Off Topic Political Debate

Creaking a bit Dan..... but otherwise

 

"The History of the British Passport" - or, given the obvious mistakes here, "Re-writing the History of the British Passport" by the Tory Party...

 

John Curtis failed to predict his knighthood - useless bugger.

 

The sooner they scrap the whole sorry system the better.

 

I see LibDem deputy leaderJo Swinson has been awarded a CBE for 'services to political and public life'.

Yet she is currently under investigation by Police Scotland over her election expenses.

 

At the last election the party who won the most votes stood on a platform that included overturning the fox hunting ban. Today the PM has announced her intention to ignore the will of the people by ruling out a vote during this Parliament. So the precedent has now been set - democracy doesn't necessarily mean democracy. Interesting times ahead.

 

She didn't get the sufficient number of mp's to win her the vote. Not that there is anything remotely civilised about foxhunting in the C21.

 

Agree with all of that - but just saying

 

So the PM is likely to have a shake up at Tory HQ after her disaster at the General Election, none of it of course was because she thought she could run it on her own. Figures suggest that membership of the party has fallen off a cliff since the referendum, with Labour, SNP and Liberals all having substantially more paid up members. Maybe that is not a problem until local elections come round in May when people are required to post leaflets into houses. Big business might still be keeping the wolf from the door, but they will not get out on the streets to try to gather support. Maybe with only. 28% of Tory members believing that they have any imput into policy making, there is part of the problem. If you join a party it is because you would like to be a part of the democratic process, but when all the party wants is your subscription why bother?

 

The Tories are becoming even more reluctant to publish their current membership figures Frenchie. It is suspected that they are now a smaller party than the Lib Dems. and the SNP. Labour has nearly 5 times as many members. As you say this is a problem on the streets at elections, but not only that - they have to field candidates in all wards at local elections and are often stretched in doing this. The biggest problem is one of financing - the fewer members they have the more dependent they become on private sponsorship. At their last Party conference only a third of those present were party members - and the rest ? Private sponsors and lobbyists. As far as age is concerned they are fast becoming the geriatric party of the UK.

 

The fact that they are so reluctant to publish the figures means you have to rely on leaks from within. I have seen various ones but all of them suggest membership has halved over the past couple of years.

 

Despite the imbalance of party membership the 2017 local elections produced a landslide for the Tories with their best results for over 10 years, Labour suffered their worse results for the same timeframe. Political party membership is vastly overplayed in its importance.

Labour policies are now increasingly dictated by the union barons and the insurgents from the far left via the insidious Momentum group. Centre left moderate MP's and councillors will be targeted at local levels to destroy the traditional LP approach.

 

Which local elections ? As far as I can see there were only 6-7 of them. I am not surprised to see you playing down the importance of party membership size - with only around 70,000 members it must be an embarassment. It also makes the Tories more vulnerable to 'Entryism' or rather takeover - like from any of the 594,068 who voted for Ukip.

 

You are confused by the new mayoral elections, keep up. There were actually elections in 35 local authorities and all councils in Scotland and Wales.

Even the Guardian called it a Tory landslide.

 

Local councils play a large part in how the country runs. Last week the trend of Tories losing seats continued, with one changing hands in Hertsmere. There was a report that there could be a major loss this coming May in the South of England which despite local and national politics dealing with different matters, people tend to vote on how well things are going in the country. With the current state of affairs it is quite likely a big kicking is coming.

 

35 out of 353 is only 10%. Not a lot to go on.

 

The last general election saw the Tories gain their largest share of votes since 1983. The political party membership numbers game means absolutely nothing.

 

And still they couldn't form a majority government.

 

You don't have to be a mathematician to know that party membership figures are very important - if they weren't then the Tories would have no reluctance in publishing them. The latest leak shows around 70,000 - around the same number as in the German Green Party. I know first hand what a difference this makes - 70,000 means around 1 in a thousand of the UK. population. It means that, taken as an average, you will have 20 members for a municipal population of 20,000 - not all members are going to be active but you still have to contest 20 wards. All of this means that you have people contesting council seats who are not suitable for the job. I know that at the last local elections here we had people standing, and people on reserve lists, who were not even party members.

 

In England the Tories have control over 54% of councils, Labour 28% and Lib Dems 2%. They don't appear to be suffering from poor membership levels.