcher had snubbed the Polish governing party in favour of a deal with the Czechs.  The Poles were not even invited to Thursday's signing and will not quickly trust the Tories again.  As late as Tuesday afternoon they were being called by a member of the shadow cabinet to check that they still wanted to form a new grouping with British Conservatives and other Eurosceptics.

Spirits in the Europhile camp of MEPs are very high, however.  They feel they have three years to find ways of ensuring that the new Tory-ODS group - when it is launched - will stay within the EPP or in some close form of association.  That is not their only ambition, however.  Those MEPs who have strongly supported EPP membership are worried that they will face a backlash from Eurosceptic party activists at selection hustings.  Although a number of controversial MEPs like Caroline Jackson will be retiring at the 2009 elections a number want to stay on.  They would like the husting events - where activists decide whether they should be readopted - to be replaced by a system whereby association chairmen or CCHQ make the decisions.

The Labour Party model is apparently the mechanism favoured by the Europhiles.  Labour uses regional officers to decide where sitting MEPs will be ranked on the party list.  Regional officers are seen as more malleable and less ideological than party activists.  A more centralised system would also give CCHQ the ability to ensure more diverse candidates represent the party in the European Parliament.

ConservativeHome - in the spirit of the 2005 campaign to keep the members' vote in leadership elections - strongly opposes any erosion of internal party democracy.  A postal ballot of all party members in a region may be a better way of ensuring that MEPs are reselected by a more representative sample of the membership but any 'officer-isation' or centralisation of decision-making would be unacceptable.

PS On 6th April ConservativeHome reported the formation of an internet-based Campaign for Real Conservative Candidates.  I have not been able to contact the campaign in the last 24 hours about the developments outlined in this post.

Revamp of party membership rules on the way

The Board of the Conservative Party are consulting local Associations on changes to the membership rules, and specifically the annual subscriptions.  This involves an online questionnaire for voting between various options and even a private blog.  I ought to come clean and confess that I've been sent these details as an Area Deputy Chairman in London.  Because of the nature of the consultation exercise it's difficult to hazard a guess on what the result will be, but an overhaul of the system has been due for some time.

 

This review is part of the improved professionalism Francis Maude promised in his recent Tory Radio interviews in the May 2006 archive.  As such, it should be welcomed.  At a recent City Circle event in London I was talking to someone from the Income Generation department at CCHQ.  There are some very creative ideas for helping local associations in the pipeline and some genuinely impressive people working on them.

 

It's worth putting on record that, for all the stick Francis Maude has received in recent months (not least from visitors to this site) he does deserve applause for the way in which these changes are being handled.

 

The £15 minimum annual membership fee was set nearly ten years ago, and it is possible to join either centrally via CCHQ (e.g. through the website)  or through a local constituency (find yours here ).  I know from my own experience that the national membership facility is bitterly resented by local officers (largely because it has never really worked efficiently).  It's also true to say that constituencies have been less than enthusiastic about helping to fund the Centre, with the annual quota often descending into an undignified haggle.  There has to be a better way of doing these things, and it reassuring that CCHQ is on the case.

CCHQ launches fundraising campaign

With David Cameron at 37% to 38% in the opinion polls, CCHQ has chosen a good time to launch a funding drive across the whole party membership.

My invitation to give arrived in this morning's post.  The fundraising letter is posted on the right (click the graphic to enlarge it).

The heart of the appeal begins at paragraph three and all of the 'core vote' buttons are quickly pushed.  There is talk of...

"Labour have given new powers to the European Union"

"They have created Regional Assemblies which noone wants."

"Highest tax burden in British history."

"Huge damage on our pensions system."

"Foreign criminals... released onto Britain's streets rather than being considered for deportation."

Later on there are references to "a sustainable environment" and candidates "representative of modern Britain" but the letter is primarily negative and designed to get Tory activists to open their chequebooks.

I'll send off a small cheque but it won't be big enough to get me into one of the donor clubs that the mailing also advertises (image on right):

• A £2,000 annual fee will get you membership of 'team 2 thousand' - "a lively programme of drinks receptions, dinner and discussion groups" with the Leader and Shadow Cabinet.
• Also for £2,000 you can join The Entrepreneurs Forum.  The Forum meets in London's West End and in the City with leading industrialists and prominent City figures "to expose Labour's red tape, bureaucracy and excessive taxation".
• "Key players within the property industry" can become part of Lord Young's Property Forum for £5,000 and can then discuss property issues over breakfast.
• The Front Bench Club passports you into 'team 2 thousand' events but the £5,000 membership fee also provides "the opportunity to meet and debate with Shadow Cabinet Ministers at a series of private political lunches and receptions".

No change on the Party Board

In the Party Board Elections Simon Mort and Jeremy Middleton have been re-elected and Emma Pidding has defeated John Flack and Toby Vintcent for the third slot.

Party board election: Local candidates

Derek Tipp's final question refers to local candidates.  Whereas only a third of December's ConservativeHome.com respondents favoured a 50/50 A-list of candidates - as prioritised by David Cameron, 71% supported more local candidates in the most marginal seats. 

Would you support the right of all constituencies to be able, if they wish, to consider a local candidate for selection as their PPC, provided that candidate was approved by the Candidates Committee?