Let's not mince words about this. The SW Norfolk executive have disgraced themselves. The decision to refer Liz Truss's selection, which she won clearly on the first ballot, back to a meeting of the full association is scandalous.
If what a person has been doing in their private life is legal, that is an end of it. Liz's past and present relationships are none of the association's business. I answered "yes, there is" at every selection to the question about anything in your past that would embarass us -because I had been a member of the Labour party. I would not have dreamed of discussing my personal life in answer to that question.
This is rank sexism. The neanderthal idea that your love life has a bearing on your ability to do a job. I hoped decisions like this were part of our party's past. This sort of thing is what has, in the past, forced gay candidates to lie about their sexuality. It does not matter whether the affair was public knowledge or not (it was). It is a matter for the parties involved and no-one else.
SW Norfolk's Executive have damaged the reputation of our national party. They have damaged all the work that David Cameron and many other forward-thinking associations round the country have done to show how we have changed, selecting candidates from a broad base, women as well as men. Of course one must not judge the whole association by the small number of people on its Executive. The full meeting may well be more sensible.
If not, CCHQ must act. We cannot have the ugly spectacle of a female candidate for a safe seat deselected because of her private life, doing nothing illegal and something that is entirely her business. As a commenter on the S&C thread said, Liz was not seeking ordination to the priesthood. She wanted to be an MP and she was chosen on the first ballot to do just that.
Going forwards, selection rules that already forbid questions about marital status and childcare must be tightened to specifically exclude matters of relationships and sexuality. These are not the 1950s. Object to AWS? Think there is no sexism left in our party? The treatment of Liz Truss, up to now, proves otherwise.
