The Conservative Party is far from dead!

Robin Horsley, yesterday, in his Crossfire blogged that The Conservative Party is dead!

And although I agree with him that the Tory Party membership has declined drastically since 2005 – 2006 and that in many parts of the country Associations’ average age might be around the 55- 60 bracket. I don’t necessarily agree with him in that his particular case is mirrored every where and dare I say in some parts of London he (41 years old) will be the average and even a little on the oldish side!

However, Horsley has hit on a very important issue and the dilemma facing all political parties in the UK today. Which, by the way, also makes me wonder how exaggerated are those “LibDem Exodus to Lab” claims by the Labour leadership – but lets’ just put that one aside for now.

As for the election and its results, we all know that not every person who votes Conservative is a Tory – many voters vote on one or two issues and for a different party form one election to the next.

But there is no denying that the Conservative party needs rejuvenating and needs it continuously – the big question is how?

As for why there was a massive exodus, the simple answer is change – not everybody likes, welcomes or understands change. Change is difficult and many people, especially those who are directly affected by it do not appreciate its need or importance. Since 2006 the party has seen lots of changes that came form the top, but were not all necessarily explained all that well at the bottom – not for lack of trying but because the party was doing new things via an old vehicle.

That’s why I found the suggestion of an elected party chairman – it came up during a discussion in the Freedom Zone at this year’s conference – a brilliant idea. An elected party chairman will give associations and grassroots more of a say so via their own representative, accountable to them first, similar to the relationship Conservative Future members have with their chairs, and we all know how successful CF is.

As we still have most of the five years before the next election ahead of us to address this and many similar issues, timing couldn’t be more ideal. Between 2005 – 2010, the party transformed its outer image, now it has from 2010 – 2015 to work internally in increasing and solidifying its membership.