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The Welsh Conservatives have changed – but there is still much to do to get the party in best shape for the next decade

AS ASSEMBLY Members, we are now looking towards the elections in 2011. The autumn of the third year of an Assembly is very much the starting point of the strategic development of a party’s manifesto. It is also the time when the mechanics of the party machine are ratcheted up another gear in selecting our candidates for that election.

Writing for WalesHome back in June, I said that if the Welsh Conservative Party was to become a credible alternative for the Welsh public, then we had to proactively take the party’s electoral progress beyond the realms of Labour-voter apathy.

In my lecture to the Wales Governance Centre, I said that we have to become more comfortable and confident with our Welsh identity, to become more exciting and more relevant to the wider voter demographic and more ‘autonomous’ and ‘strategic’ in our operational capacity.

I would like to build on those comments and give a more clear indication on what I would like to see the party doing to address the issues of candidate selection and campaign modelling, ahead of May 2011.

I have already publicly called on several occasions for the party to introduce positive discrimination for female candidates. Although this will be a controversial subject for many associations to contend with, I am really pleased that Nick Bourne is addressing this issue head-on. There is no doubt that our party has a poor record in its selection of women candidates. The Assembly group has been under-represented for far too long. In the elections in 2007, our current group was just 90 votes away from being an all male club. For a party that champions equality and wants to prove that it is in touch with the modern world, this is unacceptable. My party, at its grass roots, is dominated by active, enthusiastic and politically astute female members but, for whatever reason, not enough seek selection as candidates and few are adopted.

While attitudes are slowly changing, there are still antediluvian tendencies within local associations and frankly the party simply cannot afford to wait for a Noachian conversion. We need to change the rules to ensure more female candidates are selected in first place. My personal preference as an initial move forward is for the first available slot on each regional list be offered to a female candidate. While there maybe some party members who will view this as a step too far, I feel we can no longer pursue a programme of positive affirmation just to increase the pool of would-be female candidates. We need to get them selected.

A Welsh Conservative campaign at the Assembly election should be about ensuring the election of a Welsh Conservative First Minister. If that is to be realised, then the person leading the party in the Bay needs more say over our selection procedures, especially if we are to be more representative of the people of Wales. Sadly, the position of leader in the Assembly is not as leader of the Welsh Party, and the current title stems from the 1998 election by members of “a leader of the Assembly campaign”. Having chaired Nick’s campaign 11 years ago, I remember thinking how ridiculous this made us appear. Since then we have been out-manoeuvred on that front by our political opponents, as all the other parties have changed their rules so that their Assembly group leader is now their Welsh party leader. It was ridiculous in 1998, and it is ridiculous now that the leader of our Assembly group is not recognised as our main spokesperson in Wales, and called our leader.

The second big problem that we must address is to ensure that there is parity of security between constituency and regional Welsh Conservative Assembly Members. As the only Welsh Conservative Assembly Member to have been both a regional and a constituency AM, I know that there is an unacceptable difference in the way that we select candidates for our regions and constituencies and the security offered to both types of sitting members.

I, for example, only have to ask my executive committee to re-adopt me, a simple straightforward process for a sitting constituency member. However, the current rules for regional members open the process up to a ballot where other candidates can compete. This, for me, is a complete nonsense. In what world is it right that Darren, Angela, Paul, Nick Ramsay or myself can get reselected virtually automatically, but Brynle, Mark, Andrew, David, William, Alun and Nick – our group leader – need to go through a full reselection process. It is a ridiculous distinction which is insulting to the calibre and dedication of more than half the Assembly group.

It is also a total waste of resources. At a time when we should be putting every penny and every effort into defeating our political opponents, the current selection system pitches elected member against one another. The Welsh Board of Management needs to look at this issue as a matter of priority and show faith in Nick Bourne and half the Assembly group. The rules need changing.

One of the key tenets of my Wales Governance Centre lecture was that the Welsh Conservative Party needed to become a more independent and professional organisation. That means our party focusing on a long-term strategy with clear objectives on how we grow and develop the party within the Welsh political environment. Central to this planning has to be a comprehensive training package for our candidates. Currently, I believe that the Welsh Conservative Party does not do enough to properly equip candidates with the necessary range of skills required for such an intensive and public-facing role. It seems to me that there is almost an assumption that party selection of a candidate automatically translates into campaign and media experience – this is clearly not the case. We need to develop a training package outlining commitments and expectations, with hard work rewarded with increased funds and campaign resources and un-fitting or inappropriate behaviour sanctioned with de-selections.

In training candidates we also need to carefully manage their political expectations. The party has worked hard since 1999 and it is clear it has become increasing more popular with supporters and voters across Wales. There have been many new candidates attracted to the party because of our present standing. However, with that new involvement there will often emerge a natural expectation of early success. Success is not always possible and should not naturally be expected, particularly if it is not matched with commensurate effort. My own experience of fighting for more than eight years to secure Cardiff North, having lost at the 1999 and 2003 Assembly elections, is that this sort of commitment, of ‘try, try again’, is sometimes required.

I fully support Nick Bourne’s recommendations to make our party more demographically representative. But on top of putting women and ethnic minority candidates to the fore front of our party’s selection policy, we must also reach out to younger people and people from “non-political” backgrounds.

Politics in the main fails to reach out to younger people. If we are to captivate the imagination of younger people then we need to develop younger more hungry potential candidates at all elected levels. I was 24 when I was elected and, out of the original group of nine Welsh Conservative members who came into the Assembly in 1999, there were three of us under the age of 30.

In the Local Government Elections in 2004, four candidates – three of them under 30 – fighting a council ward in Cardiff North, overturned healthy Labour majorities and turfed out four sitting, well-known Labour councillors. Those four Conservative councillors are now well established and have majorities of over 1,000 votes. This has taken effort and a hell of a lot of footwork. It is this sort of battle commitment and enthusiasm that we need when we are popular as a party, to help avoid the accusation of complacency. And it is critical at those times when the Conservative message is harder for the public to swallow.

Secondly, if politics is to become more accepted as a career, more dynamic, and more accepting to the people then we need more ‘non-politicians’ to consider politics as a career. I do not believe the selection of party apparatchiks is a healthy course of action in trying to create a more responsive and more relevant party in Wales. The selection of Dr Sarah Wallaston in Totnes is a great example of the people being involved in picking such a non-politician.

Political life is fast changing. Our candidates need to be more diverse, and our appeal to the electorate and methods of campaigning must adapt as quickly. Some of these things will of course take time. But others, like making our Assembly group leader the Welsh Party leader and scrapping contested reselections for incumbent regional list AMs, can be achieved speedily and painlessly.

In all this, we must become a Conservative party that cannot afford to be too conservative.