The YCs had gained a reputation for being priggish and stick-in-the-mud and recruiting new members proved almost impossible. When Malcolm Charlesworth, a member of the South Ella branch in Hull, wrote a manifesto on new branch formation in 1977, it fell flat. He advised: "It will be a case of ‘scouting around' for a suitable venue. You may be able to ‘hire' a room at the local pub. This may have the advantage of ‘beer on tap', but be warned of the temptations to under-age drinking." His plans were neatly typewritten with large, clear margins, but those inverted commas around anything "illicit" must have done much to put off potential members.

What is more, the youth wing of the party was becoming increasingly divided. With the expansion of the universities, the university-based Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) siphoned off many people who might otherwise have become YCs.

During the 1980s the FCS became increasingly militant — "more Thatcherite than Thatcher" — and difficult to control. In-fighting saw the FCS split into authoritarian, libertarian and wet factions. Then there was an alleged "riot" during the 1985 FCS conference at Loughborough University. Little actual damage was done — the bill for repairs amounted to less than £20 — but the tabloid press scented blood. The party chairman John Selwyn Gummer began to look for reasons to close down the FCS.

In the end, the task fell to his successor Norman Tebbit. In 1986, Harry Phibbs, a member of the FCS, published an interview with historian Nikolai Tolstoy in the FCS New Agenda magazine which repeated Tolstoy's accusation that Harold Macmillan had been complicit in war crimes. Today, Phibbs ruefully recalls that Tebbit had been looking for any excuse to "stamp on" the FCS. The Tolstoy debacle was the last straw and the FCS was disbanded.

That just left the out-of-fashion YCs who, Phibbs says, had simply become too "bland and goody-two-shoes". By September 1991, YC membership was 3,933 — an all-time low. In 1998 William Hague, then party leader, called an end to the Young Conservatives, 52 years after Lord Woolton had given them life. The movement which had once been the darling of prime ministers and party chairmen thanks to the energy of its local activists had been reduced to little more than an unpopular after-school club. Hague renamed the youth branch of the party Conservative Future.