A year and a half of chaos in Westminster has left Conservatives in some areas struggling with depleted local resources as grassroots activists lose faith in the ruling party.
Those behind the new push to make the party more democratic say its members turned their backs on the Tories after seeing two leaders they voted for, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, both ousted after they lost their MPs’ trust. .
But some conservatives believe the party has a secret weapon up its sleeve: a sudden influx of new young supporters who are campaigning, volunteering for elections and even running to prove that the Tories are not doomed to vote as youth votes are lost.
With parliamentary elections underway, the latest BMG Research poll is positive. I assumes that the Conservatives will receive the support of no more than 16 percent of voters under the age of 35. But one MP said: “I don’t know where they come from, but all of a sudden the Conservative Party has a much younger membership in rural Britain.”
The arrival of this young army gave hope that the Tories would avoid the nightmare scenario of failing to field enough candidates in future local elections.
“The Liberal Democrats didn’t field candidates in the recent midterm elections where they should have and could have won, and the problem is they don’t have candidates,” the Conservative MP said.
“I thought we had this problem and I think we were on our way to this problem, but all of a sudden, out of the blue, we had a lot of young supporters … I could probably fill each department by someone in their 20s. and the 1930s.
The Conservative teenager Harrison Allman-Varty, 19, said he was “by far the youngest” when he first applied to Elmbridge City Council in Surrey last year, but other young Tories are now moving to the local county.
He said I: “I gave my seat, but I didn’t play very well at my age – I prefer to be chosen on merit. I said something about the fact that young voters might see something in it. But I don’t think that my pitch would be very different from other candidates.
“It’s fair to say that I don’t fit the profile of the average advisor. I think there are younger Conservative candidates at the moment – there are two girls in Elmbridge who are in their early twenties and they are gorgeous. There is an increase, maybe because of our region. You usually associate young people with those who always vote for the PvdA and are more on the left.”
Mr Allman-Varty joined the party at the age of 14 after being dragged into politics by the Brexit debate. He admitted: “Now is not the best time for conservatives, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. You just have to look at the polls.” But he insisted that the Tories remain a “reasonable” party: “I think we’ve suffered some reputational damage, after 13 years in government it’s not exactly easy. But I think Rishi did a really good job of improving it, time will tell.
Harry Johnson-Hill, 21, will become a Winchester councilor this week for the first time at the age of 18. He said he is “the only person born after 2000” in his area who is an active member of the local Conservative Party, adding, “I think the second youngest person is a man who is about 35 years old.”
He would rather focus his party on the economy than on the culture wars, which are “sometimes portrayed as a bigger problem than they really are.”
He added, “I come from a small business, my father works at a market stall, he sells flowers, my mother sells shoes, that was my lifestyle. I have always helped with this. So I believe in low taxes, I think in Margaret Thatcher’s attitude towards business and housing.
Mr. Johnson-Hill suggested that local politics were a friendlier environment than is sometimes portrayed: “Personally, I only raised national questions on the doorstep once, and that was Boris. I think people are looking at the polls too quickly, projecting them onto the overall election result and saying we’ll end up with five seats. The party is not dying.
However, party bosses are getting warnings that the Tories, who give their members less say in the running of the machine than other parties, may have to fight to bolster their base’s overall strength. This was stated by a senior MP I: “We have one problem – an aging base of activists. Another reason is that people are simply less likely to join political parties. Because they get nothing even from their membership with us.”
David Campbell-Bannerman, a former MEP who helped found the Conservative Democratic organization, added: “You need your activists. So if you piss off participants and kick them out of what’s happened over the past year, you’re losing activists just when you need them. This is the price to be paid for the lack of democracy and the contempt for members by some at the top.
“Perhaps they rely more on university students, and this is very important: young, enthusiastic and ambitious people. We rejected highly qualified, experienced members because they were tired of the way they were being treated.”
A Conservative Party source insisted there were no problems with recruitment, stating: “The local election campaign produced a record number of leaflets this year, came close last year and registered more than 7,500 candidates – significantly more than any other the consignment”.
Source: I News
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