In this article (submitted to ConservativeHome on 25th November) Andrew Woodman discusses the idea of an 'A' list of Tory candidates. News stories today confirm that David Cameron will detail the nature of that list in a speech tomorrow. Andrew Woodman is Deputy Chairman of South Derbyshire Conservative Future.
It is generally recognised, that the Conservatives need more female MPs. A paltry 17 out of 198 is not acceptable. Where there is disagreement, is in the way the party achieves higher female representation. There are those who believe all female shortlists are the answer. I myself do not believe in this. A constituency must be able to select from the widest possible base. Local parties may feel a local candidate would be most suitable for a constituency. What if there were no local female candidates? We would surely be doing ourselves a disservice going down the route of being forced to select someone with no links to the constituency just because of their sex.
In the quest for being more representative in one respect, we would become less representative in another and the electorate would surely see through this.
There is a proposal for an A list of 100 candidates for the top 100 target seats, with the party headhunting candidates to go on the list. I have two issues with this
Firstly, local parties may again wish to select a local candidate, as well as having candidates who performed well at the last election. In this situation, the existing candidate would have the advantage of being already known in the constituency.
Secondly, we shouldn't need to headhunt candidates. Potential candidates should headhunt us. If people haven't got the political passion to join the Conservative party and get involved, then would they have the passion to fight for the party at elections and in parliament? Perhaps the way to attract more high profile female candidates is nothing to do with candidate selection, but requires us to adopt female friendly policies.
If we want to headhunt, then why don't we do it in our own ranks. Firstly, we have many highly talented individuals who fought un-winnable northern seats at the last election. In my own area of the East Midlands for instance, we have ConservativeHome.com contributor Jonathan Sheppard who fought a highly professional campaign with limited resources and even less foot-soldiers, yet still managed 12,000 plus votes; Priti Patel, an extremely talented candidate who fought an inner city Nottingham seat in May, Nicola Le Page who achieved a fantastic result in North West Leicestershire against a popular local candidate and Andrew Griffith who, as a local candidate, is ebbing away at the Labour majority in Corby and so nearly won last time. Would we want to replace any of these great candidates with some form of centrally imposed candidate?
Secondly, we have the biggest political youth movement in Europe. What are we doing to harness the political talent from within our own ranks? I know of the frustrations encountered by potential candidates who are not part of the London loop. Associations do not want to spend money (if they have it) on campaigning. They are saving it for that rainy day. Young candidates can be mistrusted. What do these whippersnappers know about campaigning and why aren't they doing it the way we've always done it? The party has many networking events, but these are almost always in London, and not too convenient for those young professionals who may be based elsewhere.
I believe it is time we set up an academy style approach to recruit and test the talent within Conservative Future. We firstly need a dedicated website to act as an accessible registration point. No more of the discretion of a local party approach to recruit candidates out of London. Secondly, when we have a list of interested potential candidates, they must be tested and trained with a roving academy. One idea might be a series of weekend courses taking place in the South, Midlands and North. Here, potential candidates can be tested and trained by present and ex members of parliament, as well as specialist media and communications coaches. Indeed there must be many of our current PPCs who actually work in Communications who may be able to help in this area. By taking it around the country, we will widen our base of potential candidates and in making it a more lengthy procedure, we can rigorously test them, so only those who are truly competent, and will be an asset to our party will get to graduate.
I strongly believe we do not have to headhunt outside our party to solve our balance of MPs problem. We already have quality candidates for our top 100 target seats. By taking an academy approach to recruiting the next generation of candidates, we can ensure that we have passionate conservatives from the widest possible base in place to fight the elections
of the future.
