Electors, although often personally eminent, independent and respectable, officially became voluntary party lackeys and intellectual nonentities".
"I know it probably sounds like an odd thing but I loved the voluntary party.
He said many in the "voluntary party" were disappointed about the fact that they would not now have a vote.
"I don't think that was the intention but it is the result of disenfranchising the voluntary party and putting more power in the hands of central office".
Having recognised oneself to have been a voluntary party to violence and cruelty, one learns how desperately important it is to try to be good.
"If someone said to me, the only way that your voluntary party expresses its views is by turning on a computer, logging on, creating an ID, getting on to Conservative Home, and starting a blog – well, that doesn't really fit the type of most of the voluntary party that I know".
The voluntary party is the lifeblood and bedrock of democratic politics: starve it, suffocate it, isolate and ignore it, and you might just get rid of the more atavistic irritants; the "turnip Taliban", the "dinosaurs" and the "backwoodsmen".
But the voluntary party has been shorn of any payback or reward: even lowly MBEs are no longer dished out to the deserving, for fear of some "leafleting for honours" scandal.
Other members of Conservatives for Britain include former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson, (the group's president) former Tory defence secretary, Liam Fox (a vice-president), and Steve Bell, president of the Conservative National Convention, the powerful parliament of the voluntary party.
He was determined to avoid a repetition of the circumstances that had blighted the prospects of his hapless predecessor, Iain Duncan Smith. Underrules established by another short-lived leader, William Hague, the 300,000 or so members of what Tories call the "voluntary party" were allowed to choose between the two candidates who had made it through to the final round of voting by MPs.
