A campaign to restore Conservative (Tory) Party democracy including a top donor and former Cabinet minister has been launched following the coup that installed tax-hiking Rishi Sunak as premier without consulting members.
The Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) boasts Peter Cruddas, a member of the House of Lords, former party treasurer, and major donor as President, and aims to “take back control” from the party’s parliamentary elite and empower party activists and members, who have frequently found themselves at odds the MPs who represent them on key issues such as Brexit and especially immigration in recent years.
Indeed, the gulf between the parliamentary party and the party at large is now starker than ever, with the government led by Rishi Sunak, who was resoundingly rejected by members in favour of Liz Truss earlier this year, and Jeremy Hunt, who was even more resoundingly rejected in favour of Boris Johnson in 2019.
Sunak and Johnson sit at the apex of the Conservative Party and, by extension, the British government, as a result of MPs ousting Liz Truss after less than two months and installing Sunak — who most of them had backed in the first place — without balloting ordinary members a second time.
Polling indicated that most members would have backed Boris Jonhson returning as leader following Truss’s ouster, but the ex-premier — himself forced from office by MPs without ordinary members being consulted — struggled to gain the 100 MP endorsements which the parliamentary elite required would-be leadership candidates to amass in order even to participate in the contest, and he bowed out in typical vacillating fashion amid fears that MPs would not allow him to govern even if he won.
Theresa May, a Remain supporter, became party leader following the Brexit vote in 2016 as a result of a similar stitch-up, with Brexit-supporting rival Andrea Leadsom abandoning a membership vote she was predicted to win because she did not believe fellow MPs would support her.
The Conservative Democratic Organisation aims to not only strengthen members’ role in choosing the party leader — even when they are balloted they can only choose from a final two candidates whittled for them by MPs in a way that often leaves them stuck with having to pick a least worst option, and even then their winner can be easily toppled by the parliamentary party if they don’t like the result, as happened with Truss — but to empower them in a number of other areas as well.
For example, the CDO wants to see members directly elect the party chairman and other party officers, and for local constituency (electoral district) associations to be able to choose their own candidates and, if necessary, deselect them — where at present party headquarters tightly controls who can stand for the party and where, with the associations tasked with campaigning for them having little real say in the process.
Possibly the most senior parliamentarian to back the campaign is Priti Patel, a former Cabinet minister once very popular with the party grassroots whose credibility with members was more or less destroyed during her time leading the Home Office, when she found herself — admittedly by choice — covering for a party leadership and departmental officials with little interest in controlling the nation’s borders or deporting foreign criminals, goals on which she staked her reputation.
“Our grassroots are the heart and soul of our Party. They work tirelessly to campaign for Conservative votes, knocking on doors, delivering leaflets and fundraising locally,” Patel said.
£They are our greatest assets and advocates and they should never be taken for granted. Party members are committed to our values of freedom, enterprise and opportunity and we need to empower them to have more say over our policies and candidates,” she insisted.
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