Fleur Butler is the Vice President of the National Conservative Convention
As Vice President for my 4th year on the board, I am writing an open letter to our Leadership candidates.
As the longest-serving member on the Party Board, often the only elected woman in the room, I have been at the top of the party as a Council Leader, candidate, National Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation, President of our Party, and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Policy Forum. I have been through five Prime Ministers and nine Party Chairman. But I am always surprised how few understand how the Party works and fear that not all potential leaders have grasped its complexities.
I think of it as a three-headed monster that we need to keep in democratic balance. Currently, MPs think like MPs, members think like members and the executive tries to ignore both.  We need to unify all three elements to renew and win elections. Patronage and influence by the changing teams around our PMs have focused more on the needs of Number 10 than the Party but now we have a chance to make us fit for the future and capable of winning again. And it is through more democracy that this will be achieved.
Chairman of the Party, the Board, and the Need for Democracy
The choice of a good Party Chairman should provide stability and leadership over time. The Chairman needs to understand the issues of the Party and must be able to advise and even challenge the Leader if necessary.  Currently, it is too easy for a Leader’s team (often without the Leader’s real knowledge) to push through decisions through a hand-picked Chair.
While the demands for an elected Chairman identify this dysfunction, it is the wrong solution.  Having experienced nine chairmen and the churn and lack of grip generated by this constant change, a regular election fills me with dread. I would look to the Party Board to search for a wider talent pool and then the choice be made in consultation with the 1922 committee, the Executive, and the Convention team.
Convention officers and the whole Convention
The senior Convention officers must work better also. Regular meetings with the Leader’s teams and all the Convention officers are needed, not just with the Convention Chair. After all, we are elected democratically by the members as a team of five, not of one. I know that it is only by working as a team that we can harness our five votes and work with the other blocks on the board to deliver the strategic overhaul needed.
We need to keep the regular meetings too with the whole Convention to make sure we are listening to our elected activists. How else can we test innovations in our party without getting feedback? All the Convention officers have to work as a team to make sure the Leader and Party board hear us. Otherwise, the three-headed monster has two noisy mouths and a gagged one.
CCHQ Committees and Democracy
It sounds dull but to deliver the democracy we need, the committee structure at CCHQ needs to change so it can support the Board better. Currently, the committees are opaque, don’t cover all activities and their membership is often more about patronage than ability. The committees need to be open to all members to apply and for the Convention officers to choose the best.
Just as a council balances the executive officers, the politicians, and the ordinary councillors through audit committees, so the Party can adapt this model to emphasise greater knowledge sharing, for use in CCHQ. This innovative approach will put members into the heart of CCHQ and help break down the silos.
Associations and Decentralisation
The Party Board next needs to look seriously at the demands on local volunteers and Association Chairs. The new obligations on Associations are not imposed by CCHQ: it is the electoral commission, employment law and a host of other regulations that have come in over the past 20 years.
CCHQ needs to be more strategic in its help and not take everything on itself and then struggle to run the party locally from such a distance. Decentralisation to the Regions and Areas, and working with properly trained Agents would help. The trick is to keep local interest, loyalty, and turnout for campaigning, but to run things with less repetition across constituency boundaries through federations, multi constituencies, and the other ways of sharing association duties.
MPs and Members and a Constitutional Review
Of course, members must have a vote for the Leader of our Party. Anything else would be disastrous. And of course, MPs must be able to also show who they can work with and unify behind in government. The Constitutional review needs to look at whether this is broken.
A bigger issue is the ease of regicide in the Party. Why do we have a system that allows small acts of disloyalty to destabilise the whole party without a solution first in place? A different issue is the need for respect and understanding between our councillors, MPs, and members.
A memorandum could be signed between Associations and councillor and MP candidates on what is expected regarding campaigning, fundraising, where a parliamentary office is based, and what the Association will do in return to support them. Two days a month as a minimum presence perhaps. Some will be stunned the minimum is set so low, some will be shocked we ask so much.
Selections
The small candidates’ team in CCHQ works incredibly hard in difficult circumstances of competing demands. They delivered a miracle of candidates across the board despite the short warning of the election. Yet we all know the current selection system isn’t working, if only because so many Associations and candidates are generally disillusioned.
But who selects the best for winning campaigns and for choosing the talent for government? We need to use the expert knowledge of both elements. Areas and Regions with proper Agents are best to manage the selection processes across their patches but with the list controlled centrally.
We need also to train Associations on what skills to look for. Some selections had very small attendances. It can’t be right to have ten to twenty people choosing the candidate. Perhaps all the members within an Area should choose the MPs, like for PCCs, mayoral selections, or federations.
It seems unfair that those who live in Labour strongholds should have no say on our winning MPs. A decentralised approach will allow timescales to be managed locally so fewer are caught by the hated by-election rules system, that we need to keep, but should use more sparingly.
Policy and CPF
And finally, a more democratic and modernised party needs to give members clearer voices when it comes to policy debates. The fear that our members might say the wrong thing has led to an overcontrol of how ideas are filtered up. With our MPs sounding off in all directions, it is just plain rude to suggest that members might lack political judgment.
Currently, CPF is too often ignored. It is up to the Leader to choose the best policies that reflect the needs of the voter and the priorities of their leadership, but members must have a voice in what policies are considered.
If elected as Vice President it is my passionate belief that democracy must be at the heart of our solutions and I hope the potential Leaders agree. I hope these ideas are different and exciting as we try to turn our Party into the campaign machine it needs to be.
If we get this future right our new Leader will be able to tame the three-headed monster and turn it into a three-horsed charioteer which is there to win races, if I can mix my images.
