Jayne Dowle: Cynical Cameron purges his party to save himself

This latest idea from the Conservatives has not just made me wonder, it’s made me despair. Apparently, David Cameron is planning to cull hundreds of local Tory associations and strip local chairmen of their powers under controversial plans to rein in the grass roots.

That’s just what places like South Yorkshire need. Talk about cut adrift. Promise us the Northern Powerhouse, and then take hundreds of civil service jobs back to London from Sheffield. Tell us we matter, then refuse to listen or take heed of what excellent local MPs such as Sheffield Central’s Paul Blomfield have to say. What’s the point, for instance, of a high-speed rail link between the North and the capital if all the traffic is one-way?

Could it be that Cameron is afraid that his own party’s rebels in the North could be his undoing? Just when things start to get interesting, he demolishes the power of local politics by clamping down on any possibility of a rogue voice shouting up and challenging the status quo.

What local Conservative associations need is proper, professional leadership from above. Aren’t the Tories supposed to be a party which attracts leaders, movers and shakers? The first thing you learn in management school is how to lead a team effectively. The last thing you should do is to retreat to your lofty redoubt and cut off all supply lines.

Surely those who run the party must accept this. Hasn’t there been enough criticism of the metropolitan elite already? Under these new plans, instead of engaging with the issues which concern the voters – employment, education, the economy – local associations would be forced into retreat.

Can’t senior party figures see that there is strength in well-organised numbers? And I’d argue that sorting out those numbers should be a matter of priority. Since David Cameron became leader in 2005, Tory party membership has almost halved to around 134,000 members, down from the 253,600 who voted in the leadership election.

Nowhere is this more salient than in my own part of the region. One look at the South Yorkshire Conservatives website told me all I needed to know. Talk about tumbleweed. The news pages have only been updated once since the General Election in May 2015 – and that was to announce the relocation of the office from the challenging environment of Rotherham to rural Penistone, a move which speaks for itself really.

Beginning to suspect that the South Yorkshire Tory is becoming a breed close to extinction, I rang the “Conservatives in the North of England” alliance to find out just how many party members they had.

A young man named Adam mumbled and eventually said that he didn’t know. Well, if he doesn’t know, who does? So I rang Conservative Central Office where this time, a young woman named Olivia said she would find out and get back to me. I’m still waiting. If Adam and Olivia are the frontline forces of a forward-thinking, progressive national political party, no wonder it’s in a mess.

Anyone with even a cursory understanding of politics knows, something should be done to rally the troops. However, the reforms would mean that up to 90 per cent of the country’s 650 Conservative associations would be axed. Political suicide or a calculating side-swipe? The answer is obvious when you put it in the context of the Europe situation. Mr Cameron thinks – and rightly so – that in general the provincial party faithful want out of the EU. This is not good for him. What’s even worse is that this means they are more likely to put their support behind Boris Johnson come the party leadership election, leaving Cameron’s chum and close ally, Chancellor George Osborne, out in the cold.

Put bluntly, the last thing Cameron wants is a bunch of Conservative activists running around the country working against him. His solution – to cull the system which supports them – might in the end save his own skin.

However, it won’t do very much for democracy. It also further nullifies the notion of public debate and engagement, turning the political process into yet another management consultancy exercise. It is more cynical even than the Labour Party’s £3 membership scheme, launched to ramp up the numbers before the leadership election and increase party funds.

I have to be honest. If I was in the somewhat precarious position David Cameron finds himself in right now, I might be tempted to do the same. I would stop short though. It is an entirely self-seeking act. It will do nothing to unite a party already unravelling, and everything to drive a wedge further between Westminster and the rest of the world. If he wants to put short-term support over the long-term survival of the political party which bestowed upon him power, authority and trust, on his own head be it.