The 'Tatler Tories' affair shows how modern politics has become the survival of the nastiest

Tatler Tories. What an addictive TV series that would be. Quick, get Julian Fellowes to pen a 10-parter on the rise and fall of “Tatler Tories”, the youngish, zealous, party loyalists whose sneering mugs have appeared in that high-society mag.

Some were candidates in the last election. They all lost, but that didn’t stop some of them from behaving like masters of the universe. In fact, Mark Clarke – the now infamous candidate who lost Tooting, south London, to Labour’s Sadiq Khan in 2010 – went on to become one of the most powerful operators in the party.

Clarke was self-assured, driven, tough, smooth (some of the time), indomitable and wore a top hat with panache. In 2010, he recruited activists from the Young Britons’ Foundation, a right-wing think-tank and training organisation linked to neocons in the United States. YBF’s own chief executive describes the foundation as a “Conservative madrasa”. Clarke was also in charge at one time of the hyperactive Conservative Future (CF) and, during the last election, ran the RoadTrip initiative, which found and took young supporters round the country to knock on doors and drop leaflets. To party leaders, Mark Clarke was a winner.

Then, in September, his star fell spectacularly. A 21-year-old activist, Elliott Johnson, threw himself under a train. He had, apparently, gone to the Conservative campaign headquarters to complain that he had been intimidated by Clarke, and, according to those who knew him, could take no more.

He had alleged that Clarke pinned him to a chair, grabbed him and warned him to back off – something Clarke denies. Johnson was 21, not a child. Imagine how hopeless and helpless he must have felt when he took his own life. The suicide prompted a police investigation and also an internal party inquiry. Last week, just as BBC’s Newsnight was about to broadcast further allegations made by insiders against Clarke, he was expelled permanently from the Tory party. Party chiefs must have hoped the story would end there. It didn’t.

Grubby tales, accusations and gossip fall out of closets, day after day, about young Conservatives. What we read and hear seems scarcely credible. Men and women, old and young, are emerging with lurid allegations about being bullied and threatened. There are claims that two other activists have attempted suicide. Clarke is accused of sexual harassment of women (again, this is something he has denied). Right-wing newspapers are outraged: “The party has descended into a morass of scandal and sordid allegations,” says one. More reprehensibly, the party leaders did not appear to take the complaints seriously at first. Clarke is now known to have been a protégé of Grant Shapps, who has been in hot water himself once or twice. And Baron Feldman, the current chairman, is also rumoured to have known about Clarke’s reputation – though, likewise, he claims that he did not.

Whatever the truth, suddenly the Conservatives are once again flapping around in the swamp of sleaze, just as they did in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, we had Cecil Parkinson and his pregnant mistress Sara Keays; David Mellor and his squeeze Antonia de Sancha; Neil Hamilton and the cash-for-questions scandal; Jonathan Aitken who lied about hotel bills and went to prison for perjury. And more.

So do we lefties rejoice as more Tory scandals are revealed? That would be gross and stupid. The degradation of politics by any party disables our democracy, and no party is immune to the effects. Elected representatives from all political parties were among those who were exposed as claiming wrongful expenses just a matter of years ago. The Liberal Democrats and Labour have both had their sick and sorry MPs and peers.

None can beat the Tory party, however, when it comes to revolting youth networks. The Young Conservatives, often lampooned by comedians, had members who were hard right, pro-apartheid, anti-immigration, and (some) proud fans of Hitler. They had – and it seems may still hold on to – a sense of entitlement; they believed they were the chosen ones, born to rule.

I was a postgraduate student in Oxford in the early 1970s and I met some such characters. One, a landed gentry chap and a member of the infamous Bullingham Club, grabbed and kissed me when I was standing on a college lawn. He laughed when I pushed him away and said: “You should be grateful someone with my pedigree wanted to touch you, a low-down coolie.” His girlfriend apparently also found it funny. Some years ago, the Young Conservatives were replaced by Conservative Future, an organisation much more pushy and hard-nosed in its nature. Its members make the young Tories of the past look like silly twerps.

In part, the new, radical activists are the products of modern culture where trolling, bullying, offending and terrorising people has become commonplace. We are becoming inured to the boorishness and lawlessness all around us. Civility is passing away, the social tapestry is being ripped apart by narcissism and by politics based on the survival of the nastiest. Dodgy and unruly youth movements have been backed unconditionally by the Tory hierarchy for far too long. This is a wake-up call. The leadership seems to have taken charge of CF. As more scandals emerge, some heads will roll. That will add insult to injury.

If, after this week, David Cameron and Lord Feldman do not decisively tame and restrain the young bulldogs of the party, we must assume they secretly support such tactics. There may even be a grand plan. Men such as Clarke and his cronies will rule over us one day (unless Labour’s opposition steps up) and, when they do, the toffs in the present government will seem upright and humane. Everything in life is relative.

Twitter: @y_alibhai