If Conservative membership is really as low as 100,000, with an average age that suggests that number will only be going down in the future, there is an obvious way for anyone wanting to reform UK politics to achieve that goal: they just encourage a mass membership entryist campaign into the Tories of those who want to deliver real reform.
But then you realise that a) this is not a democratic organisation and b) the members have almost no say on anything within it.
At which point you realise why they're c) in such deep trouble.
And then you have to ask d) why they are so frightened of people and e) why they so publicly proclaim principles that they're clearly not willing to uphold.
After which you go back to the start and realise that this is not really a political 'party' at all and wonder why we tolerate it as we have done for so long when it's adherence to all the principles that UK democracy supposedly upholds so well is so tenuous.
NOTE: Jacob Rees-Mogg seems to agree with me: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/03/rees-mogg-tory-conference-like-north-korea-rally
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You don’t have to join, just ‘donate’ an occasional 100k and your offshore accounts, non-tax benefits etc will be secure.
They have more members than the LibDems, SNP, Greens or indeed any other arty than Labour. So why do we tolerate those parties either?
According to the House of Commoins Library that is not true, at least in the case of the SNP
And they look like parties
You completely miss my point
Which is what? That you don’t like the Tories so would like to have them banned?
They are a democratic party and members get to vote in party elections. I’m not sure what principles of democracy you claim they do not uphold, but frankly your post above is nothing short of disgusting.
Tory party members have not voted on policy for years
They rarely vote on a leader
And their limited rights are made quiet clear on their web site
All I’m saying is so limited is Tory democracy that it has to be questioned what role the members have and I think that within political economy that’s a wholly valid question to ask
So, Samuel,
Is Jacob Rees-Mogg “disgusting” as well?
Excellent summing-up of the Tory situation and suggests a further question. Why do we tolerate political parties at all when their main purpose seems to be to convert our democratic representatives into party delegates?
So we need PR…..
Perhaps PR but not the d’Hondt syatem as used in Holyrood – designed to allow the political parties to fill the chamber with their own favoured idiots.
My own feeling about the Conservative Party is that it is a party which serves to look after the interests of people who for the most part are pretty good at looking after their own interests.
Their principal appeal is that they present themselves as the party of aspiration. Something that Margaret Thatcher was particularly adept at tapping into. (Mondeo Man! … Mondeo! I ask you when was a Mondeo or anything from the Ford stable less than a GT 40 an aspirational vehicle except to the downtrodden? Worcester Woman, Billericay Dickie. etc.) The thing is when they say ‘we’, which sounds very inclusive they don’t include very many people who assume they are part of that ‘we’.
In reality you can’t sensibly (with regard to narrow self interest) expect Tory policy to be of benefit to you unless you are in the top ten percent of earners or independently wealthy. Most of the Tory supporting electorate therefore are actually gulled into voting against their best interests and condemn the rest of the population to the same fate. (IMO.)
(Top 10% demarcation used to be in the vicinity of 50-55KK. It may be a bit higher than that now. Media parroting of the highly misleading ‘average’ wage confuses nearly everybody and is an unhelpful statistic. The income difference between the just inside the 10% and the top end of that range is eye watering)
PR would produce a considerably more representative parliament. Which is why the Tories produced that three horse race TV promotion that was so misleading that the Advertising Standards Agency should have bankrupted the party with a hefty fine. But My word! it did the job.
And so late in the campaign that there was no opportunity to counter it.
Clegg should have withdrawn his party’s support from the coalition at that point. That he didn’t speaks volumes for his already tattered integrity. He was right royally shafted (again).
The Tory party is now in my opinion just a front for national and international rent seeking.
And ‘we’ do not tolerate them at all. The bloody media does.
I think this is quite simple : Thatcher morphed into Blair who morphed into Cameron who played the last card with the Brexit referendum and lost and down the pan went the Tories, but as is the case with many humans death came slowly and now we have the spectacle of a dying carcass with Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al gasping for a final breath of life, but tough it’s over . As has been elaborated at length elsewhere on this blog Corbyn and Co have built a following, but have yet to find a fully authentic twenty first century voice, but hey look around the World and name me a politician who has.
John Hope(less), It’s not that bad. Unless you’re English.
Caroline Lucas. You asked for a name. There’s a politician with credibility and a following. She’s intelligent, radical and alone. How she survives I don’t know. Why doesn’t she give in? I don’t know, but she doesn’t. Maybe she believes humanity is worth fighting for.
Nicola Sturgeon. Head and shoulders above anyone I can think of in Westminster (except Lucas) Utterly and shamefully maligned by a media which celebrates Kezia (bimbette) Dugdale and has a crush on Ruth (peabrain) Davidson. Did you hear her comments on the Catalan situation on Sunday? She used the opportunity to try and score a point against her own national government. Implicitly condemning democracy. The Media pretends she is Prime Minister material. FFS. Tory Party leader maybe, but not fit for public office.
Alex Salmond is not dead yet. But he inspires a lot of media hatred. Much of which I feel is irrational but has infected public imagination. He lacks subtlety at times and has just too much ego to be a winner. Cameron finessed him in a willy-waving contest over Indyref 1. Which is why Cameron fucked-up (beg pardon: miscalculated) on Brexit- he thought he could pull the same stunt twice. Theresa May thought she could pull it off on a third attempt with a snap election. Duh! (In trying to better oft we mar what’s well. Shakespeare – can’t remember which one; Probably William)
Tony Blair killed Clare Short’s political career because she didn’t believe he could be quite so blatantly unscrupulous. With the benefit of hindsight I expect she knows she should have resigned with Robin Cook. Blair lied to her face to save his own. (Something for which I personally will never forgive him.)
And now I’m struggling without mentioning politicians who are dead or foreign (or both) and therefore not pertinent to this discussion.
OK John it’s a fair cop. There’s not a lot of acumen out there. You win. (But we all lose)
I know Caroline. The strain is enormous. She just believes in what she’s doing though.
And I agree on Sturgeon – who I do not know, unless mutual Twitter following counts.
Of the rest, I have some sympathy. Where are those we need?
It may be that their existing anti-democratic, memberphobic trend has been exacerbated by fear of an “alt-right” push as seen in other conservative parties, most particularly Trump and the Republicans?
Maybe
But that only confirms the thesis of this being a party that has limited relationship with its members and that does not trust them
Rather like the electorate at large
The ‘Alt-right’ have already taken over the conservative party which is why they are undemocratic and have lost members. Their limitations on membership, entry, and involvement is to stop conservatives with a small ‘c’ gaining entry and stopping them from developing and enacting some of their most regressive and oppressive policies IMO.