Brian Jenner was a Tory in Bournemouth and a leading contributor to the Concervativehome.com site until his recent defection to Labour. He is a professional speechwriter and a man of considerable erudition so his scathing comments about Blulabour are eminently quotable.

The Speechwriter: July 2007

Originally Posted by :

Ten Reasons Why People Hate Tories and Don’t Vote For Them (With Good Reason)

I used to be a member of the Conservative Party in Bournemouth West, Bournemouth East and Cities of London and Westminster. It pains me to see the state of their organisation. After the Ealing by-election result I was moved to write a note as an ‘honest friend’ to my former colleagues, explaining why, I think, they languish so low.

1) Bad Manners
Call 01202 776607 out of office hours. You can learn almost everything you need to know about what’s wrong with the Conservative Party by listening to this answerphone message.

2) You are the Message and You’re Not Convincing
David Cameron says how much he loves his family. If a man has young children, he has a choice between his ambition and his family. David Cameron chose his ambition, as did Margaret Thatcher. She had regrets, and he will, too. If he wants to trumpet the family, he should take a more junior position until such time as his children have grown up.

3) You Couldn’t Organise a **** Up in a Brewery
A couple of weeks ago I sent some ideas to the new Chairman of the Conservative Party, Caroline Spelman, about how to involve local people in politics. She sent me a short letter back saying that they did need to fund ideas like mine, and they were covered in the new Stand Up Speak Up website, which she was sending me information about.
That’s fine. But the point of my plan was that it didn’t need funding and she didn’t enclose any information.
You are judged by everything you do: coffee mornings, election campaigns, responses to letters, the questions asked by MPs in PMQs, the Private Members Bills. It all matters and it’s all still very wrong.

4) Nobody Listens
The extraordinary thing about the Conservative predicament is that after ten years in the wilderness, the MPs still think they’ve got all the answers. David Cameron has an impossible job. If I was him, I would get Central Office to get the email of every person who writes a derogatory comment on ConservativeHome, and then invite them all to a public meeting in a huge hall. You’d be amazed at how they’d shut up if they were made to feel important.

5) You Are Stupid
Three times the Conservative Party was given the choice: maintain your world view or appeal to the electorate. Three times you chose to hold on to your world view. Ken Clarke could have been leader, and the Cameroons could have done all the work. That would have been a happier result, and still may be the solution.

6) You Don’t Listen to Your Own Feelings
I think I’m a sane person and in my experience you only need to sit in a room for half an hour with members of the Conservative Party before you start feeling apoplectic rage. I have many acquaintances who have worked incredibly hard in recent elections. However hard they work, it makes no difference. To quote Geoffrey Howe, “It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”

7) You Ignore People With Energy
I was amazed to see that the Cameroons don’t like ConservativeHome. A fundamental principle of Conservative values is that you go where the energy is. Authority is there to reward people who do things, not clip their wings.

8) You Don’t Realise How Much People Hate You
Politics is a very important pastime. When I chose to identify myself with the Conservative Party, I became aware that people who I liked and respected thought less of me for being involved with them. To make progress you often have to renounce things. Serious thought has to be given to a name change.

9) What Do You Bring to the Party?
To qualify as a councillor or an MP, you have to be a loyal party member. But what use is loyalty to the organisation if you have no talent? There are too many people in the organisation who treat politics as a job. It suits the Party to recruit people who need the money, because it means they won’t cause trouble. There has to be scope for conviction and flair.

10) You Don’t Love People
Politics is a quasi-spiritual activity. There are few joys greater than recruiting people to a cause, coming together and changing things. But to do that, it can’t be about you, it has to be about them. The Conservative Party is exactly where it deserves to be.

[Rep]

A name change is vital but no-one will have the guts to do it for if it fails they will be castigated for ever more.

A better strategy is for a new party representing the hard working honest Britains (UK Popdems and Popular Alliance) to emerge and draw the traditional tories over to them. Then the Conservative Party can die gracefully.
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No time for Cameron, but this Jenner guy sounds like a buffoon.
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Why did he (Mr. Jenner - referred to in the first posting to this thread) join Labour? Half of Conservatives gave UKIP as their second preference (in a survey carried out at Conservative Home) with the other half opting for other parties or none.

There will be some in the Conservative Party who will be saying that anyone who defects from their party to Labour possibly should not have been in the Conservative Party in the first place.
[Rep]

Originally Posted by Britannist:
Why did he (Mr. Jenner - referred to in the first posting to this thread) join Labour? Half of Conservatives gave UKIP as their second preference (in a survey carried out at Conservative Home) with the other half opting for other parties or none.

There will be some in the Conservative Party who will be saying that anyone who defects from their party to Labour possibly should not have been in the Conservative Party in the first place.

He sounds very bitter to me and in need of some medication if he thinks Gordon Brown will lead him to utopia.
[Rep]

His article explaining his reasons for leaving the Conservative Party and joining Labour is rather long - I wonder how many people get to the end of it.
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