The Conservatives were given a reality check today in the form of new Electoral Commission data on the financial health of political parties in 2017. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour managed to break previous records and raise just under £56m in a single year – beating the Conservatives by nearly £10m. Adding insult to injury, the Tories received more money from the dead (in the form of bequests) than from the (living) Tory grassroots, with income from membership fees nearly halved. Where Labour received £16.2m in membership fees last year, the Tories managed a paltry £835,000.
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Martin Narey
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This touches on a wider issue for the Conservative party: its relationship with the grassroots. This week William Hague warned that the Conservative Party mustn’t change the rules by which its leader is elected. He was tapping into concerns echoed among parts of Tory high command that the party could be vulnerable to a sudden influx of new recruits – ‘the very thing that happened to Labour in 2015’ – who would try to change the party’s direction of travel.
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