Tory membership crisis

Tory membership crisis

Conservative party membership officially stands at 177,000 and falling from 258,000 since the start of David Cameron’s leadership.  However, Conservative party membership may be much lower than the official numbers say as the party has yet to publish its yearly membership total which suggests that is has fallen again.  Steven Swinford a senior political correspondent for the Daily Telegraph recently wrote an article suggesting that Conservative party membership has dipped below 100,000. Whether or not the party membership has dropped below 100,000 or not Conservative membership has been on the decline since David Cameron became leader of the party and something needs to be done or come 2015 the Conservatives may have a serious lack of man-power.

The big question for Conservative party HQ is how to reverse the membership trend and get more people to join the party.  Reducing membership costs could be a start, this is something Ed Miliband did to try and reinvigorate the Labour party and it has been successful as Labour has seen a rise in its party membership.  Conservative standard membership is actually cheaper than standard Labour Membership, it costs £25 for a standard Conservative membership while a standard Labour party membership costs £44.50.  However, Labour’s membership costing is very clever and has been designed to grow local parties, Labour membership only costs £15 if you are recruited by the local party.  Not only is this cheaper than a Conservative party membership new members are recruited by party members themselves which makes new members more welcome as they will already know more people in the party.  Conservatives could operate a similar scheme to Labour and offer discounted membership to those who join the party through their local association this would encourage members to recruit more people to dwindling local associations.  Alternatively  the Conservative party could expand their friend scheme, which offers partial membership for £1, they could offer full membership for £1 and go on a large recruitment drive putting adverts in the right wing newspapers, they could even offer free membership since membership fees only contribute a small amount to the parties overall income. 

Obviously, cost is not the only reason stopping people joining the Conservative party as in all honesty it is reasonably priced when compared with its rivals.  The biggest problem for the Conservative party is that the leadership is cut off from the rest of the party  and the membership feel powerless to stop the leadership taking the party in the wrong direction.  Calling UKIP member’s closet racists and swivel eyed loons has also not helped drive up party membership as many Conservative members share common believes with UKIP.  In theory, a new leader more aligned with the right of the party may see a rise in Conservative membership as the party’s core support would feel the leadership was more in tune with their beliefs.  However UK political party membership has been in long-term decline for years when Harold Wilson became Prime Minister 10% of people were members of a political party now it’s around 1%.  The challenge for political parties in the future seems to be one of gaining more members and to do this they are going to have to create parties that are more responsive to their members, if they don’t they are going to have to create a party machine that can win elections with a small membership.