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Why Are The Conservatives Losing Members?

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Kromovaracun | 20:49 Sun 01st Oct 2017 | News
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41459083

According to Eric Pickles, who is running the party's analysis of its election campaign, the Tory party "urgently" needs more activists.

While the Conservatives have not published their membership numbers since 2014 (when it was just shy of 150k), it is now estimated to be near 100,000 and falling.

Why is the Conservative Party losing members?
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because you walk in to sign up and you get confronted by some Colonel Blimp who tells you that you have to be interviewed by General Ivedonenuffink and, even if you get that far, you are completely put off by t(w)anker front man.
'And Guv, all I wanted wuz a game of snooker and I've been pretty gud on the ham-am stage at this waste of time.'
PMSL , get your tin hat on Kromo.
It may be as simple as natural wastage.

The broad demographic for socialism is younger people, and the demographic for conservatism is older people, who are dying off, and not being replaced.

This is due to an overall apathy towards politics, and the younger people who are being encouraged to participate, are being encouraged by The Labour Party.

In common with the church, The Conservative Party is so sure of its inherent 'rightness' that it really doesn't see the need to recruit new people, it assumes they will just appear, as they always have in the past.

It's a dangerous assumption - and as Mrs May knows to her cost, assuming things are going to happen can have really bad consequences.
My best guess about this is because they are not seen as relevant enough these days.

Lets face it....most supporters of both Labour and the Tories have always ben the same...they continue to support the Party that they always have done.

Nothing strange or wrong in that.

But every year, more voters appear on the scene, and increasingly, those first, or perhaps more accurately, brand new voters, see the Tories as yesterdays men.

There is a highly significant element in the BBC link above :::

"The Tory youth wing, Conservative Future, was taken over by the central party in 2015 after a bullying scandal, effectively shutting it down, although there are efforts to set up a Conservative version of Momentum"

Labour has had no such problems and that is why the Labour Membership has been soaring and the Tories has remained static, or actually gone down.

We need to realise what Party Membership means....it means more people on the street, more people knocking doors, and more people licking envelopes.....its a numbers game after all.

If it is natural wastage I hope for them it's not a harsh winter,
Charming.
Perhaps some people don't feel the need for endorsement or to be part of a gang. I never have - even in times long past when I voted for a Labour party that truly represented the working man.
The Conservatives policies are very hostile to the young, so no new members are coming along.
And lets face it, the last 7 years have been a shambles. Failure is not very appealing, and Cameron, Osborne and May have failed spectacularly. So long time members are not renewing.
I hear a lot of people bemoaning the lack of conservative policies.
Average age of Tory party members is 72, I believe
Well it's not £3.00 for starters, secondly there are man supporters like Naomi that dont see the need for membership. I too am no longer a member.

The Tories need to really worry when support dries up as that is what really counts, remember Middle England giveth and middle England taketh not the members.
//Cameron, Osborne and May have failed spectacularly//

Except tht Call me Dave did give th country the opportunity to choose it's destiny, something no other politician apart from UKIP would have allowed. I would not call that a failure. The other two you are on the right track.
bring back Saint Tony and the Psuedo Tories! PMSL!
They have - in the guise of May and Hammond.
I would say that the vast majority of conservative voters I know don't feel the need to be members of the party. And TBH my Labour friends don't either. Where are all these new Labour members and have they actually left the Conservative party to join Labour?

There is a lot of support for Labour because they offer caviar and champagne at milk and bread prices. What's not to like about that. I like the idea of that.

Won't vote for it in a million years though because of the fallout afterwards. It is the typical Now Now Now mentality. But that seems to be the way it is so perhaps as someone who looks at what the effect will be for my children and in the short term my retirement I am out of step.
Rather like cassa. There's an add-on. I only voted Tory last election to ensure Brexit; right now it appears that they are Quislings on it. The only political organisation to which I have donated in the last few years is Leave.UK.
I wouldn't join any political party, given the current shower. About 1977-ish I joined the Tories for 1 year.
Teresa May might be the problem
The Conference season is usually very disappointing for lefties. For 10 years the left have suffered woeful performances from Brown an Milliband, and last years self destruction at the hands of the hated Blairites didn't help.

A flukey general election result later, and everything has changed. The Tories are in disarry, and Labour are on the ascendancy.

And the Guardian are revelling in it. Today I have liked their writing on Hammonds's speech, and Boris jogging with the Editor of the 'Sun'.

// // S
ometimes you just have to take one for the team. The chancellor has a strong track record in delivering underwhelming speeches, but this year he was determined to excel himself. It was his duty. Not just to be averagely feeble but to be truly desperate. To make a speech that was so leaden, so empty of content, so lacking in hope that even the prime minister’s harshest critics would come away thinking she might possibly have done a better job. Right now she needed all the help she could get. //

// Why are they running and where are they going? Like naked mole rats scurrying endlessly in a plastic burrow, foreign secretary Boris Johnson and the Sun editor Tony Gallagher are photographed together. They’re seemingly in the belief that the Conservative party and its media allies have a destination, somewhere to get to, something urgent to do – other than wait for the tide of history to engulf them. //

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/02/picture-boris-johnson-tony-gallagher-running

Great stuff.
Theresa May, despite earlier in the year having mistakenly given the British public credit for common sense that it doesn’t deserve, has a more difficult job than any peacetime Prime Minister that has gone before. A lesser person would have crumpled under all the criticism, justified or unjustified, that she is receiving. I admire her strength and I admire her tenacity.

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