The Conservatives are still vulnerable to the next Mark Clarke

Westminster wisdom has it that a politician must resign if he or she is “the story” for a fortnight or longer. That wisdom is often attributed to Alastair Campbell, but he says he never set such a rule – and if he did, it was wrong. Many ministers survive for months after a scandal has broken, while others are writing their letter to the Prime Minister before the ink is dry on the newspaper presses.

Campbell’s rule-that-never-was would have been proved wrong, anyway, by Tory Party chairman Lord Feldman, who has been the subject of negative headlines on and off since September, when young Conservative Elliott Johnson died. He is believed to have committed suicide, and in letters left for others to find he spoke of “bullies and betrayers” in the party. These included fellow Tory activist Mark Clarke, whose name appears in the newspapers almost every day with a new allegation attached. Clarke denies the allegations.

After former Conservative Party co-chairman Grant Shapps resigned last month, the spotlight inevitably fell on Feldman. Now Johnson’s father wants Feldman to resign too, and others are alleging that he was aware of the problems with Mark Clarke back in 2010 – something he denies.

Everyone is denying everything. And when they can’t deny working with Mark Clarke, rather than stopping his progress through the party, they deny they ever enjoyed spending time with him. “I wish I had never met Mark Clarke,” seems to be a constant refrain.

Feldman probably feels the same, but in spite of daily headlines about what he is supposed to have known, he doesn’t look as though he is budging. Yesterday, Skills Minister Nick Boles launched a furious defence of his party colleague on Tory website Conservative Home, arguing a “media witch-hunt” was under way – particularly by the BBC – and “we will do nothing for Elliott Johnson by hounding Andrew Feldman out of his job”. Instead, he said, the party must wait until the conclusion of the independent investigation into the handling of the bullying allegations.

A rule Alastair Campbell should also have set is that to predict someone will stay in their job is to tempt fate that they will suddenly resign. But, barring the appearance of some other piece of evidence, Feldman does look safe until that investigation has concluded. And he is David Cameron’s old tennis partner and close friend, which is what makes him so alluring a scalp to some.

But what is also keeping the pressure on Feldman down a little is that there just aren’t enough Tory MPs who are gunning for him to go. Few newly elected MPs – with the notable exception of Bath MP Ben Howlett, who also says he was bullied by Clarke (which, again, Clarke denies) – were involved in Conservative Future, and many more in the parliamentary party regard the youth wing of the Conservatives as a slightly embarrassing bunch of people from whom they fled at university. “None of us have a clue who any of these people were,” says one MP. “There’s all these stories that come out each day, each with more people we’ve never heard of.” Another remarks: “Most MPs are slightly befuddled and know nothing of the allegations.” And it’s true: for most MPs who weren’t fighting marginal seats, Clarke was an unknown. Now, as they hear their colleagues say “I wish I’d never met Mark Clarke”, they thank their lucky stars they never did.

None of this makes any difference to Ray Johnson, Elliott’s father. His son is dead; whatever the anatomy of a political resignation, he wants Feldman to go. Even MPs who don’t really understand the detail of the alleged bullying stories expect them to continue.

Whatever happens to Feldman, the bigger question is how the Conservative Party’s structures allowed Clarke, who has been expelled from the party, to flourish. Many of those who worked with him describe the activist as “the most poisonous individual I’ve ever met”. So how did he manage to become a candidate for the party in 2010?

Was it that the vetting procedures for those standing for parliament aren’t quite as robust as the Conservatives claim? People can and do fail the parliamentary assessment board that puts a candidate on the official list associations choose from. Clarke passed. His local party was unimpressed that he was removed from the list after the election, but tried to use his RoadTrip scheme to resurrect his career.

And the party was so desperate for ground troops it probably didn’t step back and wonder whether it really wanted to spend more time with Clarke. Conservative membership was, the last time the party thought fit to talk about it, just under 150,000. It is by no means a mass movement. Clarke at least offered a few buses of keen young activists.

Those young activists may well have boarded the buses because they wanted to help the Tory Party. But they also seem to have been duped into believing this would somehow smooth their path to a safe seat – something that many of them, Clarke included, regarded as the most important thing in the world. The party let the myth spread because it was so desperate and needed to give its ground troops an incentive to do the unglamorous work of pushing leaflets through doors.

Whether Feldman ultimately stays or goes, the Conservative Party still has the same structural weaknesses which will leave it vulnerable to a repeat of this affair. And there should certainly be an Alastair Campbell-style rule against making the same mistake twice.

Isabel Hardman is the assistant editor of ‘The Spectator’ magazine