Is CCHQ showing favoritism in Mayoral race?

An events co-ordinator at CCHQ has sent out this email to members of the Fastrack donors' club:

"Fastrack, our donor club for members in their 20s and 30s, are meeting the Mayoral candidates Nick Boles, Cllr. Victoria Borwick and Cllr. Warwick Lightfoot on Thursday 16th November to discuss their ‘Conservative Vision For London’.  The discussion is taking place at Conservative Campaign Headquarters from 6.30 – 8.30pm and we have some places available – these will be allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis."

I'm sure it will be a very interesting meeting but in the run-up to an election CCHQ should be extra careful not to organise meetings where one or more candidates are favoured over others.  I have checked with one of the other candidates - Lee Rotherham - and he was not even invited to be on this 'Vision for London' panel.  Naughty, naughty Central Office!  10.30am update: "The event has now been postponed because of closure of the CCHQ press conference facility.  When it is rearranged let's hope it is a more inclusive gathering..."

Meanwhile Nick Ferrari, LBC radio presenter, has continued to complain about the Tory primary timetable.  On Saturday's Radio 4 PM programme and in Saturday's FT, Mr Ferrari repeated his concern that candidates were being asked to campaign for too long in advance of the 2008 mayoral election.  The FT reported that:

"Mr Ferrari exacerbated Mr Cameron's woes by saying he was "absolutely" considering running as an independent. Business people had already pledged "not far off" the £1m needed to fund his run at the top London job."

Boris Johnson, the shadow education minister, told the FT that he had rebuffed attempts to persuade him to run.

Comments

[Sally Roberts]

We have "missed the boat" by not taking Mr Ferrari on board! He is going to be a charismatic figure if he does decide to run and his votes would all come from Conservative supporters! I listen regularly to his breakfast show on LBC and not only is he a superb journalist and broadcaster but he has first-class skills in publicising not only himself but any cause with which he chooses to align himself. I think we should try again to get him into the Conservative Party fold as he will be a winning candidate - for OR against us!

[old right whinger]

We havn`t yet grasped that the mayoralty is a high profile job for a big established name such as a film or media star. An electorate like this is tailormade for a Reagan or Schwartzeneggar (sic!) not a candidate used to small electorates. Actually being able to run the place, or aspects of it, are a secondary consideration!

[Phil Taylor]

Central office seem to be a bit conflicted here. Apparently these three candidates, who all came forward before the original deadline in August, were not good enough to allow the process to remain on track but they are good enough to entertain the Fastrack crowd.

If I was a one of the "members in their 20s and 30s" I might feel patronised by this invitation.

[George Reynolds]

Get real. The kind of right wing populist rubbish spoken by the self-serving Ferrari would be an absolute disaster for the party in London.

[Sally Roberts]

Listen carefully, George Reynolds! I never said that I agreed with every word he said.... but I do think we should take his considerable populist skills very seriously!

[George Reynolds]

We don't need populism we need a coherent, positive Conservative agenda for London. We don't need a DJ who shoots his mouth off, flirts with the leadership of the party and then bad mouths it in the press when he doesn't get his own way.

[James Maskell]

Interesting update there...rather good luck for CCHQ dont you think? It would be highly embarassing if the event happened and it looked like CCHQ was showing favoritism. Now the even is being postponed, they can make it seem more fair without it looking like they are re-thinking how it was organised due to this bad press...

[Graeme Archer]

I agree with George, especially his second posting. Is Ferrari really the sort of candidate we need? He's welcome to stand in the Conservative primary election - if he's as great as he keeps telling the newspapers, presumably "we" would vote for him; although you couldn't pay me to vote for him, to be honest, and if that sort of rentagob guff is what it takes to defeat Livingstone then I despair. No I don't, because it's not true. Charismatic is *not* the same thing as "being a DJ" or speaking like a News of the World editorial.

[More to the Point]

Further to your breaking news about Dave wanting Boles - bears still ain't using bog roll & the Pope's not yet a Moonie.

[Og]

What seems to be quite obvious about the London mayoralty (probably not true of other mayoralties) is that it is ill-suited to party politics. Consider the type of candidate it attracts and their relationship with their nominal sponsoring party:

Red Ken: disowned by Labour, eventually asked back (on account of his puzzling popularity among Londoners, not because he changed his views)

Dobbo: Probably didn't win all the available votes in his own household. Totally out of sync with Nu Labour, now an opponent of it.

The villain Archer: Hague's self-confessed worst mistake, a chancer and lightweight.

Shagger Norris: at arm's length to the Tories, a position CCHQ was comfortable with, never entirely trusting him.

Hughes: In tune with his party, to be fair, but only 15% of first choice votes, thereby underperforming against his party's notional poll position, and this when up against a Labour oppoenent as whackily left wing as Red Ken! Barely did better than the nonetity Cramer in 2000.

CONCLUSION: It's a popularity contest with little or no relation to manifestos for London. Boris would win it hands down, but rightly avoids it. The LibDems have no one remotely capable of winning it. Red Ken plans to be there at least until his beachfront retirement home near Havana is completed, which at Cuban rates of progess might be 2012.

If Rudy Giuliani fails to get the White House in 2008, the Tories shouls snap him up quick. He's the man for it.

[Mark Clarke]

I do think you are being a little harsh on Fastrack here. The purpose of Fastrack is to help raise money for the Party. It is not a campaigning vehicle for the Party or for any individual (Mayoral candidate or otherwise). As such it is run by a committee who seek to find speakers and put on events which they believe will attract young donors. This event was put on with that in mind. Whoever, wins the mayoral election will benefit from the support of Donor Clubs like Fastrack whose money supports whoever is the Conservative candidate without favour. Given that there are more candidates who have applied for the mayoral race (many undisclosed to date) than one could reasonably put on a panel, some choices have to be made. Those choices are made by the Fastrack committee not CCHQ.

This is a non story. But a shame that a group which very transparently helps to fund the Party by:

a) bringing in young people
b) encouraging mass smallish donations rather than reliance on a couple of big donors

is coming in for some unjustified criticism.

[Ted]

From Wikipedia
"Ferrari was a news reporter on the Sunday Mirror in 1981 and has had many other posts in journalism: ShowBiz Reporter at The Sun and Editor of the paper's "Bizarre" gossip page, Editor of the News of the World's Sunday Magazine and Assistant Editor of The Daily Mirror. A school-friend of former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, Ferrari joined him at L!ve TV where he devised such programmes as Topless Darts, the News Bunny and the weather presented by a dwarf on a trampoline."
He might have populist skills but having listened to his opinions I wouldn't want him as a Tory candidate - worse than Archer! Ken might have turned London into a circus act but that doesn't mean we go with a clown.

[Frank]

Actually, we don't need a Mayor of London it's a stupid invention. On that basis let's have a populist run!

I cannot believe a serious politiacn would look at this. That said Red Ken does need removing given some of his anti semitic comments and own in house foreign policy agenda

[Dot Con]

Ferrari is no more than a "B" list shock-jock and a wobbly self-publicist.
To challenge Livingstone effectively will require more than burble and bluster aimed at people stuck in traffic jams. He needs to be picked apart on planning, crime and transport, challenged on why he has failed to bring inner and outer London together and asked why he can barely go longer than a month without being offensive to someone and heaping embarrassment on London internationally.
Our candidate will need to demonstrate an ability to bring fresh thinking to all of these issues and to work effectively with the London Boroughs - a majority of which are now Conservative. You don't manage this from the safety of a radio studio.
I don't know why we are so obsessed with finding someone who is "famous". We should instead look at people with a real understanding of these issues at both local and strategic level and then help them to build up their profile. Livingstone made his name in local government but we still prefer to regard it as a vaguely embarrassing backwater - even though we now love localism.
You'd have thought that the Archer experience would have taught us that we need substance and integrity rather more than name recognition.

[Roger Evans]

The big problem is that there is no 'person spec' for the job. The party don't know if they want a former big hitter brought back from retirement or an ambitious new politician on the way up. Six years of Livingstone have failed to define the role for anyone else.

Instead of seeking to address that question, they are dividing into two camps: The 'magic wands' just want a celebrity and expect stardust to do the rest; The 'ostrich's' wish it wasn't happening and go on about abolition, yesterday's battle.

Is that 'Norris for Mayor 3' approaching in the distance?

[Matt Davis]

There is a logical train of thought that could be followed here:

We are told that we must continue to support David Cameron because he is the best chance the party has of winning a General Election. Logically therefore we ought to take the same approach to the London Mayoralty and choose the candidate with the best chance of winning that too, whether we agree with him or her or not.The Mayoralty will be won by the candidate, regardless of party, who gains the bulk of the floating voters as Livingstone has now done twice thanks to what the voters perceive as his populist appeal.

The only name of those whose hats are in the ring who has the existing populist profile amongst Londoners is, Nick Ferrari, whether you like him or not or agree with him or not.

[london tory]

It won't work to run someone who has never been elected to anything more than a local council seat up against the politically shrewd and well entrenched Mayor Livingstone as well as one, maybe, two well-known centre-right candidates standing for UKIP and/or as an Independent. This is not a party-based election where the candidate's rosette wins it for them, making it much bigger and much harder than even winning a parliamentary constituency--never mind a council seat in a safe Tory ward on a safe Tory council.

The party has been lucky to have someone of a similar standing to Livingstone the other times, once after they totally screwed up their own primary (sound familiar?) by ignoring the very sensible advice they received from many different quarters about the candidate who ended up in prison.

Whoever thought up the idea of having the primary so far in advance shouldn't have another one. It discourages the serious candidates and just leaves us with two-bit nobodies who don't have anything else to do.

Finding someone who, as London expert Tony Travers says, is "Populist, capable of giving as good as they get and willing to mix it" is more than stardust or celebrity, and requires a certain believability that one could actually be a seriously effective CEO for the city and a brilliant campaigner.

Unfortunately as Dr. Travers adds in that Financial Times article "not many leading Conservatives fit that description." At the moment, however, we don't even have leading Conservatives, just a housewife, an economist and a think tank wonk--all unknown, none of whom have ever even won a parliamentary election, and all of whom are so uninspiring that the lack of decent alternatives led David Cameron to extend the deadline for candidates in the hope that he would not have to put up with any of them.

[Walaa Idris]

To George Reynolds 09:15 AM,

THANK YOU

[Tam Large]

CCHQ trying to fix the selection? You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment....

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

LT you also have Dr Lee Rotherham who is Sargeant in the TA, rather clever, speaks rather well and has novel ideas. He would wipe the floor with any of those people invited to Fasttrack, no doubt that is why he was left out.

[Martin Hoscik]

I hope Tim doesn't mind if I lazily cut and paste the full text of a letter I sent to the Standard recently (I think a shortened version was published):

"I read Keith Dovkants's feature on the lack of a potential 'Beat Ken' with great interest.

Despite a few doubtful claims (Dobson surely lost because of Labour's backing and not despite) Keith accurately highlights the lack of a 'Beat Ken' candidate. However he seems to have missed a vital contributory factor namely that a decade and a half of GLC abolition left London without a vital training ground for city-wide politicians.

Over the past six years both the Conservatives and LibDems have failed use the London Assembly as such a training ground yet what the capital needs is a 'Leader of the London Opposition' - opposing Livingstone has to be a full time job it can't be done in the few weeks before an election.

The Conservative idea of an open primary was an example of a good idea let down by dismal results - few of the potential candidates have anything like the experience needed to take on Livingstone.

The notion that an unknown policy wonk or a Kensington and Chelsea councillor is likely to succeed where the widely admired Norris has failed would be laughable if it didn't doom London to an artificial contest the results of which would be wholly predictable.

Why would someone's status as a millionaire businessman appeal to the families who live at or below the poverty line?

As for running a celebrity candidate I've never heard a more depressing idea. Would someone who has no natural political base to rely on really be prepared to make the difficult and unpopular decisions which governing London requires?

Of course this touches on a major contradiction those who wish to unseat Ken must somehow square. He's routinely accused of populism yet the biggest idea any of the would-be candidates can come up with is to scrap the congestion charge they claim he introduced against the will of Londoners.

In drawing attention to the issue they constantly highlight that Livingstone is prepared to make those tough decisions and leave themselves looking like the 'say anything to win' candidate.

Keith has asked the right questions but the Tories aren't even close to providing the answers."

Bringing the comments directly back to this discussion, reading many of the comments on this blog over the past few months I often want to cry - I can't believe so many of your party can't or won't take both Livingstone and the job seriously.

No-one's going to elect an abolitionist candidate. You can come up with all the 'cool' reasons why you think they will but it's cuckoo-land politics and any party running on that basis will get a drubbing. Feel free to waste an election and put it to the test and when you come fourth behind the Greens please then try and take things seriously for 2012.

You can run on an anti-congestion charge message for the third election in a row but the evidence of 2000 and 2004 is that it's not a guaranteed election winner and makes you look pretty 'single issue'.

What's your message to those households who can't afford a car? Where will you get the money to invest in the buses if you scrap the charge?

Do you have anything to say on any other issue affecting Londoners?

The many Londoners who aren't millionaires aren't going to be impressed by someone waving their affluency in their face.

What's the message to those who live at or below the poverty line?

Why would some DJ who large numbers will never have heard of appeal to Londoners? What unique contribution could they make to a
campaign?

What experience of running a budget of billions do they have? Won't they look somewhat under qualified up against a man who has run London in two capacities?

[changetowin]

If a modernising candidate behaved in the spoilt brat way in which Ferrari is behaving everyone on this blog would be calling for their blood. The lastthing the Conservatives need for London is a shock jock.

[jeff randall]

"The notion that an unknown policy wonk or a Kensington and Chelsea councillor is likely to succeed where the widely admired Norris has failed would be laughable if it didn't doom London to an artificial contest the results of which would be wholly predictable."

Indeed. The road to City Hall is not paved with Kensington ladies' lunches or earnestly written public policy research papers.

[Opinicus]

@Hoscik No-one's going to elect an abolitionist candidate. You can come up with all the 'cool' reasons why you think they will but it's cuckoo-land politics and any party running on that basis will get a drubbing.

Fortunately, assertion isn't argument.

Fact 1 - The Conservatives have no candidate with a snowball's chance of winning against Ken. They have no alternative strategy, they have given up on the Congestion Charge, they have nothing new to say. Its all process and incremental administrative improvment. Its as sexy as Nora Batty.
Fact 2 - The Conservatives will lose, if they play the game.
Fact 3 - Any alternative strategy doesnt, therefore, have to guarantee a win, although that would be nice - just lose less badly. It would therefore be nice to have a platform we can believe in.
Fact 4 Turnout will be very poor. (Ken isn't that sexy himself (what has he achieved for all that extra money?), just the devil we know and more interesting than the alternatives.)
Fact 5 Therefore, it will be easier to win by energising the non voters than by trying to alter the voting patterns of the core committed supporters who turned out last time
Fact 6 To energise the non-voters you have to offer them something they aren't getting from the current two-Party fix.

Ergo give them something controversial

Abolish the Mayor and GLA.
Campaign on Labour spending London's money on its friends in Scotland

[Logos]

I think we can actually have our cake and eat it. We dont have to sell ourselves short by selecting a populist candidate, especially an embarassment like Ferrari. If you want to beat Gary Kasparov, don't play him at chess.

We should give Londoners more credit, talk about Ken's policy failures and how we would remedy them, simple as that

[Praguetory]

Strategically the best option is Lee Rotherham for Mayor. He would be a large step towards persuading the public that the Tories can cut taxes and waste. Unfortunately the stance of Osbourne is a plank in the other direction.

[jeff randall]

Reading the entries of--please tell us they are not party members--in favour of the so-called abolitionist candidate reminds us why our party doesn't run City Hall or the UK Parliament.

[Opinicus]

@jeff randall
Magesterial, despairing, condemnatory and

wrong.

It may have escaped your notice that the Conservative Party ARE currently NOT in control of City Hall or the UK parliament and we are apparently following strategies and policies of which you approve. How many more failures (of which you approve) is it going to take before you accept that that there might be a more successful alternative to going through the motions, playing the game and losing gracefully.

[question]

Were Andrew Boff and Richard Barnes invited to this event by CCHQ? It's pretty disgraceful if they were not.

[jeff randall]

"How many more failures (of which you approve) is it going to take before you accept that that there might be a more successful alternative to going through the motions, playing the game and losing gracefully."

This makes me wonder what a party member is supposed to be. Surely, someone who understands something about politics and elections. If you think Lee Rotherham in 2008, would do better than Steve Norris, it is a bit strange that you bother with a political party, not understanding politics.

[Roger Evans]

I don't support the idea of an 'abolitionist' candidate for 2008, but of course I have an interest...

It's an important debate which we need to have sooner rather than later. I have started a thread over at www.city-hall.blogspot.com and would be interested in comments from mamebers, non members, even prospective candidates.

[Roger Evans]

Sorry - final line should read 'members' - not 'mamebers'...

[jeff randall]

The need to win second preference votes is being overlooked by those who, foolishly, talk up the unelectable "abolitionist."

[Opinicus]

The policy needn't be "abolitionist" but a righteous anger at Ken's mismanagement leading to a call to give voters another say - a second referendum - on whether they want to continue with a Mayor and or a GLA. Blair only offered a Mayor and GLA whilst we were at the time, rather half-heartedly, in favour of only a GLA. Londoners were not given a choice. Given the steadily rising cost of the mayoralty, it is entirely reasonable to ask Londoners for a second opinion. If they vote yes then that is that and the Conservatives can run the Mayoralty cheaper and more efficiently than Ken but only the Conservatives will offer the choice to re-consider whether all that money is well spent and whether it is appropriate that all the costs of the Met (including diplomatic protection and anti-terror) and the costs of the Olympics should fall just on Londoners, whilst London's taxes are wasted on Labour's friends in Scotland.

The cry is "Let Londoners speak".

A referendum is a voice for London and all the polling evidence is that London is more ready to say something rude to the government than the rest of the country at present.

[interested party]

Check out the Outer-London Candidate Simon Fawthrop. He has more support than any other Candidate and unlike this Blog actually lists all the other declared Conservative Candidates and gives links to their web pages where known.