Zombie Tories Today, Zombie UKIP Tomorrow

Stuart Parr blogged yesterday on the astonishing news that Tory membership could be as low as 59,000. Having crunched the numbers, he showed that even taking much more generous estimates of membership that the party, once sitting councillors were excluded, is now almost completely devoid of activists.

No one seems to know exactly how many members the Tory party now has, including the Tory party itself. Rumours circulate of estimates between 59,000, 84,000, 100,000 and 130,000. However membership does seem likely to have slipped below the psychologically important 100,000 mark. Still appreciably bigger than UKIP's of course, but crucially even those members who remain are horrible demoralised, with around half of them no longer campaigning for the party.

The Tories are now a Zombie party. Terrified that it's members and the country will perceive the horrible truth  must surely be the reason why the Tories refuse to release estimates of membership. However, it is another fantastic own goal by it's blundering, arrogant leadership. Refusing to be open about the issue won't stop rumours circulating, and, as is the way with rumours, getting ever more wild over time. More importantly, it is yet another insult to it's poor remaining membership. After all, would you want to be a member of an organisation that refused to tell you even the most basic of information about itself?

Given our own rapid rise in membership, it is very tempting for us 'Kippers to sit back and gloat, and look forward to the wonderful day when UKIP membership overtakes not only the failing Lib Dems but also the weak and sickly Tories.

Not so fast.

The fact is that our structure is as archaic and in desperate need of reform as all the other parties. The era of the rigid silo is well and truly over. In the internet age, political parties will have to take on the characteristics of social networks.  Policy formation, for instance, must be crowd-sourced rather than confined to a closed and select few, and there must be all sorts of models for social engagement and membership.

In no way should the hard work and guts of UKIP activists in getting our party up to a historic high of 30,000 members against the fierce head winds of general voter apathy and alienation be disparaged. However, as the pundit Fraser Nelson never tires of pointing out, something is desperately wrong with party politics in this country when other voluntary organisations and causes routinely have memberships in the millions.  Put UKIP membership figures in that context and it shows just how far we have to go.

The first political party who radically reforms itself on social network lines may see huge increases in membership, and there is a great danger that it won't be us. Nothing is as dangerous as success, as the saying goes, and it is very tempting indeed to think that nothing is wrong and to carry on as we are.

It has been to UKIP's huge luck and advantage that it's principle rival has been lead by people without an original idea in their heads over the last few years. It would be extremely foolish to bank on that luck lasting forever. Facing extinction, there are strong signs that the Tories are now beginning to look seriously at Douglas Carswell's ideas to "spotify" the party. Carswell, perhaps the most brilliant original thinker in British politics today, has already proven the worth of his ideas in his own Tory branch in Clacton. Given his head, he would be far more formidable opponent than dunderheads like Cameron or Grant Shapps.

The political fates are always fickle: although now very seriously wounded, you should never underestimate the Tory party's ruthless instinct for survival. It has still got significant financial resources,  individual though woefully under utilised talent and  residual - though badly tarnished - brand recognition and loyalty. A Tory party returned to it's members and supporters via the social network route could well leave UKIP high and dry, struggling to catch up but without the depth of resources to do so. It is therefore absolutely essential that UKIP is both first and boldest in embracing the new models of social organisation that are an inevitability in the age we live in.

The Tories may be a zombie party, but that is the thing about zombies: they have a very nasty habit of rising from the dead.

Why Open Primaries Are A Dumb Idea

An undeniable attribute of the modern Conservative Party is that it has a large number of radical thinkers amongst it's number, mainly sitting on the backbenchers of the House of Commons: Steve Baker, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and Andrew Tyrie to name but a few. It's great crime is that it largely ignores them. Instead, it's leaders are cynical, visionless blue-bloods who regard government as little more than reactive management of change in the sorry Tory tradition. One of the huge benefits of the rise of UKIP will be the emancipation of such original thinkers from the dead hand of Toryism in future.

Two of the Conservative Party's greatest thinkers are Douglas Carswell and Dan Hannan, co-authors of The Plan and in Carswell's case, The End Of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy. Many and perhaps most 'Kippers will be familiar with these books and the ideas they contain but, if you are not, there is much to recommend them and much that the average UKIP activist would probably agree with.

After the recent furore over candidate selection and the activities of UNITE in the Falkirk constituency, both Carswell and Hannan have once again been touting their idea of Open Primaries for candidate selection, the central idea being that the candidate for a given party should be selected by the electorate of that constituency rather than just the party concerned.

However, open primaries are not one of their better ideas.

The main weakness of open primaries is that it seems to suggest that the only point of a political party is to win elections in the short term. In fact, like any institution, a primary responsibility is to be the custodian of the beliefs and ideals that formed it, even if these are currently deeply unpopular. Of course, over time the party would naturally wish to convince the electorate that it's beliefs are right, but it is not technically necessary for it to actually win a constituency in order to do so. For instance the Greens, and latterly UKIP, enormously changed the terms of the political debate prior to having any parliamentary representation.

The great risk of open primaries is that it would render the cultural memory and capital of a party redundant. Imagine, for example, the case of a strongly libertarian party within a deeply socialist constituency. Your ideas are currently profoundly unpopular with the electorate but you hope with hard work, debate  and tenacity that with time you will start to convince them otherwise. However, your parliamentary candidate is selected by an open primary. Naturally, the candidate from your party who would be most likely to win would the one who was the least in tune with your party's ideas but most in tune with the current thinking of the electorate. Thus your candidate is highly likely to be a bland centrist rather than a fire-breathing radical. The former stands a much better chance of being elected, but the latter has a much better chance of igniting and shifting the terms of debate. Furthermore, parties would be prey, even more so than they are today, to falling victim to careerist shysters who would use a party machine solely for the purpose of their own ambitions. There is also the further issue of the expense involved, which may favour wealthy candidates over poorer ones.

This, from afar, seems exactly what happens in the United States of America, where open primaries are commonplace. Politicians are mostly exceedingly rich people, seem virtually interchangeable between Republican and Democrat, and seem to practise "exquisite followship": every issue is polled to death before the candidate will make up their mind.

Many would say that is precisely the issue we have now in the UK, and they would be right, but that is because of the ruthless centralised control modern party hierarchies exercise over local constituencies. A much more ideal situation than open primaries is to leave a local party in power of candidate selection, with the central party authority only stepping in and overruling selection in extreme circumstances.

That said, Douglas Carswell still has some interesting ideas on party organisation that UKIP should look at stealing, before his own dozy party finally wakes up (and they will have to sooner or later, given how membership is in free fall). His central idea is to spotify party membership, where individuals sign up to all sorts of membership packages based on the policy portfolios they support. Here, he really is onto something - sooner or later parties will have to adapt to the internet age and social media and the concept of the diffuse network. Like all political parties, UKIP are currently wedded to the old model, something we should look at changing as a matter of urgency.