The Conservative Party’s Headquarters (CCHQ) have been acting like a North Korean regime for years. Why is the Tory cheerleader website, ConservativeHome, now suddenly surprised that it wants to disclose little to no information pertaining to the selection of its Mayoral candidates?
Well, probably because its after an election and the circular firing squad can now resume. I hear you protest, “yeah well you lot in UKIP got started a bit quicker than them, didn’t you?” We always were more efficient.
I used to be a member of the Conservative Party, and an active one at that. What I saw inside CCHQ, was brutality, ruthlessness, secrecy, an abject refusal to stand for anything, and punishment for those who believed in something. Anything. Apart from gay marriage. That was okay.
That hasn’t changed since I was a member. Indeed it has become worse – with small-c conservatives targeted, suspended, bullied, demonised, and publicly briefed against for daring to remind the party that conservatism isn’t just about financial markets. Indeed the Conservative Party is scantly about free markets either. With its revolving door between London’s big accountancy and auditing firms, it truly is the party of corporatism. We’ll see that in action when Mr. Cameron appoints his new Lords.
There are friends and acquaintances of mine inside Conservative Party HQ who will neither like, nor be surprised at me writing this article, but I’m just so amazed that ‘Tory sources’ are themselves shocked that the central party might not be the bastion of ‘sound’, ‘freedom’, and the new Tory-boy clarion call, ‘transparency!’ that they all once believed.
ConHome reported last week:
It’s outrageous that CCHQ will shortlist the declared [Mayoral] candidates down to two or possibly three for the open primary selection. Why shouldn’t Londoners have a much wider choice? If the candidates are credible, why not put them all through?
Labour have just done that, and they are giving people six candidates to choose from. We all know Zac will be one of the two or three, and quite right too – but I fail to see any reason for excluding a Conservative MEP, the Deputy Mayor for Policing, the leader of the Conservatives on the GLA or the leader of Westminster City Council.
If any of them are excluded by CCHQ, we should ask why they are good enough to hold their current positions, I’d have thought. Perhaps CCHQ should bear that in mind.
Yes it is outrageous. And yes, we finally know the names of those who will be making the Mayoral candidate shortlist choice. But if anyone thinks CCHQ is going to end its bully-boy tactics just by writing a few blogs (I understand the irony, believe me) then they’ve got another thing coming.
The fact is the entire Conservative Party needs clearing out. It’s full of poisonous, toxic people who make it their life’s work not to represent conservatism (Burke who?) but rather to assume power, and turn the party into something it never should be, nor was destined to become. There’s a plethora of activists, think tanks, and individuals inside the party who have overtly declared to me that they are not conservatives, and are simply trying to to change the course of the party.
Entryists, I call them. Modernisers, they call themselves.
That’s why people like me left the Tory Party in our past. It may prefer parliamentary majorities to principle. It may like stitch-up selections more than offering real choices. I’m afraid that I, and so many other conservatives, have found a new home. And much to Mr Cameron’s chagrin, we’re not “coming home“.
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