Date for your Diary 17th December COPOV Mulled Wine and Mince Pies Forum, Gerrards Cross

 See Events 

Forum 

11am - 2pm Saturday, 17th December 2022

(Coffee served from 10.30am) 

@ All Saints Church Hall, Oval Way, Gerrards Cross, Bucks. SL9 8PZ 

AGENDA:  Mulled Wine and Mince Pies Forum 

See Events for Detailed Agenda 

Conservative Party Chairman - John Rentoul in "The Independent"

 Extract from an article by John Rentoul in The Independent 12 November 2022

The important question now is whether either or both parties can go back to the election of leaders by MPs alone. The Conservatives seem more likely to. It is significant that Conservative Home, the activists’ website founded by Tim Montgomerie and now edited by Paul Goodman, a Tory former MP, has proposed a deal by which members give up the right to vote in leadership elections in exchange for the right to elect the party chair, who has a seat in the cabinet.

Even more significant was that this was supported this week by John Strafford, who is a junction-box in the hidden wiring of the Tory party. He runs an outfit called the Campaign for Conservative Democracy, and for decades he has been a mirror image of the Bennites in the Labour Party – except that he is no ideologue and is not promoting a faction within the party. He is a sincere advocate of members’ rights, but he can see that the idea that such rights are advanced by a vote in leadership elections is “fatally flawed”. He rightly focuses on the right to select candidates free of interference from Tory HQ, a form of party democracy that is compatible with constitutional principle.

Unfortunately, it will never be a prime minister’s priority to change the rules back. Rishi Sunak will not want to antagonise the majority of Party members who want to retain their vote in leadership elections. A rule change depends on a cluster of people, including Nadhim Zahawi, the party chair, Peter Booth, the deputy chair, and activists such as Strafford: they have to accept that it is in the party’s and the country’s interest to make the change.

Tory members "Quitting in Droves"

 Article in Daily Telegraph 8 November 2022:

Should Conservative Party members have a vote in the Leadership election - not anymore!

 

Member’s vote in the election of the Leader of the Conservative Party.

The disclosure by Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee that Boris Johnson had the required nominations for him to go forward in the Leadership election of the Conservative Party and Johnson’s subsequent withdrawal, thus depriving the Party members of a vote in the election is a further example of the debacle over the election of the Leader and has demonstrated once and for all that the process is fundamentally flawed and needs to be changed.   Conservative Members of Parliament should elect the Leader alone and no longer should the voluntary Party have a vote.   This means of course that Party members will be giving up the only democratic right that they have within the Party at a National level and for that there is a price to pay.  Members must have the right to elect the Party Chairman, Control the Party Conference including motions for debate, and the to elect or deselect their Member of Parliament without interference from CCHQ.

In 1998 the Conservative Party introduced a Constitution for the Party in which for the first time Party members were given a vote in the election of the Leader of the Party.   The process by which this was to take place was fatally flawed and it was a huge mistake for the voluntary Party to agree to it.   At that time, the organisations campaigning for democracy in the Conservative Party including the Campaign for Conservative Democracy wanted an Party Chairman elected by all the members of the Party based on One Member One Vote and for the Party Board to have a majority of voluntary Party members.   CCHQ refused to agree to this because they wanted central control of the Party, so they gave the members a sop by saying they could have a vote in the Leader’s election.   The member’s mistake was to accept this sob

The fatal flaws in the process agreed with the members were as follow:

1 The Parliamentary Party decided which two candidates were put to the members for election.   There is a fundamental problem with this.   A Prime Minister has to have a majority in the House of Commons to govern and the Leader of the Party must have a majority of their own MPs in support otherwise his/her position is unsustainable, as we have seen with Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss.   If the party members favour a different candidate to the candidate favoured by the Parliamentary Party there is bound to be trouble.   But why should the Party members favour a different candidate to the Parliamentary Party?   Primarily it will be because the voluntary Party take a different view on the policies being pursued by the Parliamentary Party.   How can this be?   Because since 1998 the local Constituency Associations have not been able to select or deselect their MPs or even their candidates.   CCHQ has taken complete control over them.

2 The detailed rules for the election of the Leader are decided by the 1922 Committee, which has the power to change them after consultation with the Party Board and the threat of change can therefore be used against a Prime Minister or Leader who has lost the confidence of a majority of MPs.

Once the 1998 Constitution was brought in CCHQ began to demolish all lines of communication between the members and the hierarchy.   All the checks and balances which existed prior to 1998 were abolished.   Pre 1998 the Party Conference was organised and run by the National Union (the voluntary Party). It invited the Leader and other Ministers to speak at the Conference.   There were motions for debate tabled at the Conference and published in a handbook.   Votes were taken on the motions.   After CCHQ took over, 1999 was the last Conference at which we had motions for debate.

So, what else happened after 1998?

The Central Council of voluntary members met twice a year and the Party Chairman and other Ministers used to attend.   It consisted of several thousand members including representatives of the Women’s Organisation, Young Conservatives, and others and at which motions for debate on Party organisation were tabled: it was abolished.

The National Union Executive Committee which was regularly addressed by the Party Leader and had representatives elected by the membership: it was abolished.

Regional meetings for Party members used to be held four times a year, which had officers elected by the members, motions for debate etc. – they were abolished with a couple of exceptions.

Regional meetings of the Conservative Political Centre had officers elected by the members and which discussed policy issues: they were abolished, also with a couple of exceptions.

The National Committee of the Conservative Political Centre had members elected by the membership of the Party and which had meetings with the Leader: it was abolished.  A new Conservative Political Forum was set up under Oliver Letwin and for years did - nothing. 

The Annual Conference of the Conservative Political Centre which any member could attend, was addressed by Ministers: it was abolished.

In other words, all the lines of communication between the Party hierarchy and the ordinary membership of the Party were eliminated.   It was as though the hierarchy didn’t want any members!

One of the main reasons CCHQ wanted control was so that they could control the Conservative MPs.

Prior to the 1998 Constitution the 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.

Although the Conservative Party now has a constitution, that constitution cannot be changed without the agreement of an Electoral College consisting of Members of Parliament on the one hand and the National Convention, which consists of Constituency Chairmen and Area and Regional Officers on the other. The real power resides with the Parliamentary Party. The Leader appoints the Chairman and Treasurer of the Party, so they are unaccountable to the membership. There is no Annual General Meeting of members so there is no formal forum for members to raise questions about the Party’s organisation or policies. The Annual Accounts of the Party are not tabled for approval at an AGM. The Parliamentary candidates of the Party are controlled centrally. The Party Board can take control of any Constituency Association, which does not toe the line and has done so. When Slough wished to elect its own candidate for the 2005 General Election the Association was taken over by Central Office and effectively a candidate was imposed on them.   The Conservative Party is a self-perpetuating oligarchy.

The National Convention was set up by the 1998 reforms of the Party and is the senior body of the voluntary party. It was created to be the voice of the members and in its early days there were motions for debate and discussion of organisation. Gradually over the years it has changed and now it is a top-down organisation with no debate or meaningful discussion. It has become a rubber stamp for the party hierarchy. It should be abolished.

In the new Constitution of 1998 CCHQ were determined to take control and 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.   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.   After this episode, the Parliamentary Party became very uneasy about their status and moved to improve their position by increasing the number of MPs on the Party Board and the Constitution was amended in 2009 to add two more MPs to the Board.

Key to all these changes is the Party Board for they can determine the amount of political discussion in the Party, the process for the selection of candidates and the control of CCHQ.   Get the right MPs in Parliament as selected by the Constituency Associations and you do not have to worry about the Elected Leader not having the confidence of a majority of Conservative MPs.

One further point; at Constituency level the members elect the Constituency Chairman and elect their local Councillors, but it is the Conservative Group on the Council that elects the Group Leader.   The same should apply at National Level.

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) The Parliamentary Party should elect the Leader of the Party.   The rules for the process for election being incorporated in the main body of the Party Constitution and not capable of being changed by the Party Board.   Voting by the Parliamentary Party should be on a preferential basis with the first candidate getting over 50% of the votes being elected Leader.   Each candidate must have at least 15% of the votes of the Parliamentary Party to be nominated. 

Election of Tory Leader by the members - how it started!

 At the Party Conference in 1997 a paper was presented by William Hague setting out a democratic Constitution for the Conservative Party. This was the first time the Party had a constitution.   Missing from it was the right for Party members to elect the Party Chairman based on One Member One Vote.   Instead, members were offered a vote in the election of the Leader of the Party.  Initially it was proposed that there be an electoral college sharing votes with the Parliamentary Party.   Jeffrey Archer suggested that the members should have 50% of the votes and the Parliamentary Party should have 50%.   I rejected this.   In the end the rules for the election of the Leader were determined by the 1922 Committee.   What a disaster.   We should have stuck to our guns and pursued the election of the Party Chairman and control over the Party Constitution.   By doing this we would have controlled the rules by which the Parliamentary Party elected the Leader and using preferential voting the Leader would be the candidate who got over 50% of the Parliamentary vote.   This would help to cut out the personal stake way in which today many MPs use their vote.   We would also determine how the Leader could be removed in a fair and democratic way. 

Tory Leadership - I predicted what would happen - it happened!

 Article by Camilla Turner in the Daily Telegraph 24 October 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.”

The Conservative Party - What went Wrong!

 

View this Podcast in which John Strafford explains what went wrong with the Conservative Party!

Tory Party Leadership Election - We Want the Full Monty!

BBC Newsnight, 21 October 2022

View this 4 minutes 23 seconds in:      

     We Want the Full Monty!

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.