The Rock Blog

On Friday, I went to Cardiff for the evening. There was an event at the Yard in the Brewery
Quarter with Jonathan Evans MEP. I’d been fortunate enough to meet some of the Cardiff CF members at the Bristol Hustings and with a new Chairman at Cardiff University, Michael Foreman, I thought I should visit and meet up with some more members.

I haven’t been to Cardiff in about 6 years and it has changed a lot too. I still recognised the bars we celebrated Wolves’ promotion in(!) but it is obviously a city on the up. The same goes for the CF branches in South Wales, we have a tremendous amount of support amongst the under thirties and it was good to see former Area Chairmen still involved (Richard Minshull) and a mixture of working CF members and University students.

Had some interesting conversations and the Monkey with a Blue Rosette came up frequently. I must find out who that wee ape is…..!

Howay the lads! I seem to be heading back to all my old stomping grounds and an evening with the Newcastle Uni CF was not different! Starting at The Goose on Percy Street, we headed onto a couple of places I hadn’t been to before as Newcastle has changed quite a bit in the last six years.

The University association has always been strong and the present group are sound Tories! After a couple of personnel issues earlier in the term, Steven Bainbridge has really turned things around and, once again, the society is flourishing.

The thing I’ve enjoyed the most about travelling around the country is that I get to speak to normal Conservatives! Having lived and worked in the North East, I know how lonely it can be as a Tory and I commend the work the committee have put in for Newcastle Uni CF.

On Monday night I travelled up to Nottingham for the final hustings of the election. I feel hustings are a crucial part of the election process, and that is why I am the only Chairman candidate to have attended all the hustings.

The night went well, although I had no-one to directly compete with! We had two local PPC’s attend, Anna Soubry & Stephen Mold, which is always a good sign that CF is beginning to be recognised again.

With two excellent universtites in the area, Nottingham is a great place to build strong allegiances with fellow Conservatives and I think all the executive members over the past few years deserve credit. Patrick Sullivan obviously has a tremendous reputation in the area and was publicly supported by both Edward Keene and Hamish Stewart.

My badges were readily accepted by the audience so I think I must have done well enough!

I am a big fan of York as a city, having frequently visited there when I lived in Stockton. I went to the Pool Tournament hosted by York Uni’s Conservative association. Fortunately, I avoided competing in the tournament itself (I wouldn’t want to stand accused of losing on purpose to win votes!) but I did join in with the pool, darts and quiz machine!

Matthew Kilburn is continuing a fine tradition of strong membership at YUCA. I was please to see the group included students who were not yet full-blown Tories! We need to look beyond our conventional demographic if we are going to truly build momentum for the next election; YUCA are showing the way ahead!

I went to the Manchester Hustings on Friday, as did all the independent candidates. I cadged a lift with the Keele CF, who made up the majority of the audience. There was a surprising low turnout locally but David Bonner and Alex Law came down from Lancaster to bolster the numbers.

I thought I performed well and am looking forward to the Nottingham hustings, which will be the last of this election trail.

We went on for a curry after and headed home well debated and fed! It was good to hear that Manchester has an abundance of young councillors and some supportive associations.

I am heading back up north this weekend - visiting more branches & speaking at other hustings. I feel it is key to visit as many branches, and meet as many members as possible - see my map for where I have been so far!

I include below where I will be over the coming days - do come along and meet me if you can!

Friday - Manchester hustings
Saturday - Manchester & York
Sunday - Leeds
Monday - Nottingham hustings
Tuesday - Newcastle Upon Tyne

UPDATE: so far I have been to Newcastle, Hereford, Cheltenham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Blackpool, Lewes, Bournemouth, UCL, Kings, LSE, Imperial, Cities of London & Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Lancaster, Essex, Cambridge, Newcastle & Keele, Croydon, Tooting, Dudley, Birmingham, Stafford, Brentford & Isleworth, Harrow, Richmond, Watford, Kent, Manchester & Norwich. 

On Wednesday we saw the monthly Star Social, the monthly event from “CLWCF - The mother of the Conservative youth movement”, the speaker this month was Shaun Bailey, the PPC for Hammersmith. Shaun is obviously a sound Conservative but well grounded in the real world. It’s good to see a wider range of opinions being offered by Tory PPC’s and that we now can be confident enough to venture into non-traditional subjects.

I always try and go along as these are always great events. I am so impressed by how far this branch has come in only a few months. They are lucky: being only a few minutes from Parliament makes it very easy for them to get speakers. I know this in not the case for most branches around the country - this is why I believe a Speakers Panel to be crucial. We must use CF’s position in the Party to push for speakers for branches across the UK.

My first video message of the campaign is a review of my visit down to KUCA.

I had Sunday lunch in Norwich with CF members from across the area. U.E.A. provide a significant number of CF activists and I was pleased to hear how well integrated into the wider association the university branch is. Paul Wells has led the UEA Conservatives to unprecedented strength this year and they have two young PPC’s to really bolster support.

They are aggressively targetting Council seats too, with CF members standing and winning wards directly from Labour. Their approach is just the kind the knowledge we should be sharing across CF, to encourage and develop our organisation.

I went to help Ian Oakley out with a day of campaigning in Watford. It’s a three way marginal and as I may have mentioned before, my MP has encouraged me to help out in our neighbouring constituency.

My seat, South West Herts, is a solid seat so trying to build the wider Conservative base across our region is just as important as keeping our local voters in touch. Fortunately, David Gauke is a very popular MP so we can afford to help our ‘next door’.

I missed the lunch but I hear we had a good turnout from across the Herts and London, with the newly elected North West London Chairman, Oliver Cooper, shoring up the numbers.

After the last two hustings, it was hard to know what to expect: a respectful, attentive audience or a vocal, partisan audience. I think it was arguably a combination of both!

All the NME candidates were none affiliated and independent. Owen was his usual calm, collected self; Matt was honest, bright and earnest; Steve was passionate, heartfelt and British(!); Anastasia was brave, open and natural.

I think that Patrick Sullivan deserves a paragraph all to himself. I am sure many hundreds of Conservatives know Patrick. He has friends across the spectrum of the Party and CF and no doubt beyond. The speech Patrick gave tonight was possibly the bravest speech I have seen by an individual, young politician in my life. Patrick demonstrated everything I believe about internal politics: we should focus on the positives and not the negatives, we should aim higher,we should be better.

I have had tremendously positive feedback about my performance. As one person put it ‘a striking return to form’! I am happy that I can deliver my message and not only be complimented by my supporters but by people with commitments to other camps.

The evening had a positive, progressive tone that did all the candidates proud.

Ah, back to home turf once again! I love being a Midlander, no matter where I am in the Midlands I feel an affinity to the people and Birmingham is no exception. I used to go there frequently in my teenage years but it has changed tremendously. All for the best, of course!

I was pleased to be invited to the Edgbaston Conservatives’ Association’s Spring event, which had Alistair Burt MP as guest of honour. It was really interesting to hear the role he has taken on: encouraging a bottom up approach to the Party, involving more members, more councillors and trying to generate more of an interest at a local level.

Sounds familiar to me, I must check my copyright…

CUCA hold an annual trip to the Palaces of Westminster and for the third year running were hosted by the Younger Member’s Committee at the Carlton Club in the evening.

A tremendous turnout meant more people could hear the now infamous James Scott anecdote of his first trip to the club (I’ll leave it to him to regale you all!)

The beauty of the Carlton Club is a combination of many factors. Lord Cope, the Carlton’s Chairman, defines it as three things: the building, the members and the staff. I would go a step further and claim the heritage of the Club gives an enormous edge over any club in London and arguably the world: the Carlton Club is the spiritual home of the Conservative Party. The legacy the club has is second to none in terms of the events, discussions and influence that have taken place there and you can sense that in its atmosphere.

I hear a huge amount of CUCA students are very interested in joining the Club so it must have impressed them!

Lancaster has long been a source of popular, successful and progressive CF Chairman. Paul Bristow, Claire Hilley and James Bird have all demonstrated tremendous tenacity and drive in building branch numbers and motivating members.

I’m very pleased to say, David Bonner is continuing that tradition this year and keeping the Conservative flag flying high on the Lancaster campus. It was a real pleasure to spend the evening with the university branch, which included a talk by me, a Q&A session and a curry at the Spicy Hut. A night is always nicely rounded off by a curry, imho!

Sunday lunchtime saw me meet the Dorset CF, which has gone from strength to strength under the leadership of Paul Hughes. Paul has orchestrated campaigns against the Lib Dem councillors and has built the CF presence up from almost zero.

I absolutely love going to almost random towns and seeing all the great work that CF does. One of my main bugbears with CF is that we don’t promote all the tremendous work CF branches perform in their local areas enough. The achievements of every Branch and Area should be a source of pride, knowledge and confidence that we can achieve much more than we do at presence.

I talked through my proposals, which were very well received. The most obvious attraction for successful Area Chairman of my plans is that the effort they put in will actually be recognised nationally. We need to shift the focus of CF to listen to, learn from and better value the hard working CF members all across the country.

I’m becoming worryingly familiar with certain areas of Tooting! Another day leafletting was followed by the second hustings of the campaign trail.

Suffice to say the atmosphere for the hustings was somewhat ‘different’ form Bristol, which accounted for my less than perfect performance. I was actually disappointed by the behaviour of some individuals but, this being politics, I should have expected it.

More people contacted me to compliment on my performance than they did at Bristol. Apparently, I performed exceptionally well, under the circumstances. Onwards and upwards!

Thursday saw two conflicting events with both LSE and King’s holding events. I popped in to see Oliver Letwin standing strong against the LSE branch. The audience was not made up entirely of Tories and they all know there stuff - Letwin battled well and presented himself in a very good light. Chatted with Paul Church, the Chairman, about how he has built the society to be the largest at LSE (which is notoriously left wing) and about the range of events they’ve had this year.

Finished the night after-drinks with KCL CF. A great little branch that is growing stronger and stronger under Colin Moore’s leadership. They held a great event with Boris Johnson last year and have got Lord Tebbit doing a lunch on the 6th Feb.

I saw Lord Tebbit back in 2005 and know this will be a very interesting event. Lord Tebbit is undoubtedly one of the most impressive figures from Conservative Party history and still has a salience that is almost unsurpassed on many subjects.

Duncan Crossey and Alan Mendoza’s group, The Disraelian Union, hosted a dinner with Michael Howard as guest honour and speaker for the evening.

I am a enormous fan of Michael Howard: he was absolutely brilliant as Home Secretary in the 1990’s and arguably salvaged the Conservative Party during his leadership from electoral annihilation.

I met two more bloggers who I’m a fan of, Conservative Party Reptile (and Token Bird), and many familiar faces from within CF and the Party.

Polly Toynbee vs Iain Dale, with Damian Green chairing promised to be a polarised debate!

I think Iain Dale is a great media presence for the Conservative and conservative cause. It’s always interested to meet a blogger in the flesh and see how they translate into live debate. I think Iain’s style was particularly effective, as it is on his blog. I’m sure Polly pulled her punches on most of the issues: perhaps she guessed her opinions wouldn’t go down to well to a Tory audience!

The range of opinions from the floor was wide and searching. I’m always interested to hear the different strands of Conservative voters and commentators, I believe it can help you affirm your own opinions. I do get tremendously frustrated when we don’t take on the left with more vigour: nearly all the major answers over the past few decades have come from the right of centre perspective and in many ways it was disappointing that Polly wasn’t quite projecting the views DK so dearly loves!

The first hustings of the campaign trail was set up by Nick Webb and his team in Bristol. Although unofficial and therefore potentially rowdy, the audience were attentive, interested and inquisitive. Perhaps it was down to the stellar chairman performance of John Moorcraft…

I know all of the independent candidates and it was great to see Anastasia, Matt, Owen, Patrick and Steve there. Harry was still tied up with university work. Christian May was the only NME candidate from FT to attend. I think overall the standard and performance of the candidates was a credit to CF. I look forward to working with any of the candidates I have met so far.

I was pleased with my overall performance and have had many positive comments back from a range of people. Onwards and upwards!

It was great to meet representation from Cardiff and Bristol universities and, of course, the great team Nick has put together for the Bristol and Gloucester Area: I extend my thanks to Laura Rose Saunders, Nathan Cavin and Eleanor Downey.

Nick has does a great job of rejuvenating his Area and I’m glad to hear he is standing for the position again. The event was a pleasure to attend and I hope the audience got as much out of it as I did.