Rebuilding local party politics is priority number one

Today I've been up at Newcastle for a New Culture Forum event with Rafe Heydel-Mankoo as speaker. It was a very worthwhile trip. I'm impressed with New Culture Forum because if we are going to build a new conservative movement then it will absolutely depend on in-person social networking outside of London, and NCF events are going to be key to that. Peter Whittle understands this too.

As it happens, this wasn't exactly local to me, but I know how sick I am of trekking down to London to do politics, so if, for once, politics is done inside my regional operating range, I'm obliged to put my money where my mouth is. I wasn't disappointed. Rafe Heydel-Mankoo is good speaker and touched on most of the important points that need making right now.

I was pleasantly surprised as I imagined it would be like early day Ukip public meetings where the speakers outnumbered the audience, but I counted at least forty people, one of whom I know through Facebook.

The highlight of the day, apart from popping into the North East Land, Air & Sea Museum (any day with military aircraft in it is a good day), was meeting William Clouston, leader of the SDP. I was already impressed by him, but meeting him in person seals the deal. He is an intelligent, thoughtful and nice man who understands the necessity for steady, determined movement-building, and understands why zombie Thatcherism has no place in any conservative revival. I have a lot of thinking to do on the basis of our discussions but I think I probably will join the SDP.

Not so long back I was talking about entryism into the Tory party, but I don't think it's likely to work. Many of you warned me that CCHQ has stitched it all up to prevent a right wing takeover, and the remaining Tory MPs believe the shtick that the party went too far to the right. That much is true, but there's an even bigger reason. You cannot enter what does not exist. In a lot of places there is virtually no Tory party infrastructure left. A lot of it is managed remotely by neighbouring branches, and most of their key activists have let their membership lapse. You can't stage a deselection coup if it's just a handful of incomers versus the incumbent local party chairman.

One party member said to me:

---"Even if you did manage to embark on such a project without interference from the party board, the level of coordination needed to be successful would be extraordinary. You’d need to get the chairman and the executive council on board just to get the opportunity to put a “de-selection” motion to the membership and then there is no guarantee the membership would play ball. To guarantee the support of the membership, they’d need to be heavily lobbied in advance and to do that covertly would be impossible and would attract the attention of the board who would use some interpretation of the constitution to shut you down. One of the reasons we’re in such a bad place is because the political direction of the party is determined by the leader and when you change leader as much as we do, that whole process is subject to the whims of very small groups of people".---

Joining the Tory party might give you a limited say in who becomes the next leader, but that's only of the options presented by the parliamentary party, and that'll be after the great purge. The most you're likely to be offered is Badenoch - which brings its own problems.

As it happens, calling in at the air museum at Sunderland today was politically instructive. I decided to take a little detour through Sunderland, through some of the grimier bits and through some of the posher bits. I didn't see a single election poster. There's is no real world indication that we are having a general election. As such, local party politics has completely imploded. There has been a general withdrawal from party political activism. Which brings me to something William Clouston said; "You win by turning up". The Muslim Vote is showing us how it's done.

Being that the Tory party is a zombie party that's ruled almost entirely from London, and all of the local Tory online forums and pages are ghost towns, we can safely say there are no embers to breathe on. We don't need Reform to destroy the Tory party. It is already a dead-man-walking.

It's not surprising then, that the Tory party is so easily swept away. It will hang on to more seats than the polls suggest, but what's left will be a nepotistic little clan that has nothing to say to the rest of the country. The scribble tree is still standing, but the roots are rotten. Even a Tory party with a vaguely right wing leadership can't revive it, and there is nothing particularly conservative about the Thatcherite wing.

But that brings me to the problem with Reform UK. It suffers from much the same problem. Farage allowed the infrastructure of Ukip to wither on the vine, and never bothered to rebuild it. Though Reform is making a big media splash, it will implode the moment Farage runs out of steam. Most of its candidates are unvetted paper candidates, most of whom would not be effective MPs - even if you agree with them.

I'm of the view that Reform will not do as well as anticipated. MRP polling is deeply flawed, and the absence of a ground game, and poorly coordinated local campaigns, probably means that this election will be Reform's high water mark. It will end up as a historical curio, much like the Brexit Party. It existed, did more or less what it was supposed to do, then vanished. Even under Habib, it simply cannot become a serious force in politics. It cannot break through the inherent electoral ceiling that goes with generic right wing populism, and voters will soon grow bored of it.

Thus, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that we either have to start from scratch (which is next to impossible) or concede the obvious: that the SDP is the party that best represents British conservatism right now, despite its left leaning economic ideas. It is clearly the party with the best manifesto, and the most competent leadership. While Reform is dominating the airwaves, the SDP is quietly building the local infrastructure that makes for a viable movement, and in conjunction with NCF Local events, there is a nascent movement that is not contingent on a London organisation or central funding.

The missing component is you. The SDP has limited funds and will go nowhere without members and donors. If you want better politics, you have to pay for it. And let's face it, even if your politics don't fully align with the SDP, our politics would be better with the SDP as a political force. One of the main selling points for me is that every SDP person I've interacted with has been basically decent.

You might say that a vote for the SDP is a wasted vote, but that's simply not the case. Every vote for them at this election means a stronger chance of them doubling the number of candidates in 2029, to become a force the media can't ignore. Building something with your vote is not a waste.

People tell me that we need to be fighting fit by 2029 and that we don't have time to build a movement. But we're just not going to achieve anything with flash-in-the-pan voter activism. This line of argument reminds me of the many excuses given for not building nuclear power stations twenty years ago. Sure, commissioning new nuclear wouldn't have solved the the energy price problems of 2006, but here we are in 2024 with no new nuclear power stations when we need them most.

It is not a given that Labour will lose in 2029, nor is it a given that the Tory party will learn anything at all from its defeat. Nor is it a given that a Tory party led by a right winger would be any more electable given their dismal track record in office. Do we really want to get to the election in 2034 without a political pot to piss in? If you've got a better idea, I'd love to hear it, but so far as I can see, the SDP is the only operation that's actually doing something constructive.

Right wingers are obsessed with destroying a largely self-eliminating Tory party, in the belief that something better will simply appear out of thin air to fill the void. But not if we don't build that something better ourselves. Otherwise, it'll be another bored, eccentric, attention seeking millionaire who thinks politics is just a case of getting on GB News three times a week.

They do say you get the politics you deserve, and looking at what's on offer, that has never seemed more true. Most don't bother to join a party, most don't turn up to political events, and most won't put their hand in their pocket to make things happen. It's time to be the change you want to see. I suppose you could start by subscribing to this Substack!