ACTIVISTS in the Conservative Party launched a slick, aggressive, and well-funded attempt to hang on to their vote on the Tory leadership yesterday.

The campaign has been planned secretly for months and finally swung into action from offices cheekily located only doors from the Tory party headquarters. Its aim is to prevent the party executive from removing the vote from grassroots Tories as they choose a new leader. It claims the active support of more than 100 constituency chairman, as well as about £50,000 from backers.

With just eight weeks until the vote on the new rules governing the leadership, the “A Better Choice” campaign is confident of victory. At its helm is Barry Legg, the former party chief executive and fundraiser for Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership campaign. Several other senior MPs have pledged their tacit support at the beginning of the telephone and internet battle for the heart of the party.

“Associations are the bedrock of the party,” Mr Legg said. “To blame them for our recent election defeats makes no sense. This will not tackle the problems we have had in Central Office.”

The dissidents are up against the party board, a group of Tory dignitaries who are drawing up the ballot papers for the postal vote on September 27. Under the plan being pushed through by Conservative MPs, the power to choose the leader will be taken away from grassroots members and returned to MPs. But a significant proportion of the “constitutional college” entitled to vote on the proposal are the party’s 650 constituency chairman.

A Better Choice has recruited scores of volunteers to man its call centre, reaching constituency chairman at home to argue their side. “We are going to win,” a spokesman said. “It just doesn’t work for the party to say we trust the people on the ground to run their lives and then to say they don’t trust anyone in their party to have a say.

“We are squeezing them now, because if they don’t get this vote through they’ll have to proceed with the old rules and they will not be able to have a new leader of the party before March.”

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said that officials would listen to what the campaign had to say before the ballot was held.

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