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Monday 4 February 2019

Conservative and other political party democracy

The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice a newcomer to the daily blogroll list to the right - the Campaign for Conservative Democracy. John Strafford has been striving ever since Hague imposed his elitist and centralist constitution on the Party in 1998 to reform and democratise the party. He makes a most persuasive case for we, the members of the Party, reclaiming ownership from the Patrician elite and their globalist backers. I won't dwell on the details, which are of little interest to UKIP readers.

However, this fundamental requirement for a party to operate democratically goes to the heart of many issues now assuming importance. My previous tongue-in-cheek reaction to the formation of the 'Brexit' Party was primarily due to a broadly signalled tight central control that would deny its new members effective governance. Its founder is caught in a Catch-22 situation. She wants a new party that can field 'professional, highly competent' candidates and can exclude the Muslim-baiters and the swivel-eyed-loon tendency of UKIP (of whom it must be said there are remarkably few in my experience) and thus is terrified of allowing a one-member-one-vote system. But a party founded without real member democracy must fail; individuals won't donate to a body in which they have no say (the current Tory dilemma) and the party will be dependent on large donations and therefore be vulnerable to corruption and anti-democratic governance.

One of the reforms that I support most strongly is the limiting of individual political donations to somewhere around £50,000. This is vehemently opposed by both Labour and Conservatives; the former relies on Trade Union bungs, the latter on sometimes shady globalist finance. In the absence of large bungs, each party becomes greatly more dependent on its members for both direct funding and fundraising - and each party must in return allow members a real say in the important things.

These matters have been simmering for some years, but have, like so many other issues, now come to the fore because of Brexit. Charles Moore writes in the Telegraph in a manner in which no-one five years ago could ever have imagined; he advocates the firm but fair deselection of all Conservative Remainer MPs, starting with Dominic Grieve. He writes much as many readers write in the blog comments - 
Recently I attended a country funeral. The people in the pew behind me were pointing out the war memorial on the wall. “People shouldn’t forget what those men did,” said one, “They made sure this was a free country”. “It’s not a free country while we’re in this EU,” said another, “We want to go, and now these MPs are trying to stop us”. Some MPs seem slow to pick up this point, and not to realise that they are moving themselves into uncharted territory.
It seems that ensuring party democracy won't wait even for the 29th March. Thus for my party at least, I support fully Mr Strafford's proposals. 

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ukip are to the Tories what the Provisional IRA were to the Officials.

They share the same ends.

Ordinary fold should think very carefully about what those are.

Anonymous said...

It's a weird idea of a free country, which means one where the Government is free, to deny the people the rights and freedoms that the EU seeks to protect on their behalf.

Stephen J said...

Yes Raedwald, but party is not the basis for good argument...

If UKIP has taught me nothing else, even though I already knew it... (It was one of the reasons that I joined!) The best way to keep this sort of organisation straight is to base each new organisation on a separate issue.

Democracy only works when it is issue based, representative democracy was always about power and money and never about democracy.

Naturally, new parties will always have money behind them and that money will (at some point) want something.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

EU rights and freedoms?? Arsehole. Fuck off.

When I can vote out an EU kommissar you can talk about EU rights and freedoms.

Stephen J said...

Just been choking on my breakfast by watching TMay in parliament, when a thought entered my head...

Haven't both David Lidington and Philip Hammond who provide her with flanks... both got weak chins?

Is this a defining characteristic of the breed known as "remainder", or just a coincidence?

Anonymous said...

"I won't dwell on the details, which are of little interest to UKIP readers."
Don't jump to too many conclusions, RW: not all of us are narrowly sectarian, and some of us have been around a while - it's clear from the biog details you've let slip that I'm older than you, for instance. I voted Tory from when first eligible, until post-Thatcher - then dumped the Tories because I despised Major, and the other 2nd-raters they subsequently appointed to lead them, thinking I'd wait until the Party returned to some traditional sanity. Of course, the signs weren't good: Heath was an EU-phile catastrophe whose mendacity over the true nature of the EEC (I voted to stay in, in 1975, like most) became clear later on. It's never happened. The Tories have morphed into a queasily hypocritical form of social democracy, especially under Cameron but confirmed now under May - that the Party could possibly have considered her fit for the highest office in the land demonstrates a staggering absence of judgement, as the past 2½ years have proved. Good grief...
In a way I admire you for finally joining, but rather in the way one admires the Charge of the Light Brigade - magnificent, but it's not war, truly.
Since, when I have voted in GEs at all since Major (and I declined at least twice to vote, absence of worthwhile candidates), I have voted UKIP, I suppose this makes me one of those "UKIP readers": I hasten to point out that my knuckles do not scrape the ground, I have a 1st Class degree and postgrad qualifications, and my wife (Continental) & I spend much time at our 2nd home across the Channel... I also continue to take an interest in the broad spread of politics, as I have done since age 12. I visit the Con Home site regularly (I was evicted some years ago, for disagreeing with its somewhat anal, control-freak honchos, but I got around that easily) and there are a great many Party members there. Very many of them have long lamented the state of their Party, especially the serf-like status of ordinary members, who are treated as cannon fodder with deep pockets but whose opinions are ignored...
Brexit, and the contemptible shambles created by May and the Party which is too gutless & impotent to evict her, has exacerbated this problem: members seem to be resigning frequently, and forecasts of a split are stronger and more frequent than ever.
Surely the days of the Conservative Party are numbered?
BTW I see you are still visited by the "anon" creature: his latest inanity about UKIP/Provos suggests a worsening pathology...
Best wishes
MS

wg said...

@Anonymous 4 February 2019 at 08:26

It's a weird idea of democracy that allows a common market to presume what rights
its participant members may or may not have.

I have never wished for the EU to have my rights in their hands: how did that come about?

Of course, when a body deprives individuals of agency that body gains control.

We have seen how the EU protects rights in Greece.

rapscallion said...

Something tells me that Anonymous is in fact Telemachus. Shall we say certain phrases give it away.

As for our rights and Freedoms Telemachus, We were born with them, as were all Britons. We did not have them granted to us by the f***ing EUSSR.

Go and foul someone else's website you revolting specimen.

Anonymous said...

Well, the UK will soon be out of the EU, and ukip's wastes-of-space MEPs will be getting helpfully shoved down the EU Parliament's steps.

So you can rant and rave all that you like, and nothing that you say here will make the slightest difference to the Mainland then.

And just what, exactly, will you blame, for all that you so clearly hate about this country then?

Anonymous said...

Maybe my simile about the two IRAs flattered ukip unduly.

They are to the Tories, what the Archies were, to Freddie And The Dreamers.

Raedwald said...

'Malcolm Stevas'

If you're older than I am your mind is also not perhaps as sharp as it was; you may recall that I banned you under the name of 'Tony Harrison'.

Please be careful not to behave in such a way that I feel obliged to do so again.

Dave_G said...


Politics is, after all, just BUSINESS (of running a country) and holding the employees up to the same critical standards as any successful business could/would give us a system that worked.

Decent pay and productivity bonuses, punishment, sackings, demotion and fines when not performing to standards or operating outside the boundaries of law/business, application of rules according to insider trading or corruption (influence) etc.

Why we place our Government EMPOYEES on a pedestal of 'freedom to operate how they see fit' is beyond understanding. They are employees and we are their boss and they should work under the same restrictions and reward/punishment regime that we all have to.

What makes them so damned special that they can abuse us and the system so readily?

Time to reel them in.

Anonymous said...

You did indeed ban me, RW, rather as ConHome did - and it's disappointing that you choose not to address some of the points I make about the Conservative Party. You might not like my views, but that does not disqualify them, and neither does it justify you in insulting my intelligence: older than you I might be, but not decrepit, thanks very much. I still manage to stumble about rather well, far better than most perhaps...

jack ketch said...


Ukip are to the Tories what the Provisional IRA were to the Officials.
Uhm actually The Young Farmers are the armed wing of the Tory party.

Raedwald said...

Ah, bless the Young Farmers - ruddy-cheeked scions of the soil, some of whom have even mastered cursive script and earned a place at Cirencester Royal Agricultural College. We used to call them the Woodentops. When the SU bar charged £1 deposit on pint sleeves, a mate drank for free for an entire term each year as the freshers took at least 60 pints each to learn not to leave their empty glasses unattended.

"Bugger, Nigel that's three I've lost tonight. You don't think someone might be taking them?"

Anonymous said...

It's a bit of a dilemma for Tory-ukip, isn't it? I mean, how to get the mob to demand the lynching, of anyone who might actually pose a genuine threat to their established power, without running the risk that its rabid gaze might one day be turned on them too, when they realise all the crap that they have swallowed?

Anonymous said...

There's a lot of silliness already in the comments to this post.

I have been a Conservative party member right through my adulthood, and an activist since I was sufficiently established at work to take the time off on Election Day to do telling. I have been loyal through thick and thin, and some ghastly leaders: Heath, Major, Cameron and May. I have loyally supported and campaigned for some truly dreadful MPs - because the prospects of a Labour government were too awful to contemplate (and usually worse than the contemplation when they happened).

My membership subscription is due this month. I'm not renewing it. Conservative have shown that they are not fit to govern. They've had the last of my money and my efforts.

Anonymous said...

Well, Tony Blair made a catastrophic error in cosying up to GWB, and being railroaded into an unnecessary war, but he did give us thirteen, blissful, Tory-free years, and passed some damned fine laws too. You didn't have to worry about yet another useless Tory PM then, did you?

Raedwald said...

Anon 12.03 - I seem to recall you resigned from the Conservative Party around three months ago, then again a few weeks ago. We look forward to hearing about your fourth resignation in due course.

Matt said...

passed some damned fine laws too

PMSL - it's questionable whether there have been any damn fine laws since around the middle of last century. Mostly it's been tinkering around for the sake of it.

As an example, how about the Violent Crime Reduction Bill banning toy guns? And the criteria for whether it's a Realistic Imitation Firearm? Whether some interfering old twat on the omnibus think it is.

Anonymous said...

The BBC reports:

"Lorries will be able to drive straight off ferries and Channel Tunnel trains without making customs declarations in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the government has announced."

So, all those people who voted Leave for a hard border, and rigorous searches for immigrants will have got the complete opposite eh?

So take your pick. Food and medicines and some stowaways, or none of those. Looks like HMG have decided, doesn't it?

LOL.

Billy Marlene said...

Can’t keep track of all these ‘anonymous’ posts. Losing the will to read, let alone to react.

Why cant they just use their real names - like me?

Cascadian said...

Unfortunately a suitable domain name for this new conservative party BRINO.com has been reserved,

https://internetbs.net/en/domain-name-registrations/index.html

if DisMay and CCHQ hurry they can get BRINO.eu

Mavis Pike said...

They never told us that Arthur! Pages 11-12.