It is not an easy time to be a Conservative. No matter how many challenges and pratfalls Sir Keir Starmer may have encountered in his first months as prime minister, the Conservative Party is still reeling from its worst ever election defeat. It is facing real financial problems, and now The Sun’s political editor, Harry Cole, suggests that the party’s membership has fallen to only 125,000.
Party officials deny this figure. The real membership, they insist, is in fact higher than the 131,680 which was declared at the time of the leadership election last November. However, they will not provide a precise number of members or open the party’s internal records for any kind of public scrutiny.
By contrast, last December Reform UK’s website, which had been displaying a live count of the organisation’s membership, showed that the total had passed the most recent Conservative figure. It was a publicity coup for Reform’s leader Nigel Farage, and he invited selected new organisations to examine the website and its coding to demonstrate transparency. He also indicated he might agree to an independent audit of Reform’s records.
In the broader sense, whether Conservative membership is 125,000, or 135,000, or 150,000 is a minor issue. The underlying fact is that it is extremely small – and that should worry party chiefs. By contrast, at the end of 2023, the Labour Party had 370,000 members, and the Liberal Democrats 87,000; the latter total is likely to have risen since the party’s strong showing in the general election.
Optimists will say that party membership across the board has fallen enormously over the decades, and will recall with misty eyes the early 50s when the Conservative Party had nearly three million members and Labour at least a million. Autre temps, autre mœurs, but political parties are engaged in a comparative struggle as well as an absolute one.
The lesson to be drawn is that, whatever the exact figures, Labour has more than twice as many members as the Tories, Reform UK has overtaken them and the Liberal Democrats are less far behind than they should find comfortable.
Why does this matter? There are practical and presentational considerations. On the latter point, membership numbers are a form of bragging rights, a political virility contest. A successful party will attract a large membership, and a party attracting a large membership will appear to be successful. It may be a simplistic and circular argument, but, more and more with every passing year, politics is a battle for seconds-long snatches of public attention, and short, simple messages matter.
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Read MoreOn a more practical level, party members are an important source of revenue through their regular fees. Relegated to opposition and excluded from influence and patronage, the Conservative Party is struggling to make ends meet, and there have been reports of previously generous donors either reducing their contributions or being seduced by Reform UK.
A smaller membership base is another element of this straitened financial atmosphere, and has an effect on everything the party is able to do in terms of campaigns, publicity, research and policy development.
Party members also represent the traditional recruiting ground for candidates and activists. We are living in an increasingly digital world, but it would astonish many people how much all parties still rely on volunteers at election time to walk round constituencies, hand out leaflets and knock on doors. The ground war is important, and like any war it needs its infantry.
It is sometimes hard to remember that Kemi Badenoch has only been leader of the Conservative Party for 15 weeks. She has a lot to do, and a membership that is continuing to decline is a significant challenge. She and her advisers must not see it as some act of God, a piece of context within which they must do their best. The decline must first be arrested and then reversed.
People need a reason to join a group. For a political party as battered and discredited as the Tories, that means two things: they have to show an energetic dedication to holding the Government to account; and they must articulate a set of beliefs and policies which add up to a coherent and attractive vision of what the country could look like in the future.
At the moment Badenoch is being outpaced by Reform UK in absorbing and expressing what voters do not like and are angry about. That is the easier part of the process. What is more demanding, and is the metric on which not only she but the Conservatives as a party may sink or swim, is to offer an alternative. To rebuild the party’s hollowed-out ranks, Badenoch needs to give people a reason to become Conservatives.
Eliot Wilson is a writer, commentator and former clerk in the House of Commons from 2005 to 2016
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