Lee Rotherham: Is what the party is looking for in candidates exactly what the party needs?

Dr Lee Rotherham has twice been a Conservative parliamentary candidate, three times a council one, and is a good governance campaigner.

In old East Germany, radio sets were sold with black columns blanking out spaces where verboten western radio stations sat. The idea was that if you got caught tuned into one at home, the state instantly knew you were a wrong ‘un.

An example sits in an office on the top floor of the Stasi Museum, formerly their headquarters.

Should a similar level of constraint be applied by the Conservative Party as it seeks to reforge itself?

We learn that a review of the candidates process is under way, part of which is to ensure that those selected are actually, well, Conservative. The given requirement is that they “have a fully rounded and well-developed philosophy of what it means to be a principled Conservative”. The unspoken objective is to avoid recruiting liberal democrats pursuing personal advancement that they couldn’t get honestly on that party’s ticket.

Some recent articles have convincingly argued that a specific list of policies is needed to fix ‘broken Britain’. These embrace a credo of chasing change and locking in reform, rather than shrugging shoulders or kowtowing to the latest fad. The can-do aggression is as important as the beliefs.

The criteria are still being locked down, but how puritanical should the Party be in ensuring their candidates match them? As a test example, clearly George Galloway shouldn’t be allowed to stand as a Conservative PPC (not that he’d want to) so the principle itself is sound. Evidently the sift will also fall massively short of a Sullan proscription.

So where in between is the right level?

It’s worth remembering that the Conservative Party has not always been generously ecumenical.

The ‘broad church’ idea is a bit of a myth, particularly when the Right was not the dominant force. Ted Heath’s Central Office openly told candidates opposed to EEC entry they should not expect to get a seat. Problems for Wets in the Thatcher years came rather from local associations; but come Cameron’s time we see the notorious A Lists both official and unstated, the squeezing out of Thatcherites too lumpen to grace Tatler, the preferential advancement of Cameroons, and contempt for any objecting grassroots “Turnip Taliban”.

The favouritism illicitly survived Cameron.

Because a wrong has happened it is never of itself a recommendation for visiting like for like in return. Equanimity though has its limits. Elizabeth I had a celebrated aversion to “Peering into men’s souls”, yet she also didn’t appoint them to her Council if she knew their loyalties were shallow.

Here’s the blunt fact of it. The Party is currently beached in the political centre, and anyone suggesting otherwise will at least concede that it is so perceived by the broad public. As such it still shoulders the heavy guilt of unredeemed manifesto pledges. It has withered, and if the Party does not now swing robustly and ostentatiously Rightwards at the next election it will die.

Meanwhile those suggesting that Conservatism has never per se had a doctrine (Thatcherism or Selsdon Man notwithstanding) ignore the need for one now, even if it is merely the fissile ambition of generating a Big Fix through a Great Reform Bill whose broad content is already predictable to any thinking person.

That does then requires careful sifting of potential candidates, to thresh the Cowley Street rejects and winnow the wind-driven chaff. If it does not entail an encompassing auto-da-fé, and is not a question of forcing homogeneity, then it becomes rather a matter of finding a way to better reveal the individual.

Anyone who has been on the Candidates List for any length of time (and I am a challenger for the record) knows that associations are after different qualities, personalities, backgrounds and priorities from their PPC. If associations want to pick someone who espouses unambiguously Butlerian or Heathite views, let them. That’s local democracy.

But give the selectors the full, honest, unvarnished picture from the outset. The way selection currently takes place enables people to hide their true views until after they are entrenched. Yet it is card sharkery to enter politics hiding deep convictions opposite to those you profess; charlatanry to seek high office masking what you would do when handed a red box; deception to pretend to be of a particular mind when in a political crisis you would deliver the opposite.

So I would suggest two particular tools also offer themselves – vastly greater transparency, and a regeneration of hands-on training.

Let’s begin with transparency.

Potential candidates typically set up their own little website, with butterscotch photos showing some snapshot of campaigning and some ankle-deep statements of belief. This tells you nothing. But a common intranet section which allows every candidate to evidence their views to association members through links to articles, speeches, participation in events and history of activism, plus statements of support from backers who know them personally, would go some way to assaying their genuine belief system. Candidates could opt out, and quite properly so if they are in politically-reserved jobs. But such a mechanism would bring greater honesty and openness as well as encourage their further public engagement. Subject to legal caveats, there are good reasons to also make it interactive.

The second gap is over training, useful as much for what is taught as for the opportunity to gauge one’s peers. There used to be Conservative training colleges. Overstone Hall in Northants (1923-9) was not a success. It was supplanted by Ashridge College (1929-54), originally reorientated as a counter to the Fabians, and usefully coinciding with the creation of a Right Book Club set up by a founder of Foyles. Swinton College (1948-74) then took over, training 54,000 activists in courses covering policy, campaigning and history, creating a nucleus of knowledge in each association. By the 1970s think tanks were coming into their own – and importantly were more attuned to delivering policy on how to effect radical change – so the age of the college was over.

We can leave the background on all this to the Conservative History Group, who will be far better versed. But it does seem that today’s online training is rather ersatz, despite the IT sorcerers making the best of it. Moreover there is now too much of a gap between the think tanks and many activists and even councillors, notwithstanding several excellent initiatives by the former.

I believe there is room for important activity by the Party itself here, especially by it engaging as a bridge through policy discussion weekends in nice places that people would want to go to. I did once line up sponsored distribution of a book exploring socialism and wokery to all PPCs via the Candidates Office, which came a cropper when a general election was called the following Monday; and on another occasion free distribution of a think tanks wall map which became unstuck when the consenting Party Chairman was replaced a week later. Curse of Rotherham aside, these examples show there’s no reason why better engagement shouldn’t happen and in different forms.

I am reticent to deploy the term, but the East German radio example compels: the Conservative Party today faces its own Vergangenheitsbewältigung – the struggle of modern Germans to overcome their past.

The party needs not just to adapt, but to show itself in revolution. It needs operatives fired up to cure our nation’s ailments, rather than spokesmen for managed decline. It needs more from its candidates that simple proof of life; it needs proof of fire.