Monday, November 17, 2008
What Has the CDU Got Which The Tories Haven't?
Perhaps Caroline Spelman should send someone to CDU Headquaters in Berlin (hint: I speak the lingo :) to learn how they are managing to increase party membership. In August and September they reported a rise in membership for the first time in years and have now overtaken the SPD as the country's biggest party. The CDU now has 530,533 members, more than double the number the British Conservative Party has.
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32 comments:
The Haff ways of making you join!!!!
That's all very well, but DC et al. need to wrest back the narrative. Campbell and Mandelson are running rings round them.
What do they have? Well, don't quote me but a population 50% larger than Britain's MAY have something to do with it...
is there nothing this man will not do to get a free lunch and 'jolly'?
Q: "What Has the CDU Got Which The Tories Haven't?"
A: The Euro
They have a link to a regional party - the CSU. And later this week the Tories will more than likely have the same. Not too great on the cause and effect there, but a literal answer nonetheless.
Unemployment,Oppressive outside political interference, Political Party, Germany???????
I take it history isn't one of your strong points Iain
A sense of direction?
Perhaps it costs less than a whopping £25.
"They have a link to a regional party - the CSU. And later this week the Tories will more than likely have the same."
please elaborate?
I suspect one of their advantages is not having a party chairman under investigation for being on the take. Why hasn't Spelman resigned while clearing her name?
They have policies, they have power, they have as King Lear suggests, a hold on the narrative.
Cameron has none of the above. And a pretty shoddy team of part timers to offer the Great British public.
No longer anon.
I refer to the following meeting. Culmination of talks between the Tories and Ulster Unionists.
I think it would be down to population (35% bigger than the UK), control at the national level, and perhaps more members joining due to the first women/East German chancellor. As well, when you look at the state level, the CDU are in control, or in coalition, in 13 of the 16 German state governments (not Berlin, Bremen or Rhineland-Palintate).
They have a moderate sensible leader with appeal outside the traditional party enthusiasts. They also are the government, with about the same support as the tories have.
Also being in a grand coalition everything they can't do gets blaimed on the SPD coalition partners. Also the growth of the left (Links) pro communism party might be influential
Also the bader-meinhof film has been launched and was at that oint being hyped, nothing like communist radicals executing business people and killing civilians to make people thankful for conservative sensibilities!
While I largely agree with Chris "Underpants" Paul, I hardly think Labour's team of shoddy full-timers are anything to crow about.
Um, what exactly is membership? Pay one-off fee? Annual fee? And what do you get in return for membership?
Where to start
Competance
Actual Policies
Credibility
Not seen as an elitist organisation
Politicians that have actually had some experience in life.
Actual policies
Solid not slick
Connected to the voters through the Lander system
Not voting for wars we should not be involved in
Actual policies
I could go on
Germany has a more intelligent, better educated population who are more likely to be interested in politics. They don't have a large constituency of fifth columnists dedicated to dumbing down the culture, the education system and national debate.
They can't still be interviewing the Spelman nanny, surely?
If the Tories want more of us to join the Conservative party, a good start would be to have clearly discernible policies that people with a conservative view of the world could recognise and would, literally sign up to.
As it stands, you couldn't get a rizzla paper between labour and the Tories on the biggies like Europe, health, big state, education, immigration, public sector waste ...
And before anyone starts spouting that there's a world of difference in key areas, I'd point out that it's one thing for Cameron and his team to pontificate, fulminate and rant and rave about labour's policies, it's quite another to actually formalise these policy differences and commit to making early and substantial changes if elected.
A good example is the lisbon treaty. Does anyone really know what cameron would do if elected? If the treaty is passed into law by brown, will the Tories repeal it when in power? Will they hold a referendum if it hasn't become law by the time they get into power? I've no idea and I'm sure most of the electorate don't have a clue either. The same goes for most of the big policy areas.
On ID cards, at one point Cameron and DD were saying to the companies bidding to build this monstrosity, that, if the Tories came to power, they'd scrap the system, no matter what stage the project was at. Are the Tories still saying that? If they are, they're not saying loudly.
If Cameron is not careful, the electorate will take a "better the devil you know" attitude in May 2009.
Do they have an economic policy by any chance?
Tory membership is expensive.
Who is Caroline Spellman?
A Conservative member wonders.
Q. What Has the CDU Got Which The Tories Haven't?
A. Angela Merkel.
"Germany has a more intelligent, better educated population who are more likely to be interested in politics."
I disagree - the UK is traditionally less pro-state than Germany so fewer people want to get involved. Apathy on the British right just a symptom of its politics - a dislike of the authorities.
Plus: there's a whole load of rural, conservative Germans who join the CDU as a social/religious/cultural association. I think German conservativism is more about identity politics than over here.
There's other centre-right parties that have recently ousted leftist governments - take New Zealand as a good example. Maybe they can give the Conservatives some constructive advice.
Ich kann auch Deutsch, sprechen!
100% agree with Colin & Kinglear.
The Tories have lost control of the narrative through sheer incompetence and amateurism in managing the media, (plus some dubious holiday friendships).
The other problem is that when one joins the Tories, one automatically get placed on a government blacklist.
"Perhaps Caroline Spelman should send someone to CDU Headquaters in Berlin"
Her nanny, perhaps? as long as she was given plenty of spending money!
A few people here are making predictable jokes about the Germans, but their recent track record on civil libs has been quite a bit better than ours. An ID database on the scale of ours was rejected out of hand. (And yes, I know they already have ID cards, but only with basic info, and no centralised database.)
Then there's the Autobahn!
Shame most of the comments have been about policy etc. The party organisation always comes a poor second, and it is a complete shambles - it needs root and branch reform. Despite fine words from leadership candidates in the past, the party nationally continues to do nothing - everything suggests it doesn't understand the role members and volunteers have, or the multitude or reasons why they get involved in the party - only the pressganged [wannabee] parliamentary candidates are given any encouragement to campaign locally. Check out the lack of content on www.campaigntogether.com for example. The party nationally really doesn't seem to care that a huge resource is underutilised, we are therefore rubbish at getting on board good local Council candidates, and frequently fail to undertake even basic local campaigning activities like regular canvassing and newsletters in Tory held areas (hence the lack of concern over the fiasco that is Merlin). Seats with massive Tory majorities that should be contributing loads are frequently the worst. In a landslide national election, this may not matter - but obviously in any closer situation, this will needlessly lose us seats and could make the difference between having a Conservative and Labour government. Someone needs to get a grip.
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