Conservative Party membership has increased? It won’t be enough to save them
I know I only just used this image but it is far too appropriate to be left on the shelf [Image: The Agitator/Twitter].
On #Peston Party Chairman @BrandonLewis says that 6,000 more people have become party members since the start of the year.
Join us today: https://t.co/QslfSNsIid pic.twitter.com/3aJFYm3Jwz
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) March 18, 2018
The comment has attracted bemused responses such as this:
If the Tories are so proud of people joining, why do they continually refuse to publicly state the size of their party membership?
Why the secrecy? https://t.co/lpAWA9QJXA
— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) March 19, 2018
Perhaps it’s because, even with 6,000 new members, reports have it that Tory membership would still be less than 80,000.
And, as their average age is 72, natural wastage will see many of them pass away before the next election (if this hopeless Parliament lasts a full term).
Personally, I know people who get 6,000 new members on their Facebook pages over an average weekend.
The Conservative Party is on its way into the history books. Talk like this is merely the desperate flailing of a dying ideology.
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Do they still count members of Cons Clubs as party members? They always used to and I know several socialists who would have cut off their right arms rather than vote Tory but were members of the club for the cheap beer and good snooker tables.
I wonder whether they really have had 6,000 new members, or whether they are once again fiddling figures and, perhaps, counting renewals as ‘joiners’. It should never be forgotten that one thing at which Tories are very good is fraud and deception.
Tory Party chairman Brandon Lewis says Conservatives party membership has increased by 6,000 new members joining since the start of the year. He believes this shows the growing support for thier ideas and Theresa May’s Government. Given that he still won’t reaveal the Party’s number of members tells you it’s not worth boasting about.
In spite of a hostile press and news media who are supporters of the Tories and thier usual attack on Jeremy Corbyn as a far left politician,Labours party membership is the largest its ever been. The press continue to say Labours plan to renationalise railways and Water and keep Britain inside a customs union to secure good trade with the EU will damage UK jobs and the economy. When the other scenario of coming out of the customs union and single market is seen by many businesses and investors as having a bad impact on jobs and the economy.
The news about poor membership figures for the Tory Party is very heartening. But we need to beware of a “Zombie Political Party ” effect.
Just because the Tories have a low, ageing membership base doesn’t mean that, in the Press and on TV , they are shrinking in influence and ideas. A large membership USED to mean more people to go door-to-door, canvassing or delivering leaflets so that the voters got to know the Party policies. But today’s mass media soon acquaint the voters with the Party beliefs, especially the Tories with their overwhelming support from the tabloids as well as growing bias in the BBC etc.
Similarly, they don’t need a large membership in order to accumulate funds from all the members subscriptions. Because they get huge amounts of cash from just a few millionaires (and Russian oligarchs) so, again, they don’t need more members.
As long as their ideas are touted by the media as important, and as long as the money flows in for their own publicity, it doesn’t matter if most of the declining membership is rather elderly and too frail to go out campaigning. The Party would still live on in the public mind as if it was the powerful political body of old.
The Tory Party may well be dying but it will carry on as a Zombie Party, still appearing to move and talk and take decisions. Because it is being propped up by external support.
Today’s mass media might acquaint people with the Tories’ (public) policies and beliefs (although we know what they say and what they do are two completely separate things), but they don’t say anything factual about Labour (or, I dare say, the other parties). In fact, we have seen a huge amount of disinformation about Labour. So the party needs its mass membership to get out on the doorstep and combat that nonsense.
Your comments about the Tories seem plausible – although remember that Theresa May fell into a quagmire of her own creation during her general election campaign, by holding staged events with invited audiences, at which the tiny size of those audiences was embarrassingly revealed on the social media.