Emma Burnell

Is the Conservative Democratic Organisation the Tory Momentum?

(Credit: Getty images)

As a Labour member and supporter, I feel a certain schadenfreude watching the newly-formed Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) take the fight to the Tories. The CDO – set up in response to falling rates of Conservative party membership – appears to be a Tory version of Momentum. It’s certainly making the same mistakes.

In the early days, Momentum was a force for good within the Labour party: I remember seeing its members flooding the streets of Ilford North to ensure the election of Wes Streeting, who was hardly from their wing of the party. It was a movement that attracted idealistic people who shared Labour’s values – not just the Trotskyists of old.

When Corbyn eventually had to move on, Momentum found that it couldn’t

But the movement – which now carps from the sidelines and has no influence on Labour politics or policy – is a shadow of its once powerful self. Is the CDO doomed to follow a similar fate? There are three ways it can avoid the Momentum trap.

Firstly, the CDO must not allow itself to be seen as the vehicle for one, flawed, politician. All political careers end in failure; movements don’t have to. But they will if they become about one person. Momentum was set up out of the machinery of Corbyn’s successful leadership campaign. It could have taken the ideas of that campaign – especially the internal ones about allowing members more say over who represents them and how they have a voice in policy making – and built on them. Instead, it simply became a ‘defend Jeremy’ movement. When Corbyn eventually had to move on, it found that it couldn’t.

Good politicians are essential for political campaigns, but there has to be a recognition that they are there to serve the aims of that movement, not the other way around.

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