The Tory leader, Mr William Hague, last night brushed aside charges that he was centralising power around his leadership team at Conservative Party headquarters in the face of grassroots demands that key officials should be elected by the Tory rank-and-file.
Rumours that the party cannot pay its staff their expenses for October, the month which included the costly annual Blackpool conference, were emphatically denied last night. "All bills have been paid, but yes, money has been tight," sources said.
Hague aides did confirm that he was planning to move most of his private office team out of the opposition leader's suite below Big Ben at Westminster and consolidate his operations at the party head office on Smith Square, a 10minute walk away.
A Former MP, Mr Sebastian Coe, will take over from Mr Charles Hendry, another election victim, as Mr Hague's chief of staff. Claims that the shift was dictated by the need to save money were also denied. Aides say the shift is designed to end fragmented power-structures - "people traipsing across from Westminster".
The organisational move either coincided with or was designed to neutralise a new threat to Mr Hague's authority after a week in which the Tories were humiliatingly thrashed in the Winchester by-election on Thursday and a new pro-democracy group launched a media campaign.
Paid advertisements appeared in key Tory papers, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, appealing to "all Conservative Party supporters".
The advertisements, likely to be the first of a series funded by the Yorkshire millioniare businessman Mr Peter Gregory, demand that one member/one vote elections be used to choose the party chairman, currently appointed by the leader, and a majority of the 13-man board which Mr Hague is setting up at party headquarters.
But under Mr Hague's plans only six of the 13 will be directly elected and others will "be in his pocket", critics say. "This must be wrong, it certainly isn't democratic. Members are not being trusted," the advertisement said. The campaign reflects the views of four small reformist groups, led by the Charter Movement, founded in 1980.
Its leader, Mr Eric Chalker, has finally begun to see his agenda enacted in the wake of a crushing defeat at the polls. Last night he rejected the label "rebels", saying that Mr Hague had called for contributions to the reform programme. Reformers fear the Tories are going down a centralising path, emulating Tony Blair's reforms in Labour's ranks. Loyalists deny it. "There's no control freakdom or bossiness, nothing like the wooden-top control you get with Labour," one aide said.