The last week has been pretty wretched for the Tories in Ipswich in the wake of local councillor Steve Flood retweeting blatantly Islamophobic Twitter feeds.

And the way the local party - its council group and association - dealt with the issue was pretty shoddy. It's not as if they haven't got experience of this kind of thing, Mr Flood is the fourth Ipswich Conservative councillor to get in trouble for offensive social media activity!

I'm starting to feel that the totally inadequate way this latest crisis was handled suggests there needs to be a total change at the top of the local Tory organisation - perhaps with the existing structures being dissolved and replaced with something new.

The posts Mr Flood retweeted were clearly Islamophobic. Ipswich Conservative MP Tom Hunt described one as "reprehensible." But the first response of the Tory high command in Ipswich was to blame Labour for highlighting the issue - and to say they would not be doing anything unless and official complaint was made.

In what dimension would anyone think that response was acceptable, given the nature of the material we're talking about?

To his great credit Mr Hunt saw immediately how serious the issue was once alerted to it while he was on holiday hundreds of miles away from the town. I am sure it was his firm action that ensured the Ipswich Association did suspend Mr Flood three days after they were alerted to his social media activity.

It can't have been easy for Mr Hunt because he is personal friends with Mr Flood and his family - but he called me to roundly condemn the retweets and say action had to be taken. That took political courage.

I was then told by Ipswich Conservatives that "our position is changing." They did then suspend Mr Flood - but they couldn't resist having a go at Labour for having the temerity to comment on the position.

What was interesting was a comment I heard from one well-known Tory from outside Ipswich who said: "What would the Ipswich Conservatives have done if they found a retweet like that from a Labour councillor? They'd have been straight on the phone to you or your colleagues!"

As I said, this is the fourth time in five years that a Conservative borough councillor has got into trouble with social media.

There are many Ipswich Conservative councillors who are very keen to stir up arguments on social media. Most of the time they rein themselves in to avoid getting into trouble - but sometimes they seriously overstep the mark.

Privately I've said to officials that they ought to warn and keep an eye on these posts. My advice has either been ignored or forgotten about.

The posts Mr Flood retweeted were so offensive that we could not publish them in full. They both started with an offensive comment - it wasn't hidden in the middle of a 280-character epic.

Why on earth wasn't someone from the association keeping an eye on these posts and raising them with the executive? They must have known Mr Flood was one of their more robust members when using social media.

Why weren't the retweets instantly taken down? They were still there 48 hours after I'd made my initial call?

Most of all, why wasn't it blatantly obvious as soon as I sent screengrabs of the posts to them that they were Islamophobic? Why was there any question of not taking immediate action? Why was the initial response to blame the opposition?

I've spoken to several Tories who are not members of the Ipswich Conservative Association executive who have rolled their eyes and who feel that ICA's actions have tarnished the whole party locally.

Tom Hunt appears to be very unhappy with how this was handled - and clearly his anger prompted the action when it did come. But it shouldn't have required the intervention of an MP on holiday to get the wheels in motion.

Politics in Ipswich needs a strong, decent Conservative association to support the many thousands of decent Conservative voters who live in the town. Unfortunately it hasn't got that at present!