Politics: retreat to the centre | Turbulent Times (2024)

By Richard North - June 21, 2024

With less than two weeks to go to the general election and having had no leaflets or other election material from the Conservatives – the only other main contender for the Bradford South constituency – I thought I would have a look at my local constituency website.

I focused particularly on the Conservative site, and related platforms, as the candidate is new to the area, I know next to nothing about him and, if I am to make a judgement as to whether to vote for the Tories, it is essential that I know something about him.

Our local paper, covering the whole of the Bradford area, provides few details of local candidates and it is, therefore, natural that I should turn to the web in the attempt to glean more information.

After all, with the advent of computers, affordable smart phones and the expansion of the web to become a global phenomenon, it is something of an understatement to assert that much of our interaction with the rest of the world is by electronic means, principally via social media and websites.

So prevalent is this form of communication that even the politicians have noticed and one might assume, therefore, that political parties are keen to harness these platforms to promote themselves. It is certainly the case that spending on social media adverts is burgeoning.

According to a recent report in the Independent, Labour has spent over £2.4 million on social media ads since the general election campaign began, while political parties in general have spent more than £3.49 million on social media advertising since the election was called on 22 May.

By comparison, the Conservative Party has spent £906,916 on social media advertising during the same period. Almost all of this has been targeted via Meta/Facebook.

However, Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, a campaign group seeking more transparency in online political ads, observes a significant difference in strategy between the two main parties, noting that the Tory campaign so far has been run primarily through the main Conservative Party page.

In fact, that is not entirely accurate. The Conservative Party page is part of a network of websites, where the main, central site is linked to local constituency sites, the latter often acting as portals to the main site for those who have initially accessed local sites.

Clearly, the value of such a system transcends just the Tories. Labour has a similar network and the “insurgent” Reform Party is using its website as its main mechanism for communicating with its members and the public, and especially in providing details of local candidates.

The website is also an important way of recruiting new members, soliciting donations and keeping people abreast of news and activities. So important have party websites become that Pete has observed that, ultimately, “your party is what your website says it is”. If you don’t think it is important enough to update, he adds, “you aren’t to be taken seriously”.

Those points were originally addressed to Reform but, as general points, Pete is by no means on his own in making them, or anything like the first to rehearse such views. The role of political websites has been much explored in academia with this paper offering an admirable overview.

In particular, in drawing lessons from the study of multiple websites and their use, the paper stresses that informational content presented in an engaging and easy to find manner is “the most important way that the website could support engagement”. It then emphasises “the need for concise and updated information on party policies and candidates, in particular on the local level”.

Thus, it was with the “local level” in mind that I started my search. And what immediately became apparent is that, while there are three named Bradford constituencies – Bradford East, West and South, there is only one website, labelled Bradford Conservatives.

This isn’t the case with the Labour Party which has its own dedicated site for Bradford South Labour, and for the Conservative Party sites in, for instance, Leeds, where each of the constituencies also have dedicated sites.

With no dedicated site to look at, therefore, I ventured onto the combined Bradford Conservative site in search of the information I needed. There I was presented with four menu choices, and a link which takes one to a sub-menu offering “news” and “contacts”.

The “news” page seemed the obvious place to start but, as it turned out, the description “news” was somewhat over-optimistic. The latest entry on the site was dated 21 April 2022, announcing the death of the former association chairman Barry Whitaker. Scrolling down brought me to a report on the failure of Bradford Council children and youth services, the item dated 23 December 2021.

Persevering, I looked at one more entry, to find that this offered a line-up, with a picture, of Bradford Conservative candidates. Sadly, though, they were for the 2022 local elections – not even the 2024 elections just past. The general election had not found its way to this page.

Picking the next most likely page, I ended up via another sub-menu on events, to arrive at a machine-generated entry headed: “The Economy of the US: What are the Weakest Spots?”. Dated 1 February 2020, the text ran: “Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ul lamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo con sequat. Duis autem vel…”. That was it.

Navigating from there to the “manifesto” page, I learned that “The Conservatives offer a future after Brexit where we move on to focus on our priorities – which are also your priorities”. Thus informed, I clicked on a heading which stated: “The Community Needs Your Support: How You Can Help Our Campaign”.

This, it turned out, could not have been referring to the general election campaign as it was dated 20 August 2018. I was none the wiser for looking at the text. It read: “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat…”.

By now I was beginning to suspect that things might be a little awry – I’m quick on the uptake on such things – so in a last attempt to gain some useful information, I had a look at “our team”. This gave me three pictures and names, two of them Pakistani – chairman and president. Descriptions were generic – and minimal – telling us that each was: “A passionate Bradfordian, who is dedicated to their city and community”.

At least, from this, there was a link to Twitter, which I followed in the last hope of getting some information. But in vain. Established in January 2021 it had attracted 22 followers, with a total of 23 posts, the latest dated 26 February 2021. One video clip, dated 8 February, told me that “You have the power to change Bradford for the better”, urging me to “vote Conservative”.

As for the general election candidate, Zaf Shah, he appears to have neither a website nor a Twitter account – and a very light web footprint, with one print piece and one YouTube interview.

The print piece was dated 17 June 2015, from the Asian Sunday headed: “Why do in the case of Bradford West particularly Pakistani communities think the Tory Party are the ‘nasty racist party’?” Zaf Shah discusses the Conservative Party impact on BME Communities”.As to the You Tube clip, this was a voice interview with Radio Leeds from 12 years ago, mainly about perceptions of the Muslim community.

One gleans from this that Shah is from West Braford, a Muslim parachuted into the neighbouring constituency, sending a message that there is no-one in the mainly white British Bradford South community who is capable of representing the Conservative Party.

Oddly enough, the most detail on Shah comes not from any party site but from the Who Can I Vote For? site. That publishes his “statement to voters” in full, sufficient to ensure that I will not be voting for him.

However, having started out on the website search, I had a quick look at other Conservative sites. None were quite as bad as the Bradford site, but none were impressive. In the website for the marginal Keighley and Ilkley, for example, the “news” page leads with a “Statement regarding the death of Prince Philip”, dated 12 April 2021. Others in the region were just as bad.

For a moment, forget about the soap opera of the London-based, personality-centred election campaign. The power of the Conservative Party once resided in its constituency base.If you want an explanation for the decline of the Conservative Party, look at the constituency websites, where you will see evidence that the party has abandoned the periphery and retreated to the centre.