By Paola Totaro and London
CLOSE your eyes and think of England.
Now, scrunch them tighter and conjure a vision of a modern Young Tory, energetic, active - politically alluring even. Too hard? You're not alone. The face of British Conservatism has changed beyond imagining, light years away from the stereotypes made famous by Harry Enfield's creepy ''Tory Boy'' or Private Eye's devastating toff, Sir Bufton-Tufton.
David Cameron cycling to work yesterday.Credit: Reuters
No matter which party wins next month's general election, the new British Parliament will be unrecognisable. Of the 646 MPs in the House of Commons, one quarter are due to quit pre-poll. Swaths more will undoubtedly be tossed out, a turnover largely sparked by the expenses scandal.
Chances are, however, that the biggest change will unfold on the side of the house led by the youthful Tory leader, David ("call me Dave") Cameron. Indeed, if the Conservatives manage an outright majority, the 18 women who now sit in the house will multiply to 60, perhaps more. At least 10 of the new team will not be white, an almost equal number - men and women - are gay and out.
Even bigger transformations are under way in the Conservatives' youth wing, where the next generation of political tyros are cutting their teeth.
There too, at least at first glance, the revolution is well and truly under way. With the election confirmed for May 6, an army of nearly 20,000 fully signed-up Young Tories are tweeting and blogging, manning phones and frenetically doorknocking for votes in seats throughout the country.
In 2010, there are 200 active branches up and down Britain, the biggest youth political organisation in the British Isles.
But don't call them Young Tories because they insist their horizons are much wider than that - and their moniker, ''Conservative Future'', speaks best to their raison d'etre.
Founded in 1998 with the fusion of the Young Conservatives and three graduate and university organisations, the group bled numbers to a low of 3000 by the year 2000. During the past decade, they've grown five-fold and according to its leadership is now bigger than Young Labour and Liberal Youth put together.
The Age decided to track down and chat to a group of young activists to hear just what Conservatism means to a generation who have lived half their lives under Labour rule. They were babies or not even born when Britain's Tory behemoth, Margaret Thatcher, was in charge.
Snatching time to talk in between frenetic rounds of speeches, research and fund-raisers across the country, these four Conservative hopefuls might once have come from the natural constituency of new Labour.
Michael Rock, 31, is Conservative Future's chairman and a local campaign manager. Amanda O'Brien, 24, is a local campaign manager. Emma Carr, 20, is a student and first-time voter. Michelle Donelan, 25, is an MP candidate. All speak with passion about the need to restore the battered standing of politicians. For them, modern Conservative politics holds the answer.
Carr, just eight-years-old when New Labour was elected, was raised in the Newcastle area and is studying history and politics at Northumbria University. She says she was politicised by a sense of disillusionment.
"I grew up very near where Billy Elliot was set, these were mining communities and they have been left behind … they're definitely worse 12 years on,'' Carr says. ''[Labour] has taken everyone for granted. That is one of the reasons why I've turned towards the Conservatives: I felt young, I felt ignored and I felt let down."
Her family is not one to talk about politics at the dinner table and Carr says she cannot even be sure how her parents would vote. Her grandparents and great-grandparents came from mining stock and she knows they were strong Labour people: "I don't know how they would react to Labour now … they are not what the Labour Party once was."
None of the four attended a big, famous British public school or one of the elite universities. All describe themselves as coming from working or middle-class families. The importance of solid familial structures was a theme for them all individually - and cited as a foundation for a healthy society.
However, none defined the family only in nuclear terms: gay or single parents were all deemed OK. What matters to them is that social policy is geared to support all parents to provide healthy, supportive environments for their children - albeit stated in the rhetoric of personal responsibility.
"I very much believe in family and family values. But that also can mean men and men and women and women. Specifically it is the children that must have a secure environment,'' Donelan says. ''We need to help single-parent families, young mothers … I want to see us empower people, see they take more responsibility and ensure there is less leaning on the state. I want to see that 'will do attitude' come back again."
While Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Labour are playing the class card, unabashedly portraying Cameron and his team as Oxbridge toffs, this younger generation of Tories insist they're proud of their working or middle-class origins, their state school educations, and appear to revel in their "ordinariness".
"I am not what one might refer to as a 'traditional Tory girl','' O'Brien says. "I don't go to garden parties and watch the polo. I'd much rather have a pint down the local with my mates or go to the gym and, to be honest, that is the great thing about the Conservative Party of today; there is something for everyone and so we really are a mixed bunch."
Donelan, who says she started to become interested in politics at the age of six - and at 15 addressed her first political conference - sees becoming an MP as a "calling". She is a candidate, in an admittedly impossible-to-win seat this time around, has set up several Conservative Future branches and is on the Conservatives' national executive committee.
All three young Tory women cite Thatcher as a figurehead in their political lives and an icon as a successful female. In her biography notes, O'Brien cites "political highlights include climbing the Big Ben Tower and meeting Margaret Thatcher at a dinner in London".
"She is an icon for all Conservatives across the board. So much of what she has done is so important now … we are having a bit of a nightmare with British Airways strikes and the union that is heading that are funding Labour … She made it illegal to have to be a member of a union," O'Brien says.
Michael Rock says he remembers part of the Thatcher years, and that Thatcherite beliefs, particularly making it easier to own your own home, were instilled by his grandmother.
"Yes, they were aspirational beliefs. I can't think of when we use that word any more. We all talk about hard work, leaving something to our children … it's a shame that we don't use it because it is how everyone feels - to try and improve their lot."
CAMERON, they agree, was a motivating force behind their activism, but their political engagement originates from philosophy more than personality. Asked what makes Cameron different to Tory leaders of the past, they cite his inclusiveness. "The Tories are a traditionally seen as the nasty party, they're seen negatively and David Cameron has changed that, put a human face on the party. He's addressed issues like a centre for social justice, he cares about people who need help, can't read, write or need help," Amanda says.
Lynton Crosby, John Howard's campaign guru and long-term adviser to the Tories, says Cameron's message to the party has been clear and non-negotiable.
"He laid out very clearly that the Conservatives must change to reflect the fact that Britain has changed. That is important for a party because if you seek to represent a community, you must reflect it too," he told The Age.
Crosby agrees that the Conservative leader's age - he is just 43 - is in part responsible for a renaissance of the party's youth wing, but insists an overhaul of ideals is the primary force. "His message has also been one of broadening the party and therefore those that are interested in politics see and hear this and have responded.
"New Labour was new a long time ago … With Blair gone, so is any sense of modernisation. Brown is old Labour and Cameron unifies while Brown is seen to divide," Crosby says.
Rock argues that Cameron has also changed the way political campaigns are conducted. "The biggest difference we have seen is that he has taken the classic Conservative views and applied them to the issues that matter, instead of only talking about the things that we know are popular: immigration, law and order, the economy."
I ask about global warming and here there is a slightly less unified response. Carr suggests that within Conservative Future, debate about exactly what needs to be done and how far Britain should go has yet to be thrashed out. "There is still a big debate on environment because we still don't have a conclusive policy really,'' she says. ''David Cameron's been edgy on green policy because it will separate people."
All four young Tories are avid believers in small government and minimal state intervention, but here they sound practised, their rhetoric slightly robotic. Donelan is at pains to insist she is a Conservative, not a libertarian, so state involvement in issues of public health such as tobacco or seatbelts are acceptable, for example, but DNA databases or the promised national ID card are absolute no-no issues for all four.
All four are practised, too, in the smooth rhetoric of the need for meritocracy and a return to individual responsibility in welfare structures. But when pressed on exactly what they mean about "empowering people at local level" it is all a little waffly.
The place of Britain within the European Union also elicit the mantras much loved by Euro-sceptics, but rarely backed up with fact. "Seventy per cent of laws in Britain originate in the EU," which was cited by two out of three interviewees, for example, is simply incorrect. (The EU's powers are mainly regulatory, as opposed to budgetary, so most issues on spending on welfare, education and so on are beyond the realm of the EU. While a huge percentage of regulatory issues are EU-derived, perhaps up to 70 per cent, the mantra is akin to comparing apples to oranges.)
How the British people respond to Cameron - and whether his new team is more gloss than substance - remains to be seen. For O'Brien, however, there is one certainty: "Everyone is conservative - they just don't realise it until they are older."