By
John Strafford
On 1st May 2017 I wrote an article for the
ConservativeHome web site warning the Conservative Party not to be complacent
about the coming General Election. At
the time the press were forecasting a 200 seat majority. Opinion polls were showing the Conservative
Party on 50%. What I had not factored
into my warning was incompetence. The result in the election was disastrous for
the Party. So what went wrong?
I warned in my article that the Boundaries Commission
proposals were not yet law, thus giving the Labour Party a twenty seat
advantage. The Election result showed
that the Conservatives lost thirteen seats.
If they had waited they would have had a majority!
I warned that the Labour Party had a financial war
chest so couldn’t be outspent by the Conservatives. It would appear that Labour spent their
money more wisely. The Tories poured a
million pounds into advertisements attacking Jeremy Corbyn on Facebook, whereas
for a fraction of the money Labour persuaded their members to share positive
messages about Labour. Negative
campaigning harms not only the victims but also harms those perpetrating it.
I warned that the opinion polls would move in Labour’s
favour and Labour would then claim momentum.
Exactly that happened.
I warned that at some point there would be some bad
news and the Conservatives would get terrible publicity. I didn’t expect the bad news would come as a
result of the launch of the Conservative manifesto. It was an appalling document with hardly any
positive points in it and the presentation was abysmal. Instead of saying Winter Fuel Allowance was
to be mean tested why didn’t it just say that it would be taxed in the same way
the Old Age Pension is taxed. The poor
would get it in full and the rich would lose some of it. That is fair. The case on Social Care went by default
because instead of saying how much we had increased the amount people would be
able to keep we did not include a cap on how much people would have to
pay. A Free Vote on fox hunting was
promised which we know a large number of people oppose. Why antagonise them by putting it in our
manifesto? These stupid errors would
not have occurred if there had been a wide involvement in drawing up the
manifesto. In the past, the Cabinet,
Back Benchers and even some members of the voluntary party have been
involved. It is the wisdom of the
crowd.
The General Election was announced on the 18th
April. Two days later the following
announcements were made by Conservative Central Office to parliamentary
candidates:
We
will not be advertising seats, due to time constraints. Each
Conservative-held seat and opposition-held Target seat that is selecting will
be given a shortlist of three candidates to put to a General Meeting of the Association.
There will be consultation between the Candidates team and the Officers of the
Association in drawing up the list.
In the
case of the remaining seats that are not targets, the Chairman of the Party and
Chairman of the National Conservative Convention will be appointing candidates
after consultation with local officers.
This was totally
contrary to the rules for selecting candidates and was only pushed through using
the clause in the Party’s Constitution which gives the Party Board the power to
do anything in the interests of the Conservative Party. This is a clear abuse
of power and it was totally unnecessary.
With seven weeks to the General Election due process could and should
have happened. There was much complaint
as the candidates list had been culled after the 2015 General Election and new
candidates were barred. Effectively
only candidates chosen when David Cameron was Leader were allowed to take
part. This caused great resentment in a
number of constituencies, which wanted a local candidate or a member of the
European Parliament on their short list.
It is not a very good idea to upset your volunteers at the start of an
election campaign.
The campaign started as a very personal campaign with the
emphasis on “Theresa May – strong and stable” and vicious personal attacks on
Jeremy Corbyn. The electorate does not
like personal attacks. I had an
official communication from my MP, Dominic Grieve, which did not mention the
Conservative Party once. If you are
going to make the campaign personal, it was a mistake for Theresa May to refuse
to debate with Jeremy Corbyn on television.
This gave the impression of being afraid. It highlighted the problem with a personal
campaign. There was no hope in the
Conservative manifesto - nothing for people to look forward to. No vision of the future. Yet Labour’s manifesto contained a lot of
hope and promises which the Conservatives failed to counter attack. Our manifesto was the most miserable
manifesto in my memory.
In
the week before Election Day the Prime Minister visited Slough. I went to the meeting which was held in a large
industrial unit which was “To Let”.
Only Party members were invited and about 400 turned up. We had to wait in the rain for half an hour
to get into the building. The Party’s
coach turned up and drove into the building and became the back drop for the speeches. The Prime Minister walked in with Boris
Johnson. Boris took the platform and
gave a five minute introduction to Theresa May. All written down – no ad-lib. Then Theresa May gave a speech of about
10-15 minutes all about “strong and stable”.
No questions. They both then departed leaving me thinking “What was that
all about?” Any Leader knows that on an
occasion like this you wander round the crowd shaking hands, motivating the
troops and giving them hope for the battle to come.
My
constituency of Beaconsfield – one of the strongest constituencies in the
country was asked to help in Slough (a Labour held seat with a 7,000 majority)
and Harrow West (a Labour held seat with a 2,000 majority). In 1979 I took 110 members from one branch
of Beaconsfield to help in Watford.
This election the whole constituency struggled to get 25 members to help
in Harrow West
After
leafleting in my own constituency I decided to go to Slough to help there. When I was Constituency Chairman of
Beaconsfield we paid for a full time Agent in Slough, gave other financial
support, manned several committee rooms and polling stations on Election Day
after carrying out a full canvas of the constituency. We won the seat in 1987 and in 1992. Unfortunately in 1997 Central Office wrote
off Slough and we were sent elsewhere - big mistake! It has
deteriorated ever since and now has less than 100 members.
I
looked for the address of their committee room on their web site. It was not there. Eventually I got the address which was on a rundown
industrial estate with hardly any parking. I arrived at approx. 6.30 pm and
when I said I would bring the canvassing returns back to the office the two
volunteers told me that the office was about to close and that the industrial
estate locked its gates at 7pm. I
arranged to return the canvass sheets the next day. The canvass sheets were provided by Central
Office and included questions where you marked the answers out of ten. Each elector had a sheet. They would take at least ten minutes on each
doorstep. Great if you have 500 helpers
in a by-election but totally impractical if you can number your helpers on one
or at best two hands. I asked how much
of the constituency had been canvassed and was told 20%. There was no way that canvassing would be
completed by Election Day. Feeling
concerned at this I asked where the committee room would be on Election Day. They did not know. I then asked if the polling stations were
being manned on Election Day. They didn’t know. Next I asked if they had a list of
helpers. No they hadn't. Tearing my hair out I then asked who was in
charge – I was told it was a woman from Central Office based in
Southampton. We did our canvassing and
returned the sheets the next day at 3.30pm.
The office was locked so we pushed them through the letter box. The result in Slough was an increased Labour
majority of 17,000. I gave up.
The
day before the General Election I went to Harrow West arriving at 7pm. Once
again the address was not on its web site.
On arrival I was told that the Harrow West committee room was closed but
they were sharing a building with Harrow East which was open so I delivered
leaflets for the Conservative MP Bob Blackman who got in with a majority of
2,000.
On Election Day I returned to Harrow West to
help in knocking up. The knocking up
sheet was excellent with lots of useful information, except it did not show the
address of the polling station. To my
surprise I came across several strong Labour supporters, and then I noticed
that in some cases the last contact with them was in 2012! We not only were knocking up Conservatives
but also Undecideds. The Labour
majority went up from 2,000 to 13,000.
It
seems all these constituencies were following Central Office instructions. I am afraid to say that the clever clots in
CCO have never fought a General Election on the ground. The result was a disaster. On Election Day party members were being
directed to constituencies like Slough where there was no chance of us winning
whereas constituencies which we lost were starved of people. It is quite clear that Central Office did not
have a clue as to what was happening.
At the same time Labour were pouring supporters into constituencies
boosted by their membership of 550,000, (it has now increased to 700,000 since the
election.) Approximately one third of
Labour canvassers had never canvassed before so were part of the huge increase
in new members.
In
my ConservativeHome article I warned about the dangers of only being capable of
fighting marginal seats. I said “So
what and where are the marginal seats?
Some “guess work” will be required to decide where to put our resources
but it is “guess work” and it could go horribly wrong.” It did go horribly wrong.
Party
organisation should be the responsibility of the Party Chairman. He or she should control the campaign. All consultants, special advisers etc. should
report to the Chairman and he or she should be answerable to Party members at
an Annual General Meeting. The Leader
determines policy and priorities. He or she must take responsibility for the
political aspects of the campaign.
Without
radical change the Conservative Party will cease to exist as a membership
organisation and if that happens, oblivion awaits the Party. The Leader of the Party has to take radical
action to change the structures of the Party to ensure this debacle does not
happen again and if she doesn’t then we will have to get a Leader who will!
