Article by Camilla Turner in the Daily Telegraph 24 October 2022
Monday, October 31, 2022
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Vote forTory Party Leader or Party Chairman?
The following is an article by Daniel Hannan on the conservativehome web site on 26 October 2022
https://conservativehome.com/2022/10/26/
Daniel Hannan: This summer’s fiasco shows that control over the leadership must return to MPs.
Writer and columnist. He was a Conservative MEP from 1999 to 2020 and is now President of the Initiative for Free Trade.
“Maybe people will finally listen. For years, I have been banging on about the uselessness of our leadership rules, drawn up on the back of a fag packet after John Major’s record-breaking defeat in 1997.
I have taken the argument to, among others, ConHome readers, more than once. I sometimes felt I was in danger of becoming a bore on the subject.
But damn it, I told you so. All the things I have been saying were wrong with the system have just been on display.
First, it seems not to have occurred to the authors of the rules that they might apply when the party was in government. The contest is absurdly protracted. Throughout the summer, despite the economic crisis and the war in Ukraine, there was no government.
I don’t mean that there was no government in an anarcho-libertarian way – that might have had an upside. I mean that there was no democratic oversight of our state machine. Civil servants ran the country, applying the doctrine that the leadership contest counted like a general election.
Second, as a consequence of its length, the contest polarised the party unnecessarily. At the start of 2022, there were no Sunakites or Trussites. Sure, there were dining clubs and policy campaign groups, and drinks parties for potential supporters, but nothing that could be dignified with the name of an ideological rift.
Once the campaign began, though, MPs and activists began to take sides. Human nature being what it is, the two sides were as much defined by whom they were against as by whom they were for. “Spain is divided between the Anti-Exers, who favour Z, and the Anti-Zedders, who favour X,” wrote the Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno a few months before the Spanish Civil War. As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt teaches us, we identify our tribe with reference to its out-group.
The system ensures that both winners and losers make needless enemies along the way. In 2019, Jeremy Hunt – a patriotic, generous-spirited man, whom it is impossible to dislike in the flesh – became a hate-figure to some activists for no worse crime than standing against their preferred candidate.
Don’t think that MPs are any less tribal than activists. While some get behind whoever wins, some get so worked up during the contest that they can’t accept defeat. Both Truss and Boris Johnson faced such opponents. It eventually did for their leaderships.
Which brings me to the third and most obvious problem. As I put it three years ago on ConHome:
“The essential flaw in our system is this: you can become leader with the support of a third of your MPs; but, to keep the job, you need the support of more than half. Every other political party I know of gives its leader some incumbency advantage, so as to guarantee a measure of stability. Ours is the only one that raises the bar higher for sitting leaders.”
That was the problem that Truss could not overcome. Yes, she made mistakes. Who doesn’t? But, from the moment she won, some of her backbenchers were working to remove her. Like Iain Duncan Smith after 2001, she had won with the support of a third of her MPs, and her opponents knew that, unless she raised that number to above half, she would be ousted and banned from standing in the subsequent contest.
A fourth problem: the strife is not hidden. Debates and briefings ensure that some of the rivalry is conducted before the eyes of the electorate. Dirty linen is laundered in full view. Every candidate emerges with their virtues hidden and their defects exaggerated.
Fifth, they also emerge exhausted. One of the reasons that the ground had not been properly prepared for the mini-budget is that all the principals – the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, and their various advisers – had all been engaged in the leadership campaign. Time which might have been spent on schmoozing financial journalists and explaining the Government’s strategy to bond dealers was instead spent fighting for every last vote at the Darlington CPF.
What would I do about it? I’d change the role of our party members, giving them more say over policy and party structures, but – as must happen in a parliamentary democracy – leaving the choice of premier to the House of Commons.
It is worth noting that, when the current rules were introduced, no one had asked for a vote in leadership contests. The Campaign for Conservative Democracy, John Strafford’s decades-long campaign against the pooh-bahs who dominated the upper reaches of the voluntary party, wanted control over CCHQ and the Treasurer’s Department, not the leadership.
The concession as made in an unplanned and panicky way by a demoralised party, and has now been disowned both by its author, William Hague, and by the wise and far-sighted Tim Montgomerie, who founded this website and used it to defend members’ rights.
Here is a possible bargain: let’s give the party conference policymaking, or at least policy-approving, powers. Let’s make it easier for local members to pick a different MP. Let’s have more representation for the voluntary party in CCHQ. But let’s leave the choice of leader to the people whose votes determine whether the government has a majority.
And, for the last time, let’s make these changes now. Sure, build in a delay – say that they would kick in only from 1 January 2026 – to prevent the people drawing them up from gaming the rules in favour of a particular candidate. But, please, don’t put it off any longer.”
Here is John Strafford’s reply:
“Daniel,
You are quite right, in 1998 when we were campaigning for more democracy in the Party, we wanted the Party Chairman to be elected by all the members of the Party, but CCHQ would not agree, so we didn't get that. After trying to palm off the members with an electoral college in which the members had 50% of the vote, we rejected that only to be left with the MPs deciding to give us a choice of two candidates to choose from. The system was fatally flawed from the start.
I would give up the vote in a Leadership election if we could have the Officers of the Party: Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Treasurer, Chairman of the Candidates Committee and Chairman of the Conservative Policy Forum elected by the members at an Annual General Meeting of the Party to which all Party members were invited.”
Thursday, October 27, 2022
The Conservative Party - What went Wrong!
View this Podcast in which John Strafford explains what went wrong with the Conservative Party!
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Thursday, October 20, 2022
The Tory Party - The way we Were!
John Strafford
Speech at the meeting of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy at the Conservative Party Conference on 4th October 2022:
This is no longer a conference. A conference is a place where people confer with each other, they talk to each other, they exchange views, they ask questions, they make statements. None of that happens at this conference anymore and this is the last conference that I will attend.
I thought it would be interesting to have a trip down memory lane and tell you about my first Party Conference in 1964. The situation with the Conservative Party then was that it had two million members. It had 250,000 young conservatives. Attendance at the party conference was so much in demand that Constituency Associations were limited to 8 members per constituency. I was in Chelsea constituency at that time and couldn't be one of the representatives because there was so much demand and so I gate crashed the conference. There was no security, you didn't have to pay to go to the conference. It was held in a seaside town called Brighton where people could get bed and breakfast for £30 or £20 a night. They didn't have to pay the astronomical sums that we now get charged by the big hotel groups. They wanted to charge me £900 just for three nights at the same hotel that I used to stay in Birmingham.
The first evening of the Conference the mayor would have a free reception, and everybody would be invited for free drinks and afterwards there would be a dance.
We had motions for debate and every constituency was invited to submit motions and they used to take them to their executive councils and debate the policy motions and then send them to Central Office who published them in a handbook. Every motion that was sent in from every constituency association was then published in the handbook which was sent out to everybody attending the conference. You knew what the country thought about policies from the members.
On arriving at the conference, I went straight to the coffee lounge and sat down and had a cup of coffee and blow me down Christopher Soames came and sat down next to me.
We had motions for debate. The debates were serious debates. What used to happen was the Minister would make a speech of approx. 20 minutes to half an hour. There would then be contributions from the members from the floor. Then at the end of the contributions the Minister would have to answer the points that had been raised from the floor.
The conference ran from 10:00 o'clock in the morning until 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon 5000 members were able to go to it and they only had a break for lunch. The only fringe meetings were The Bow Group, the Monday Club and the then Conservative Policy Forum lecture, a young conservative ball and a conference ball that was it.
So what is the position today? The Main Hall is only used from pm to 6pm each day. A string of Ministers makes frothy speeches. There are no motions for debate, no questions no discussion, virtually no policy statements, nothing but froth.
Current Position
1) Party Membership is 172,437 as per the last Leadership election. Approx. 10-15% are activists, i.e., approx. 26,000. To run a National Ground campaign in a General Election you need approx. 500,000 members or 50,000 activists.
2) The last General Election at which we had 500,000 members was in 1992. Since 1992 we have had 24 Party Chairmen who have presided over a declining membership and done nothing about it. The last National membership campaign was in 1988.
3) Per the Feldman Review (2016), 290 Constituency Associations have fewer than 100 members. Only fifty associations have more than five hundred members.
4) Research has shown that people join political parties for social reasons, and in order to participate in decision making, either by voting on policy or voting for those that make policy.
5) There is huge gap between the views of the Parliamentary Party and the Voluntary Party, e.g., 60% of Tory MPs were in favour of remaining in the European Union, whereas 70% of members wished to leave the European Union.
Kemi Badenoch had the largest support of Party members in the Leadership election but failed to be in the last two candidates put to Party members.
Objectives
1) To increase Party membership to a minimum of 500,000.
2) To eliminate the gap between the Parliamentary Party and the Voluntary Party on policy issues by encouraging debate at the Party Conference/Spring Forum.
3) To reverse the centralisation of the Party organisation by giving power back to the members on candidate selection.
4) To bring accountability into how the Party is organised by having elected officials accountable to the membership.
5) To enable the Constitution of the Party to be changed without going through a lengthy process in what is now a rapidly changing world.
Six Essential Reforms
1) The National Convention should be replaced by an Annual General Meeting to which all Party members are invited.
2) The Chairman of the Party Board, Deputy Chairman, Treasurer, Chairman of the Candidates Committee and Chairman of the Policy Forum should be elected by and accountable to Party members and present annual reports to the Annual General Meeting.
3) Constituency Associations should have the right to determine who their Parliamentary Candidate should be, with an advisory role for CCHQ who would conduct due diligence. There would be safeguards for Constituencies where the membership is below a certain level.
4) Motions for debate should be re-instated at the Party Conference and/or at the Spring Forum.
5) The Party Constitution should be capable of being changed at a General Meeting of the Party, by Party members based on One Member One Vote with a 60% majority.
6) Four candidates should be put to the membership in a Leadership election and voting done on a preferential basis with the winner being the first to obtain more than 50% of the vote.
Administration
1) Party members have no rights or means of progressing these essential changes. It is therefore critical for the Parliamentary Party to get involved. A group of Conservative MPs together with a group of volunteers should meet and agree the best way to pursue these reforms.
2) The Executive of the 1922 Committee will be asked for their support.
Communication
1) By use of the internet communication can be speeded up.
2) Voting on-line can be used for positions and for involvement of the membership in proposed policies.
3) Social media can be used for instant communication.
Without radical reform the party will cease to exist!
The Conservative Party Leadership Election. Is it a Distortion of Democracy?
1. Those that elect the Leader should be the same electorate as those that decide to dismiss the Leader.
2. Only a UK Citizen over the age of 18 should be able to be a member of the Conservative Party.
3. Four candidates should be put to Party members for them to decide who the Leader should be. Preliminary voting should be done by Conservative MPs on a preferential basis with the top four candidates being put to the members.
4. The whole election process should be conducted in one month with the MPs deciding on the four candidates within one week and the members then having three weeks to cast their vote in the final ballot.
5. The maximum expenditure by any Candidate in the campaign for Leadership should be £50.000 with no individual donor allowed to give more than £5,000. CCHQ should pay for the hustings and the Ballot.
6. The Rules for the election of the Leader should specifically exclude the Party Board from exercising any rights it may have under Para 17 of the Party Constitution.
Questions at the Tory Party hustings – were they rigged?
So, you thought you would go to the Tory hustings and put a question to the Leadership candidates? This was my experience:
I applied for two tickets for the London hustings, one for myself and one for my wife on the same order form. I was surprised that I was allocated a seat in Block D whereas my wife was allocated a seat in Block C.
All the questions for the candidates were made from Block B. There was a manned security barrier between Block D and Block B to prevent anyone from trying to go from Block D to Block B. There were no microphones in Block D and no instruction as to how to put your question to the candidates, so who decided which Block was allocated to whom?
Nick Ferrari chaired the question session, and for each question he asked the Christian name of the questioner. Who gave him these names and when? Did he also know what the question was, if so who filtered the questions?
There were no spontaneous questions asked for, as at no time did Nick Ferrari ask the audience for a question and even if he had, certainly if you were in Block D, as I was, there were no microphones!
This reminded me of the Chairman’s session at the last Party Conference, chaired by Peter Booth, the Chairman of the National Convention who had a computer with all the questions on it so he could decide which question would be asked. On a point of order, I asked if he would take spontaneous questions from the floor. Ben Elliot, Party Chairman thought he should do, so we had questions asked from the floor. Both Ben Elliot and Oliver Dowden (Party Chairmen) said that in future they would make a point of taking questions from the floor, so why did we not get them at the husting’s meetings?
Were the questions to the candidates rigged. I do not know for sure, but there is precedent, and one cannot help being suspicious!
Selection of Candidates
Who here today believes we live in a democratic country?
If I told you that half a dozen people determine who our parliamentary candidates are, which effectively means they determine who our MPs are, which effectively means they determine who become government Ministers would you still say we lived in a democratic country?
So, who are these half a dozen people? They are the members of the Committee on Candidates. The Committee does not have a maximum or a minimum of members, but they are all appointed, by whom we do not know but they must be approved by the Party Board and the Chairman of the Committee reports to the Board.
The role of the Committee is to establish Lists of Candidates for the UK Parliament, Welsh Parliament and Police and Crime Commissioners.
It sets out the procedure and review of Candidates onto the Approved Lists subject to approval by the Party Board.
The Party Board is all powerful as it can take any action which it thinks is in the best interests of the Conservative Party, making the Party Constitution irrelevant.
Conservative party members have no say on who are members of the Party Board.
All this has come about since 1998 when the Party brought in a constitution and all power was taken by CCHQ and the hierarchy that run it and taken away from the Constituency Associations.
Pre 1998 the local Constituency associations were virtually autonomous. Although there was an official Party candidates list, if the local Association wished to invite someone for selection who was not on the list, or a local person they could do so. The candidates then went forward to a General Meeting of the Association to select the candidate. Constituency Associations had effective control of their candidates in a General Election. This issue came to a head in the General Election of 1997 when CCHQ sent Robin Hodgson (Chairman of the National Union) to Tatton to ask the Constituency Association to drop Neil Hamilton as their candidate. They refused and Hamilton was defeated by Martin Bell.
In the new Constitution of 1998 CCHQ were determined to take control of candidates and brought in a rule that unless you were on the candidates list you could not stand.
This came to a head just before the General Election of 2005 when Howard Flight had the Conservative Whip withdrawn by Michael Howard. Not only was the whip withdrawn but he was not allowed to be a candidate even though his association wanted him to stand again. The Party Chairman went to the Association and told them that unless they dropped Howard Flight they would be put into “Support Status” and CCHQ would take over. The Association backed off and Howard Flight was dropped.
So now, if you want to be a parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party you have to be on the Candidates list, but who controls the candidates list?
The Party Board, which consists of people like the Party Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Chairman of the 1922 Committee etc, none of whom are elected to their positions by all the members of the Party, appoints a Chairman of Candidates who appoints members of the Candidates Committee. This Committee not only determines who can be on the Candidates list but also the process to be followed to become a candidate. They manipulate the process, e.g., the “A” list, and at the time of the 2017 General Election the Party found that they didn’t have enough candidates but barred some candidates such as Syed Kemall from standing and ended up imposing candidates on constituencies or giving constituencies just three names to choose from.
It is time to bring the Conservative Party into the 21st century.
1) The Chairman of the Party, Deputy Chairman, Treasurer, Chairman of the Candidates Committee and Chairman of the Policy Forum should be elected by and accountable to Party members and present Annual reports to an Annual General Meeting to which all Party members are invited.
2) The National Convention should be scrapped.
3) Constituency Associations should have the right to determine who their Parliamentary Candidate and Member of Parliament is with minimum interference by CCHQ.
4) Motions for debate should be allowed at the Party Conference.
5) The Party Constitution should be capable of being changed at a General Meeting of the Party by members of the Party based on One Member One Vote.
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
The Conservative Party is not fit for purpose!
A new and democratic structure is needed!
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The Conservative Party is no longer fit for purpose. Without radical reform it faces oblivion at the next General Election. With radical reform it can reduce the damage it will suffer and create the basis for a revival. It is now up to Party members to decide.
Here is an organisation chart from a pamphlet I wrote in 1990 proposing a Party Board. I was heavily criticised at the time. In 1993 it was adopted by Sir Norman Fowler but instead of the elected positions he made them appointments. The Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Treasurer, and Deputy Treasurer would all be elected at an Annual General Meeting of the Party to which all Party members were invited. The Chief Executive and Deputy Chief Executive would be the only ones appointed. In addition to the above members of the Board we would add the Leaders and Chairmen of the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland Conservatives.
Changing the present Conservative Constitution would take far too long so the simplest way to proceed is as follows:
Invite all the Constituency Associations to have a General Meeting at which they would in principle disaffiliate from the present Conservative Constitution and affiliate to the new Constitution as outlined above.
If enough did so CCHQ would find it impossible to resist.
The great advantage from the members point of view is that the Constituency Associations would get autonomy from CCHQ and would be able to decide on the selection or deselection of their MP.
Secondly, The Party Conference used to be organised by the voluntary Party and this would revert to them so that they could once again have motions for debate and proper discussions with Ministers having to respond to points raised.
I see the above proposals as the only way forward if the Conservative Party wishes to avoid oblivion.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Tory Party Conferences as they used to be!
The first part of my speech at the fringe meeting of COPOV at the Tory Party Conference on 4th October.
Click on the links:
Sunday, October 9, 2022
Tory Party Conference and Liz Truss's Speech - a view from the grass roots!
Listen to this!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00https://www.facebook.com/522040588/videos/507486084171106/1cn1n
Radio 5 Live 5th October 2022 1 hour 31 minutes in.
Saturday, October 8, 2022
The Worst Tory Party Conference?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001cq2z John Strafford interviewed by Nick Robinson on the "Today" programme on BBC 4, 5th October 2022. 1 hour 37 minutes in.
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