Andrew Kennedy is the Group Agent & Campaign Director in West Kent. He blogs at www.votingandboating.blogspot.com.
If we agree that the primary, if not the sole, objective of the Conservative Party is to win elections, then we can have no complaints about the Party’s relentless focus on those very seats which deliver victory. Our 40:40 strategy played a major role in achieving that in 2015, and should be celebrated. But we must also accept that there are unhelpful consequences of allowing the Party’s organisation to decline in those constituencies that are the wrong side of 40:40, and also in allowing our traditional “majority” seats to stumble on without a serious strategy to grow and develop.
I entered politics in Merseyside during the late 1970s. The climate then was very different to today’s. The Conservative Party held two seats in the city of Liverpool (Wavertree and Garston) and was competitive in two others. We also held Crosby and Wirral West with majorities of 20,000. We held Southport and Wirral South by almost 10,000 and, in Wallasey, Lynda Chalker had a majority of 2,000 in a seat which had been Conservative since its creation. In local government, the Conservative Party controlled Merseyside County Council, held a third of the seats on Liverpool City Council, comfortably controlled Wirral and Sefton Councils, and had representation throughout the county. All that has now gone.
There are now no Conservative MPs in Merseyside, no Conservative councillors in Liverpool or Knowsley, three in St Helens and, in Sefton (which is home to some of the county’s wealthiest and most exclusive neighbourhoods), we are down to just six out of 66. Only in Wirral do we remain competitive, even though we have not had a majority on the local borough council for 30 years.
This story isn’t unique to Merseyside. A similar tale of decline could be told of Manchester (with the honourable exception of Trafford), Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle…in fact, any major industrial city or region. Does it matter? After all, we can win a Parliamentary majority without them. In my view, yes it does, for two very important, reasons.
Firstly, if we are to be a truly national Party, we must have in place a structure which enables us to hear, absorb and reflect the views of the entire United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland). This cannot be achieved if the Conservative Party does not meaningfully exist in a third of the country.
Secondly, we have a duty to give Conservative supporters both candidates to vote for and an organisation to be a part of in every constituency. And this can only be achieved by having no no-go areas for the blue rosette.
I am not so starry-eyed as to believe that “one big push” will deliver new Conservative MPs in areas that haven’t had them for a generation. However, in every town, city and borough there are sufficient Conservative voters who, if properly motivated and organised, could gain council seats and start a nascent organisation where none has existed for decades.
None of this will happen by chance. It will require dedicated effort from CCHQ, investment (in terms of infrastructure and staffing) and, just as importantly, the goodwill and co-operation of what few activists we still have in these areas, many of whom feel so abandoned that they may be understandably suspicious of “outside” interference. The prize, however, is one worth striving for.
One or two Conservative council victories in Liverpool, Manchester or Newcastle would do more for morale than gaining another 20 council seats in Kent, and the very fact that the Conservative Party can “come back” in areas where we have been written-off would, in itself, breed further success as thousands of Conservative voters “came home”, realising that we were no longer a lost cause. With those returning voters would come returning members, donors and activists – and so we would slowly begin the process of renewal.
In 1987, Chalker faced the battle of her political life. The Militant Tendency was in the ascendant in Merseyside. In Wallasey, demographic changes made her seat vulnerable and a Militant-backed Labour candidate was well-financed and attracted committed activists from across the region. Had Wallasey Conservatives had to face this battle alone, they would have lost. I know, I was there, and was part of the team running Chalker’s campaign.
But we were bolstered by a hundred activists “on loan” from Wirral West (the Conservative MP accepting he wasn’t going to lose), and a hundred further activists from the City of Liverpool (our candidates there accepting that they probably weren’t going to win, but wanting to ensure that Chalker did). This flood of local support from people who knew the area, understood the issues and implications, and cared about the outcome, enabled the Conservative Party to hold Wallasey by just 279 votes.
Last year, the situation had reversed. The atrophy of our organisation in Merseyside took its toll in the harshest way. In a city which in the earIy 1980s boasted over 3000 Conservative members there are now just 80, and of these (according to my friend Tony Caldeira, our Liverpool Mayoral candidate) there are probably no more than 10 activists. As the Conservative Party has died in Liverpool, so Labour has felt sufficiently confident to release en masse their activists to fight elsewhere. It was the flood of Labour activists which enabled Labour to win Wirral West and Chester – a complete reversal of a generation ago. And this is why we must rebuild and renew.
Small victories at council level will rebuild morale and knock the confidence of the opposition. Councillors and activists in all our major towns and cities will improve the narrative we have with the whole country – but equally important is having a local resource to draw on to help defend or gain our nearby target seats. This is infinitely preferable to the cost and effort of bussing activists around the country into areas they do not know, and with which they have no emotional connection.
There are some simple procedures that the Party can put in place to help this happen.
I wish our new Party Chairman, Patrick McLoughlin, every success. He takes the reins at an exciting time for our Party. New members, a new Prime Minister, an Opposition in disarray, and a 16 per cent lead in the polls could encourage complacency. These factors also provide an opportunity to do something truly radical which will benefit us for generations to come.
We rightfully criticised Gordon Brown for “failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining” on the economy. Let’s hope future generations of activists don’t blame CCHQ for failing to fix the problems of the voluntary party while the sun is shining on Theresa May.