I'm standing for election to the Conservative Party Board as one of the Vice Presidents of the National Convention.
The National Convention is the representative body of every member of the Conservative Party, and members of the Convention (Association Chairmen (and Constituency Officers in Federations) and Area and Regional Officers) elect five of its number to be Officers, and to sit on the Party Board.
So why am I standing?
I wrote about my motivation for standing in Conservative Home and I'll publish videos about the main things I want to do:
- A fundamental, and comprehensive, review of the reasons for our defeat. The review should take its time lead to a clear action plan setting out what we will do as a result of its findings. It should be led by someone who can get underneath the skin of what went wrong – at every level
- The Party Board then needs to hold to account those responsible for delivery of the action plan, with clear targets and milestones against which to test progress
- As part of that, a whole-scale constitutional and governance review: the bedrock on which the Party is built. My background is in governance – so I know that getting governance right can pay dividends. It determines who has power to take what decisions, and where reference back is required.
- Redraw the balance between the three wings of our Party (voluntary, professional, parliamentary). None exist effectively without the others - volunteers need to be supported, for example, in fulfilling legal obligations that we cannot avoid, but without volunteers the party is nothing.
- We need to value our members, grow their number, significantly increase the proportion who are active in the Party – and focus their efforts effectively against what should be our only purpose: to elect as many Conservatives as possible to every level of government.
- We need to embrace all the potential digital tools that are available to reach voters, identify our audience and bring them back to us. It should be ‘digital first’ not as a secondary.
I've been endorsed by a number of people in our Party, and a selection of these endorsements are available here.
