Hey, wanna join a road trip? It must all have sounded as close to fun and sexy as being a young Tory can ever get: a new kind of election campaigning, more about sunny day trips to marginal seats and boozy camaraderie down the pub than leafleting morosely in the rain. And for Mark Clarke, the failed parliamentary candidate behind this mobilisation of the yoof for David Cameron, it could easily have been a stepping stone to greater things.

Former Tory parliamentary hopeful at centre of Elliott Johnson bullying claims Read more

Yet this week Clarke was finally expelled from the party following repeated allegations of bullying, blackmail attempts and young women being pressured into sex. “Mark pulled me aside and … [said] they could do all these great things for me if I joined them,” an anonymous female volunteer named only as Natasha told BBC2’s Newsnight. And then, she claimed, he put his hand up her skirt. She left the room only to find the mood had, allegedly, turned ugly on her return: “He sort of said if you’re not one of us ... we will destroy you.”

Since Clarke strongly denies all these allegations, the Conservative party has arguably failed in its duty of care to all sides by not properly investigating until now complaints about his behaviour made to three successive chairs (Sayeeda Warsi, Grant Shapps and, currently in the post, Lord Feldman). But whoever was behind it, something very dark seems to have been unfolding in this little fiefdom.

Ben Howlett, now MP for Bath, says the atmosphere was so poisonous during his time as chair of Conservative Future, the party’s youth wing, that his mental health suffered. And all this only came to light after Elliott Johnson, a 21-year-old Tory activist, killed himself. While one can never know exactly what drives a young man to suicide, Elliott left letters claiming to have been bullied by Clarke and others.

Student politics was always a byword for adolescent zealotry and generously hideous behaviour, of course. In that sense little has changed since Norman Tebbit shut down the Federation of Conservative Students, a hotbed of drunken groping at discos and increasingly outrageous ideology, in the 80s.

But there’s something more profoundly disturbing about these tales of young Tories creeping around gathering dirt to use against each other. It’s partly that ideas, outrageous or otherwise, barely seem to have come into it. And if you strip politics of ideas, you’re left with the dregs: dreary factionalism, careerism and self-obsession. They weren’t knifing each other over ways to change the world, but over getting seats, or jobs with MPs, or proximity to power of any kind. Less House of Cards, more The Apprentice.

What an introduction to Westminster that must have been, for idealistic twentysomethings getting their first taste of politics – but what a mirror to hold up to their elders, too. For where, exactly, did they get this notion that it’s all about bald men fighting over a comb?

Many in Labour will want to see the Road Trip revelations as a resurgence of the “nasty party”, evidence of some peculiar ugliness buried in Tory DNA. But bullying behaviour and self-absorbed factionalism are not unique to any political party (or indeed profession). Not so long ago it was the Liberal Democrats on the hook over their shameful failure to investigate complaints of sexual harassment levelled against Lord Rennard, their campaign guru.

And Labour’s current death struggle for control of the steering wheel – in which it barely seems to matter where the car’s going, so long as the other guy isn’t driving it – resembles nothing more than student politics for people old enough to know better.

I was all set to write about how the Road Trip culture was a clueless, grotesque caricature of the jobs some seemed desperate to get. I was going to write about how the grown-ups have actually moved on from the days of whips keeping little black books of dirty secrets, and using these to blackmail MPs; about how many of those elected after the expenses scandal are interestingly conflicted about scrabbling up the greasy pole. It’s all true enough. But then I caught Ken Livingstone on telly, deep in a hole and not so much still digging as bringing in a JCB.

Trident opponent Ken Livingstone joins Labour defence review Read more

“He started it,” whined Livingstone, when invited to apologise for calling a shadow defence minister – who had challenged him over defence policy – “disturbed”. (Livingstone says he didn’t realise Kevan Jones had suffered from depression in the past, although Jones has long been open about it, so presumably Livingstone was just accidentally stigmatising mentally ill people generally, not Jones in particular.)

But Livingstone must have known – having just been parachuted in over the head of Maria Eagle, the shadow defence secretary, to supervise her defence review – that she was smarting. And he still chose to describe her as being “silly” if she was offended at the implication she needs a babysitter. For nothing reassures a woman that the chaps take her seriously like being called silly, obviously.

Labour has just had its own surge of young, mustard-keen activists brought in by Jeremy Corbyn. Many are joining Momentum, a grassroots movement-within-a-party promising to make politics almost as exciting as Road Trip, where the idealistic and naive will inevitably rub shoulders with veterans of the viciously personal 1980s struggle between soft and hard left. Already, some old Momentum hands are muttering dark threats against Blairite MPs. And so a new generation learns that this is what politics is all about.

Many people who read about Road Trip will perhaps have felt sympathy for Elliott Johnson’s parents, but then shrugged and moved on. They will tell themselves that politics was always a viper’s nest or that these were just kids (although Clarke was 38), and they’ll learn. But one day some of those kids may be in charge, and if these are the lessons they take into public life we’re all in trouble. Few MPs now work their way straight up from student politics but all will have done their share of volunteering: knocking on doors, leafleting in the rain, arguing in the pub. The grassroots voluntary party is where politicians acquire their craft.

Imagine the sort of people who would take one look at a backstabbing, bullying world of battling for control over others and walk away. And now imagine the sort for whom it would be love at first sight; the sort who will rise like poisoned cream to the top, and curdle there.