New-look Tories: Not pale or stale!

Shake-up in bid to lure more party members

THERESA May launched a major revamp of Tory HQ yesterday, appointing a new chairman and bringing in a raft of young and ethnic minority MPs.

Sir Patrick McLoughlin resigned, shouldering the blame for lacklustre party organisation during the election and problems with the stage set at October’s party conference.

The ex- chairman said he accepted the need for new blood, telling Mrs May there was plenty of talent to bring forward.

The Prime Minister said she wanted to put the party on a ‘strong footing to fight and win the next general election’.

Her new team will implement the results of a party review into what went wrong at the polls last June. They will also attempt to turn around the slow decline in membership, which stood at around a million when Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990.

It was 250,000 when David Cameron took over as leader in 2005. But it is now put at 70,000 and only 10,000 of those are thought to be aged under 30.

Sir Patrick was replaced by Brandon Lewis, a former barrister and council leader in Essex who has impressed as immigration minister and is considered a good performer in TV interviews. Mrs May also hired several young and ethnic minority MPs to inject renewed energy into Conservative Campaign Headquarters.

James Cleverly has been made party deputy chairman just two years after entering parliament. Confident and straight talking, he is also one of the few Tory MPs to impress on social media. Always ready with a quip, he relishes baiting Labour MPs on Twitter.

The 48-year-old is the son of an English surveyor and a midwife mother from Sierra Leone.

Kemi Badenoch, a Nigerianborn pro-Brexit MP who entered parliament in June, becomes vice chairman for candidates.

She wowed the party faithful when introducing Mrs May at the party conference in October.

Ben Bradley, who is 28 and won the Mansfield seat from Labour last year, becomes vice chairman for youth. Pakistan-born Rehman Chishti and mixed-race ex-sport minister Helen Grant become vice chairmen for communities.

Abortion campaigners condemned Mrs May’s decision to appoint a pro-life MP to the post of Tory vice chairman for women. Maria Caulfield, a former nurse who grew up on a council estate, led opposition to a parliamentary bid to decriminalise terminations.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a major abortion provider, described the decision as profoundly disappointing. ‘We are shocked that the Conservative Party has decided to appoint as their vice chair for women an MP who supports the criminalisation of women who end their own pregnancies,’ said a spokesman.

But Conservative MPs hit back, accusing pro- choice groups of ‘trolling’ a politician simply for holding a different view.

Miss Caulfield, MP for Lewes since 2015, will be expected to help devise campaigns to persuade more women to back the party.

Chris Skidmore, Andrew Jones and Marcus Jones gave up junior ministerial positions to take up roles as vice chairmen for policy, business and local government respectively. James Morris becomes vice chairman for training and development.

‘We have so much talent right now’