Conservative Party election review calls for manifesto committee
3 min read
A review into the Conservatives snap general election campaign has recommended changes to the way the manifesto is drawn up in future.
The call follows reports that cabinet ministers were frustrated at being kept in the dark about policies such as the so-called ‘dementia tax’ until the day before it was announced.
The review was conducted by former party chairman Sir Eric Pickles after the party lost its Commons majority against the odds.
He recommended the Prime Minister draw up a committee including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, party chairman, chief executive, Chief Whip, and three others appointed by the leader to consult on future manifestos.
The recommendation, which consulted MPs, peers and campaign staff, will be viewed as a reaction to reports cabinet ministers were informed of the centrepiece Tory manifesto pledge less than 24 hours before the document was launched.
There were also accusations that Mrs May's key advisers at the time, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, were guarded about the contents of the manifesto and that the campaign generally was too focussed on her as an individual.
Mr Pickles also called for a “fundamental re-evaluation” of how the party runs campaigns as there was a “clear campaigning deficiency” during the election.
And he urged the party to work to encourage young people and ethnic minorities to join the Conservatives.
The postmortem said the party should consider how every policy will be perceived by young people before it is announced.
And the former party chairman said the party should attempt to increase the number of women and ethnic minority candidates.
He said the report was intended to make the party “stronger and more adept and campaigning” and he had not wanted to pack it full of “blame and recrimination” or “sensational stories about what went wrong behind closed doors”.
He added: “At this election I felt the loss of our seats, along with colleagues I had worked with, very keenly.
“That has not blinded me into the delusion that one thing caused our setback.
“Many of the problems we encountered have been present at previous general elections, in some degree or another. I hope that this is a frank and unblinking look at our party, which will set a series of reforms in motion."
Grant Chapps, also a former Conservative chairman, told ITV's Peston on Sunday that the report was "very sensible" but it failed to acknowledge how bad the manifesto was.
"What it doesn’t say is that the main problem in the campaign was that we had a manifesto that dared you to vote for us, telling our own supporters ‘If you’re brave enough, vote for us and we’ll do a bunch of very nasty things, in terms of your old-age pensions and the rest of it. We dare you to do it’. It’s not a good place to be."
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