Conservative Party Membership "Halved"

Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, an expert in party organisation and a senior research fellow at Brunel University, found the Tory membership roll is now between 350,000 and 400,000 at most. Mr Pinto-Duschinsky believes those figures could be padded, for example by the inclusion of former and even dead members.

Labour's membership has soared by two-thirds since 1992, to 420,000 - the result of a concerted recruitment drive spearheaded by John Prescott, now the Deputy Prime Minister.

The Times says Mr Pinto-Duschinsky's estimates are based on statistics collected from 340 local Tory associations. He found that in many inner cities, in Glasgow and the Welsh valleys, the Tory party had virtually ceased to exist and was kept going only by a "tiny handful of elderly stalwarts".

One fifth of the constituencies surveyed had membership of 100 or less, and often only a couple of dozen or even lower. The Rhondda party was defunct for part of last year and reformed for the general election, according to Mr Pinto-Duschinsky. In 10 of the strongest associations, membership had dropped by two fifths over the last three years.

A spokeswoman for Conservative Central Office said that as the party did not keep a central membership register, she could not comment on the figures.

The claims will boost the case now being made by all the Tory leadership candidates for wholesale party reforms and a drive to attract more members, particularly younger people.

The state of the party at grass roots level is a serious cause for concern to the party. On Wednesday night, the Tory backbench 1922 Committee agreed that sitting MPs should "adopt and nurture" constituencies which the Conservatives lost on May 1 to offer activists "a lifeline to Westminster" and ensure local parties in those areas did not "disintegrate".