I cannot now remember where I read this (all tips gratefully received), but one of my favourite descriptions of the historic Conservative Party was something along the lines of “six hundred social clubs that dabble in politics”.
This was an apt description of the party not just in its post-war pomp, when it counted well over a million members, but in some sense right up until 1998, when William Hague gutted its democratic structure in the wake of the electoral rout the previous year.
John Strafford, chairman of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy, wrote on this site a couple of years ago about how the old voluntary architecture – elected officers, floor motions for debate, and so on – were dismantled by CCHQ, the centralisation covered by the invention of a membership vote on the party leader:
“All the lines of communication between the Parliamentary Party and the ordinary membership of the Party were eliminated. CCHQ wanted control so that they could control the MPs.”
One part, in particular, stands out in light of the news coming out of the campaign trail:
“Selection of parliamentary candidates is controlled centrally, and the Party Board can take control of any Constituency Association which does not toe the line – and has done so. Basically, the Conservative Party is now a self-perpetuating oligarchy.”
This process of centralisation, abetted by the rollout of modern technology, seems to have reached its denouement at this election, (if it did not before). Iain Dale reports that CCHQ is resorting to grossly heavy-handed tactics to try and force candidates and activists to abandon their own battles to prop up Cabinet ministers:
“I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election.”
This isn’t just a Tory problem; Michael Crick reports that similar measures are being reported on the Labour side too. But Sir Keir Starmer is about to secure a landslide victory, which isn’t the sort of thing that tends to prompt big reviews of your party machinery.
The state of CCHQ, on the other hand, is or at least ought to be a prominent issue in any Conservative leadership contest. It is rare to find any campaigner with a good word to say about it, and it is a pale reflection of the old Central Office.
Subjecting it to a measure of democratic control, as Strafford suggests, would seem an effective way to a) ensure that Schumpeter’s Gale blows at least occasionally through the dusty tombs of the party bureaucracy and b) try to invest CCHQ with more respect for the independent interests of the party as an institution, rather than just serving as the leader’s enforcer.
Unfortunately, it is a very rare candidate who is, upon actually winning power, prepared to loosen their grip on the party machinery and candidate selection process.
And in Hague and CCHQ’s defence, it seems very unlikely the Party would ever have made it to 2024 without some kind of centrally-vetted candidates list; the media environment, and journalists’ and public expectations of how parties operate, is simply very different today, and with the membership so attenuated and modern society much less prone to joining things, the gulf between members (of any party) and the wider public is wider too.
Nonetheless, it is clearly possible to survive and even thrive in the Current Year with a party at least somewhat more institutionally hale than today’s Conservative Party – Labour is the proof of it.
CCHQ, on the other hand, has spent the past month alienating first many people on the candidates list (which should be its reservoir of the most loyal troops) and now activists up and down the country, enraged not just by the tactics Dale writes about but more broadly by lethargy and incompetence.
One candidate, by no means a disgruntled right-winger of the Andrea Jenkyns school, told me a couple of weeks ago that they were going to start ignoring CCHQ’s demands for central approval of all their literature, because the green light was taking so long to come that it was hamstringing their campaign. Another said they were worried their central mailing wouldn’t hit people’s doormats until after postal voting had opened.
Whoever succeeds Rishi Sunak, something has to change about how our party is run. There needs to be a better compromise between a necessary bare minimum of central control, and the prerogatives of members, associations, and the national voluntary party. Anyone standing to replace Rishi Sunak should be quizzed thoroughly on whether, and how, they will repair CCHQ – or replace it.
