Tories turn to 'Big Brother' for a bright idea

The Conservative Party has called in Peter Bazalgette, the television producer who created Big Brother, to help it work out why people have switched off Iain Duncan Smith and politics in general.

Mr Bazalgette has agreed to serve on a "commission for democracy" to be set up by the Tories aimed at finding "ways of re-engaging people in voting and in active politics".

Although the Tories' private polls suggest the party is "invisible" to many voters, the new group is not designed solely to help it climb out of the electoral trough into which it sank after Britain's exit from the European exchange rate mechanism in 1992. The commission's findings will be given to all political parties.

Theresa May, the Tory chairman, said last night: "More people vote in Big Brother than in many elections. Why? Well, perhaps it's because when you vote in Big Brother you think it will affect the outcome."

Addressing a meeting of Conservative Future, the party's youth wing, on what she called the "democratic crisis", Mrs May said the commission would study why young people had turned off politics. "Young people aren't disinterested in politics – they're disinterested in party politics," she said. "Politics itself is not failing. Traditional party politics is."

Mrs May, who ruffled Tory feathers at the party conference in October by saying they were seen as the "nasty" party, issued another blunt warning that Conservatives must change if they are to emerge from the electoral wilderness.

"It is no secret that the average age of a typical Conservative voter is increasing," she said. "To reach out beyond that core is not a luxury for our party. Without doing so we face an unhappy and successful future." She said the Tories must become "a constructive opposition or else we'll be a perpetual opposition".

Members of the commission for democracy include Dr Richard Taylor, the independent MP for Wyre Forest, and David Butler, an academic.