UK Edition 
Conservative membership swells by 36,000 ahead of leadership election
Tens of thousands of new members have joined the Conservatives in the last year, swelling the electorate that will choose Theresa May's successor.
The Tories now have more than 160,000 paid-up supporters, an increase of almost a third since March 2018.
Sources claimed the rise was down to a recruitment drive led by Brandon Lewis, who was appointed as party chairman in January 2018.
However the rapid growth is likely to spark further claims that the Tories have been "infiltrated" by hardline Brexiteers in recent months.
Tory members will be asked to vote for one of two final candidates in the summer, once MPs have whittled down a longlist of would-be leaders.
Mr Lewis, who will oversee the contest triggered by Mrs May, reveals the increase in the party's closely-guarded membership figures in an article for this newspaper.
The standard membership fee is £25 per year.
He also lists, as the issues that members "care about", the economy, housing, the environment, and the NHS.
His omission of any mention of Brexit is likely to be seen as a warning that the contest should not focus on the UK's departure from the EU.
However Mr Lewis, who was involved in a row with Boris Johnson over comments he made about women wearing burkas, insists he "must and will remain studiously neutral in this contest".
He states: "When I took on my role last January, I made it clear that building and professionalising our membership was a key priority.
"That is why I brought in specialist staff to improve our retention of members, centralised the administration of membership and built our campaign manager programme to drive steady, daily recruitment on the ground of those who share the party’s aims and values.
"This work has meant that in a year we have built our membership from 124,000 in March 2018 to over 160,000 today."
In March 2018 Mr Lewis said the party membership had grown by 6,000 since Mrs May’s initial Brexit agreement with the EU in December 2017.
The party's new official figure means it has 30,000 more members than the 130,000 registered in 2013, under David Cameron's premiership.
Earlier this year, Anna Soubry, a former Tory minister who quit the party over Brexit, claimed that Conservative associations had been "infiltrated" by former activists of Ukip, the party previously led by Nigel Farage.
“Overwhelmingly the majority of associations are being infiltrated by nationally orchestrated entryism, blatantly designed to remove rebel MPs who they label traitors,” she claimed.
Ms Soubry, who is campaigning to overturn the Brexit referendum result, said her values were “no longer welcome in the Conservative Party."
But a member of her association responded: "It’s a load of rubbish. I feel quite offended. We’re a broad church in the Conservative Party. People have returned and come back."
Mr Lewis insists that new members "have not always come from the expected places."
"The growth rate has been much higher in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland than in England," he states.
"And the areas in England where we have seen the biggest boost have been the East Midlands (39 per cent) and the North East (37 per cent).
"We have also grown our youth membership by 64%, and established 100 Young Conservative branches in the past year."
Earlier this month, Mr Farage predicted that the number of paid-up supporters of his new Brexit Party will outstrip the Conservatives’ members, believing the Tories' figure to be 124,000. His party's figures now exceed 100,000.
As of April 2018, Labour had 540,000 members.