The Conservatives have just launched a big recruitment campaign, which includes many policy posts in CCHQ. This is good news. A month ago Tim Montgomerie raised concerns that the Tory Party was not giving enough thought to its own agenda or how the Conservatives will position themselves at the next election. Running a government and running for office are different activities that call for different skills. The risk of not having an effective party machine is that we stagnate, thus allow other parties, including the Lib Dems, to gain momentum before polling day. Hopefully the re-staffing of CCHQ will address the risk.

The job that most caught my eye* was Social Action Manager . The biggest problem for me in the 2010 Election was that the Big Society message was disconnected from those who were delivering it. Cameron’s centrepiece theme was rendered almost meaningless because the words were not backed-up with action. Big Society is ultimately about the ‘doing’. Many activists did not understand the idea because they had never been asked to participate in local projects, thus they couldn’t sell ‘Big Society’ to a sound bite weary public. In the 2015 election us Tories can’t just be the Party of the Big Society idea, we must practice what we preach and become a Big Society organisation.

The Social Action Manager will attempt to forge links with the not-for-profit sector and encourage constituency associations, local councillors and candidates to engage in Big Society activities. Unlike in the US, we Brits tend to be cautious about mixing politics with other activities. This attitude has helped to disenfranchise people, especially the young, from political parties. It is a lot more satisfying to put your efforts into a specialised pressure group where you can focus on achieving a specific good, compared to delivering leaflets or attending ‘talking-shop’ branch meetings.

Volunteering is often a fun, rewarding, educational and social activity. Politics in action reminds people why we need politicians and why it’s important to campaign to get good ones elected. The Social Action Manager, with the support of Baroness Warsi, should aim to redefine what being a Tory foot soldier means.

* Dear readers, if you decide to apply, please mention me on the application form so I can demand a generous headhunters’ fee from CCHQ…`

“Big Society” as a campaign idea did not gain much traction during the election campaign, I think for a number of reasons. It’s a big idea, trying to solve complex problems. It is not a vacuous soundbite that politicians dressed up in the clothes of serious theory, like for example New Labour’s “Third Way” pitch in 1997. “Big Society” pools together ideas and practical experiences of social civic thinkers and doers. This made it harder to sell on the door step, or in press conferences, but on the flip side it lays solid foundations for transformative government.

Another electoral problem was that the “Big Society” concept is not yet fully formed. The problems that need addressing, such as the existence of communities of the defeated, are clear and numerous. The utopian destination of facilitating respect through giving everyone the power to have a meaningful impact on their surroundings is agreeable to all. What is still fuzzy is the journey that needs to be travelled from the current directive state to the land of an enabling government. Implementing “Big Society” involves tough choices, including embracing the risk of failure, and challenging some powerful vested interests. In many ways the concept cannot be fully formed until ideas around empowering communities are enacted because fundamentally the “Big Society” idea should be driven by the experiences of those on the ground.

Lord Wei is one of the auteurs of “Big Society” ideas. He is someone worth following as the Coalition government, and ultimately we, commence the “Big Society” journey. If you are curious about this subject I recommend you read his maiden speech to the House of Lords. I have picked out some highlights below.

“On another level, the big society describes a set of policies to give more powers to people closer to where they live, to help increase the capacity and resources of civil society to take up such powers, and to encourage a sense of collective progress and momentum since it can be hard to “bowl alone”.”

“… at the heart of this debate, in my humble opinion, is not just what civil society thinks social policy should be or even what government pronounces, but a collective and very British constitutional negotiation of a partnership for the 21st century that values and combines not just the seabed, the bedrock of our public services-to protect the vulnerable-but the coral represented by the many current and future providers of those services that add variety and innovation and humanity to their delivery. Last but not least it is the very fish that feed in these waters, the local citizen groups that can extend, vivify and shape this landscape in ambitious as well as humble ways. No single part of this ecosystem can or should dominate, but by working well together each comes to form a whole that is often more than the sum of its parts.”

“There will be challenges in realising such a partnership, as many attempts to forge it before have shown both here and abroad. I list a few of the possible risks: unclear goals leading to a dissipation of effort; a lack of even a moderate amount of resource to empower scalable citizen responses; institutional resistance to the change this approach entails; the capture of new powers by vested interests that are so off-putting to the apolitical citizen; and apathy or a lack of critical mass.”

Yesterday I was in techno-political geek heaven. The Personal Democracy Forum, with the help of Onalytica, had organised ‘General Election Replay’. The e-glitterati panel which had been assembled were ready to be grilled in Question Time style.

It quickly became apparent that the question of whether this was an ‘internet election’ is a redundant one. The internet is a part of the fabric of our society. It is a tool that is inextricably intertwined with the work that politicians and journalists do. As Mark Pack pointed out, if the internet had suddenly disappeared half-way through the election everyone would have had to completely rethink how they operated.

The Conservatives and Labour had two very different approaches to the technological side of campaigning. Craig Elder told us how the Conservatives e-strategy was decide upon over two years ago. It was based on creating a website that was policy-based and easy to navigate. The goal was for floating voters to be directed towards information that CCHQ wanted them to see. This involved buying space on Youtube’s front page and enabling targetted search engine results. If you were looking for political information during April it is more likely than not that you would have come across Tory-friendly messages. Labour, as Mark Hanson explained, concentrated on energising and organising their base. The internet is a place where people gravitate towards themselves. By exploiting this, Labour managed to mobilise activists then target them at key seats. Compared to 2005, Labour employed one-third the number of staff but had three times the amount of activists.

E-influencing is about the size of the network times the power and tools inside the network. If these three parts are not aligned any impact will be significantly lessened. The Lib Dems did not have the capacity to take advantage of the surge in interest that Nick Clegg generated post TV-debate. Onalytica’s research showed that while the buzz around Clegg himself increased rapidly after the first debate the noise around his party was static. If only they had had an equivalent to Myconservatives. This was an impressive tool but unfortunately for the Tories there was no power/buzz to make it the game changer it could have been.

Twitter created the most heated part of the debate. Samuel Coates described Twitter as a giant echo chamber, which generated a huge amount of heat but not a lot of light. While this is spot-on those who think it proves the futility of tweeting have missed the point that Twitter’s power is derived from this analysis. Energising your base and channelling its power is a crucial part of election strategy. This is how Obama successfully used social media; to enthuse then direct supporters. During the campaign I downloaded both parties I-Phone apps. The Conservative one gave me useful information while the Labour app asked me to join in. It had a local news and local events section which encouraged supporters to spread targeted messages to applicable audiences.

Twitter has made spinning a naked art. In Harry Cole’s view twitter gave the parties an extra thousand spinners. Mick Fealty rightly pointed out Twitter radically changed how spinning works. For example, I follow Alastair Campbell. During the leaders debate he tweeted the prepared line that while Brown was losing on style he was wining on substance. Forget the spin room or political operators having a word in correspondences ears; Campbell was directly spinning at me. Both Toryites and Labourites do do their master’s spinning but it is completely transparent that you are being fed biased views. If you are on Twitter and want to get a flavour of the grassroots debate, but don’t want to follow thousands, I can highly recommend @HouseofTwits. It is the best grassroots political aggregator out there.

What about the future? Joe Trippi believes we will end up in a place where it will be impossible to control information. I think we are already half-way there. Anthony Painter suspects that the Internet and social media are helping to create a much more fragmented electorate. If progressive politics is about engagement then the tools we have today make interaction so much easier. Stella Creasey, Labour MP, kept making the strong point that it is not about the forums you use but how you use them. In some ways the Labour Party has a more natural fit with social media. It has always seen itself as a movement and the internet is a Darwinian battle of competing movements all trying to get the maximum momentum. Will Labour be able to regenerate itself through e-debate or will this easier interaction allow the loud shouting loons to dominate sensible instincts? We shall see.

From the coalition government’s perspective how will social media allow supporters to interact with this new politics? On Tuesday politics changed but how we have the political conversation has yet to catch-up.

All the parties had e-successes and e-failures, which I’m sure they all learnt from. This will undoubtedly help to advance e-campaigning BUT if the next election is in five years it is probable that the influential platforms of 2015 have yet to be invented.

When assured by a parliamentary colleague that a properly led Liberal-Conservative party was guaranteed his vote, Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald exclaimed, ‘Anybody may support me when I am right.  What I want is a man that will support me when I am wrong.’

David Cameron may be harbouring similar thoughts as the general election draws nigh.  Will dissenting party members and former voters come out to the polls in support of his Conservative parliamentary candidates?

The Conservative party has long been a mix of laisser-faire, limited-government adherents and advocates of Disraeli’s One Nation Toryism, for whom State action on behalf of the least advantaged is a virtue.  But this complementary composition—around which most fault-lines lie—broke down completely following the 1997 defeat, with each faction distrustful and suspicious of the other.

Life in the political wilderness has had a sobering effect, however, and in the end, the Conservative ‘appetite for power’—in John Ramsden’s felicitous phrase—triumphed over tribal rivalries.

Cameron won the leadership based on his charisma and promise to heal old wounds, campaigning to reconcile the country with his progressive conservative programme. (Commentators often write of his efforts to ‘detoxify’ the party, but that seems too harsh, given that the putative toxic Thatcherite economic policy was the partial platform upon which Tony Blair’s New Labour won the trust of the British electorate.  Cameron’s objective was to address the social concerns Britons felt were unappreciated, and has done so with his pledge to fix the ‘broken society’. )

By-and-large the rifts were soothed and the Conservatives have faced this election as a united party.  Yet the last two years of economic recession and uncertainly about how to bring about recovery have occasioned a simmering disgruntlement.

The MPs’ expenses scandal, which left no party unscathed, has added to the unrest:  critics argue that in view of the appalling record of the Labour Government, Conservative fortunes ought to have soared.  That they have not is cause for muted enthusiasm and second-guessing of the party’s performance.

But if Marc Anthony did not come to praise but to bury Caesar, my inverted purpose is not to cast aspersions upon the Conservative party, but to acknowledge the lay of the land and to look to the future.

‘The complaints of a friend are things very different from the invectives of an enemy,’ wrote Edmund Burke.  ‘It is our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects, or to cast them into the shade, and industriously to bring forward any good qualities that he may happen to possess.’

Though the conservative-minded voter may likewise have legitimate complaints with the Conservative party—for what honest political organisation can be all things to all citizens?—the point at issue is not personal pique, but the national well-being, and whether other contesting parties, with the potential to form government, can advance a conservative agenda.

·         If this voter ridicules the Conservative deficit-cutting timetable and its programme for promoting economic health and prosperity, do either Labour or the Liberal Democrats offer a path toward financial salvation?

·         If this voter is exasperated with the Conservative posture toward Europe—as too obsequious,  or insufficiently accommodating, or just plain unintelligible—what can be said in defence of parties that seek greater European integration, adoption of the euro, and a blurring of British sovereignty?

·         If this voter laments irreverent Conservative attitudes toward time-honoured constitutional conventions (plans for House of Lords reform comes readily to mind), what can be said in favour of changes which include the Alternative Vote and Proportional Representation?

No doubt this list could be lengthened, but to no purpose.  Omitted are those Conservative proposals around which there is general consensus:  decentralisation of power from Whitehall; returning autonomy to individuals and their communities; making cherished public services accountable and cost-effective, whether in education or the National Health Service; and rebalancing the roles of MPs in Westminster with the constituents they serve.

Suffice it to ask that, for each article of perceived failing in the Conservative party outline for office, whether or not any possible alternative government can do better or, indeed, does it threaten more of the same and worse.

This is the question before the friends of Conservatism; as for Burke, he knew when it necessary to rally round his allies.  Only when the danger had passed was it well to seek amendment:

When his safety is effectually provided for, it then becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults and vices with all the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them in their most vivid colours, and to bring the moral patient to a better habit.  Thus I think with regards to individuals; thus I think with regard to antient and respected governments and order of men.

Such recourse can be had when the election has passed, when there is ample opportunity and the hope of restored trust to effect the amelioration of shortcomings within a Conservative government.  But now is not the time.

Now is the time for all good Conservatives to come to the aid of the party…

Stephen MacLean’s research website is focussed on Organic Toryism

What was the most important political event of last week? Was it the volcanic ash sponsored travel chaos? Was it Cleggmania? Was it the Sky News debate? For me the event which will have most impact on Election 2010 was the release of a slew of economic data showing the recovery to be finely balanced.

Inflation rose from 3% in February to 3.4%. The Retail Price Index rose to 4.4%. The consequence of this is that most of us are becoming poorer. The British economy only grew by 0.2%, making it unlikely that there will be many inflation-matching pay rises in the near future. None of this may be as televisually exciting as exploding volcanoes or beautiful Liberals but when it comes to deciding elections I am with Bill Clinton; “It’s the economy stupid”. 

Gordon Brown has tried to claim the economic agenda as his own. His tactic has half-worked in the sense that people are unsure whether the Conservatives have the ability to make the correct economic judgements. Brown’s tactic has not worked in convincing most voters that he is our economic saviour. We know who is responsible for this mess, and it’s not just far-away foreign bankers. 

At the moment we seem to be heading towards the very un-British state of affairs of having a hung Parliament. The British public are not convinced that Labour or the Conservatives deserve a mandate. The rise in Lib Dem support is – almost certainly – not due to their policies. It is a protest against two parties of government. Nick Clegg won the first debate because he stood to the side and then channelled the anger of everyman against the political elite. 

The good news for the Conservatives is that the election is there to be won, but it’s going to take a big performance to seal the deal. This performance may happen on Thursday as the topic of the final TV debate is the economy. Whoever wins the BBC debate will have almost unstoppable momentum going into polling day. 

How should the Tories take advantage of this situation? Firstly, the tone needs to be right. No-one ever won a popularity contest by talking about an ‘age of austerity’. The electorate wants solutions that give them hope. Most people I speak to logically understand that some cuts are necessary but emotionally wish this were not the case. Cameron has to convince the undecided that he is an expert pruner. Every act, including cuts, will be done carefully and to ensure that British society emerges stronger.  

Secondly, Gordon Brown should be held to account for the mess he has created. Labour is trying to promote the myth that he is a great economic decision-maker who saved us from Credit Crunch meltdown. If the public believed this Labour would be ahead in the polls. The incompetence of his decision-making is there to be exposed.  His beliefs, such as that increasing NI tax will get money into the economy rather than take money from it, show that he is not the right person to lead a recovery. 

Thirdly, David Cameron needs to offer simple, realistic solutions that will create positive outcomes. He is part of the overwhelming majority of public opinion in stating that improving our economic situation is the Conservatives’ domestic priority. Cameron needs to invest himself in leading the economic recovery by ensuring that people know he will personally be on top of the subject. The Conservatives also need to talk about how the economic collapse hurts the poorest and most vulnerable in our society and how their proposed solutions will help these groups. 

Fourthly, the economy needs to be the main focus for the rest of the campaign. I am a great fan of the Conservative manifesto. I agree with Jonty Olliff-Cooper when he says that it makes him mad that the Conservatives are caricatured as having no substance. The Big Society and PBAge ideas are the biggest governing ideas a party has come up with since the 70s and they truly excite me. But we are political geeks. My girlfriend describes me as niche-normal, which is a lovely way of saying abnormal. Its not politicians, and assorted geeks, who pick what elections are about. It is the voters.  

When the Tories were well ahead in the polls there was a dangerous assumption that they would win the election. This is no longer the case. The British electorate are there to be won over, as long as we do it on their terms.