Christopher Shale had No 10 backing for party membership plan

Aide to Cameron who died in Glastonbury had radical plans to make Tory membership more palatable No 10 and Conservative headquarters had been deeply involved and supported the radical plans to transform Tory party membership drawn up by Christopher Shale and leaked hours before he died in unexplained circumstances at the Glastonbury festival. The damning assessment by Shale, David Cameron’s constituency chairman, of the Conservative membership offer to voters was initially seen as a freelance operation. But it has now emerged that Shale’s strategy paper, Project Vanguard, was backed by Conservative HQ and was calculated to make membership more palatable to the “98% of Tory voters” who are “politics light” and would be terrified of canvassing. Shale, 56, had been feeling ill before he had found out about the leak, according to a source close to his widow, Nikki. A coroner ordered toxicology tests to be carried out after an initial postmortem proved inconclusive. The aim of the project was to launch proposals for membership on 6 October, the day after Cameron’s speech to the Conservative party conference. Some of the analysis by Shale, who was found in a toilet in a VIP area at the festival, had clear echoes of the 2002 conference speech by Theresa May, who as chairman of the party said the Conservatives were still seen as the “nasty party”. Shale’s goal was to boost party membership by recognising that membership, and the offer made to potential members, were deeply unappealing. The objective was “to achieve a transformational increase in membership of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association and to do this in ways other apply to similar effect nationally”. In his preface, Shale said he wanted to “thank everyone at Number 10 who has given their time support and ideas”. He wrote: “If one asks Tory voters as I have done many times over the years to complete the sentence ‘I should join the Conservative Party because …’ there is no compelling response. If there was I’d have heard it by now. There is not. The claimed benefits – the right to attend party conference, take part in selecting our MPs, and so on – are of zero interest to most current, let alone potential, members.” The leaking of the document might have proved embarrassing for Shale, but not devastating, even if it were written in a jocular tone that might have disturbed older party members. Shale listed reasons not to join the Conservatives, including “collectively we are not an appealing proposition”. He went on: “As a group we don’t look that much different to how we looked 10 to 20 years [ago]. Everyone else does. The perception is that we are too fond of looking inwards rather than outwards”. He added: “To many potential members the idea of Tory party social activity is at best rather a threat than promise, at worst a perfect oxymoron. And they are generally right.” He went on: “The widespread perception is that our party plunders its members at every turn… we rarely miss an opportunity to pick a member’s pocket. Their money disappears into a bottomless pit. And then we ask for more ad nauseam.” Shale said the public regarded membership as a big step, losing intellectual independence and being forced down a slippery slope leading “to leafleting on a wet Wednesday evening or worse still, terrifying in fact, canvassing”. Some people would be deterred by any idea they might be publicly identified as member of the party. They also fear “they have to support us even when you know we’re wrong”. He admits that “literally 98% of Tory voters are politics light” – meaning they are not really interested in politics and find heavy politics a big turn-off. He says the answer is to change the environment in which the Conservative party operates so it does not turn off “politics-light people” . He says the party has to give an undertaking: “We will behave look sound and present ourselves differently. We’ll raise money by earning it, not begging it. They wont be asked to sign up anything onerous, agree with all our policies or defend us when they think we’re wrong. They won’t be pressganged into activism. They will have the option to keep their membership as private as they want. They can leave at a moment’s notice.” His solutions included getting into “the events management business, a day in HMP Wormwood Scrubs, an evening with a non-politician celebrity, a great debate modelled loosely on the Oxford Union, a day watching prime minister’s questions .He also promised one social action element far removed from the stereotypical spectre of “marauding hordes of Tories armed with paintbrushes loose in the vicinity bursting with bonhomie furiously painting for victory”. Christopher Shale Conservatives Glastonbury festival Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.