The news that Tim Montgomerie, founder of Conservative Home blog is to leave the Conservative Party after 28 years is a matter of significance to our national political life. Not because he is personally important to the future of the Party, or of the nation but because his high profile departure indicates just how loose the ties to the heart of our Political Parties really are in 2016. Many of us have believed for a long time that the future of our nation depends as much on political activity outside of the main political parties as it does on the minority interest that our mainstream political parties have become. The idea that a tiny number of people in the nation should shape the decisions taken by our major parties is clearly unsustainable. Although the combined membership of our political parties is 1% or less of the population, far fewer people than that actually take the decisions which are then endorsed by the 1% as party policy. These policies are then in turn offered to you and I as the limited options we can choose from at a General Election. Once the election is over the winning party or coalition then returns to the small group to further tweak and adjust their policies on a regular basis, often out of the light of public scrutiny and the connection with the voters in time becomes little more than a formality every 5 years. We need to find an entirely new way of carrying out public decision making when it comes to national issues. The idea that most MPs are elected because of the colour of their party rosette, rather than their personal integrity or views is deeply disturbing. Changing the system will no doubt raise many questions and create its own set of problems, but carrying on as if nothing is wrong is something that only the most ardent party member would contemplate. We clearly need debates in our communities to explore what the new political arrangements could look like. This need not lead to a one sized fits all result and it will almost certainly not end up with a tidy outcome in the first instance. However it is vital that we don’t simply treat this news as one more EU sceptic throwing his toys out of the Tory pram.