To go along with conference season, the Tories have released new merch lines; including the “BackBoris” collection, the party history collection and even cashing in on the culture war with a line of Land of Hope and Glory tote bags and tea towels. Most eye-catching of all from the party that supposedly wants to privatise the health system is their new “Love the NHS Collection“ in which all profits will go to NHS charities.

If you believed the headline you’re a mug…

Guido is not convinced the “Same Old Labour” line being pushed by CCHQ this morning is going to work. With Starmer denouncing and distancing himself from Corbyn and pointing out the party is under “new management” every other soundbite, this will be hard to make stick. Admittedly the Tories have not yet got any Labour policies to get stuck into yet. Starmer knows this and is not likely to give the Tories any red meat until the last possible moment. The usual fiscal prudence attack lines won’t work either with Rishi now running a sky high deficit.

Readers old enough to remember the “New Labour, New Danger” attack line used against Blair, will remember that slogan presaged a Labour landslide. CCHQ is going to have get their thinking caps on and come up with some better attack lines… 

One office that has taken heed of exhortations from Boris to go back to their desks is CCHQ’s office in Matthew Parker Street. Claire in HR has just emailed all party employees to tell them they will have to reserve a desk if they are coming in tomorrow, as the office is at its socially distant full capacity. Not something that can be said for many other offices in Whitehall…

Back in May readers might remember emphatic reports CCHQ hadn’t furloughed anybody despite facing a big financial squeeze from Lockdown; with a spokesperson telling the FT it “hasn’t furloughed any staff and doesn’t have plans to”. They clearly failed to stick to their plans however with Electoral Commission figures this morning showing the Tories took £80,163 of furlough money – almost 8 times as much as Labour’s £9,914. On top of recent sackings, the Tory coffers are clearly in a dire state…

UPDATE: A Tory spokesperson maintains CCHQ have not furloughed any staff, however clarified local associations are “no different from other voluntary sector organisations in facing challenging times”

It’s also been pointed out the New Statesman reported on the LibDems furloughing half their staff at the start of the pandemic, and as such have raked up a staggering £179,000 in taxpayer donations to keep their staff on the books…

Unlike other parties, the Tories showed off during the pandemic by not furloughing any staff, keeping all staff on the books. In May, a party spokesman told the FT, “claims that a significant number of redundancies are planned are simply not true”. To the contrary, however, Guido now learns a number of staff have now been made redundant – with the scythe focusing on campaign managers. Not a good sign in the run up to next year’s major spate of local elections…

While the total number of redundancies made today has not been revealed – one newly-jobless party hack floats the campaign manager cull at 50% – multiple sources tell Guido the sackings have fallen disproportionately on the London division. Both sacked sources Guido spoke to cited pessimism over Shaun Bailey’s mayoral campaign as one reason for the move…

A CCHQ spokesperson tells Guido:

“CCHQ’s role is to campaign and win elections and like any organisation, we keep our operations and staffing under review to do this most effectively.

“We have entered a period of consultation with a small number of colleagues as we restructure a small number of teams.”

Don’t expect these to be the last Westminster job layoffs to lie at Covid’s door…

Theresa May’s reshuffle of 2018 not only gave us Chris Grayling as party chairman for a memorable 27 seconds, it introduced us to eight new CCHQ vice chairs, up from the previous four appointees – an attempt by May to inspire loyalty from younger MPs and improve the look of the Tory party. Their loyalty faded pretty quickly…

Boris kept the positions in his first reshuffle, though two of the deputy chairs have since been appointed to Ministerial posts – namely Paul Scully and Ranil Jayawardena. Lee Rowley was drafted in as Scully’s replacement, however Guido now hears the Tories are considering plans to cut the number, down to one deputy chair and fewer vice chairs, with the vision of “moving forward as part of a smaller CCHQ team“. Each deputy chair gets a £10,000 salary boost paid for by Tory members – so that will save the Tory’s treasurers £80,000…