Not dead, just resting

Unfortunately, today's interesting cover story in the Independent - former Tory MP Michael Brown on 'The Slow, Strange Death of the Conservative Party - requires a subscription for you to read it online, but it's an interesting look behind the scenes at the organisational side of party politics, and how the Conservatives are slipping further and further behind as their grassroots wither. Of course it's not just the Conservatives this affects - I've heard complaints from Labour Party members that not only are membership numbers dropping, but those that leave are the people who would go out delivering leaflets on a wet Wednesday night in February and the Liberal Democrats have a smaller membership than the other two parties and less resources to pay for a national structure - but one does wonder if the Conservatives are suffering more than the other two parties, especially from an aging membership. For instance, the Young Conservatives claimed to have 150,000 members back in the 50s and, as Brown points out in his article, whole swathes of the country used to have their own local full-time Conservative agent and now don't. (However, he does make a mistake when he claims this makes it harder to join the Conservatives - one of William Hague's reforms was to make it possible for people to join the Conservatives centrally, instead of having to join their local party) It's probably worth noting, though, that whatever the membership of Conservative Future (or whatever it's called this year) may be, the swivel-eyed loons don't seem to even have a youth wing, though one suspects that if they did, it's members would start getting very lonely very quickly. Actually, if anyone has spotted someone trying to establish a UKIP branch at a University, do let me know.

I suspect we'll have to wait until the next General Election to see what the actual effective membership of the parties is, though.