ConservativeHome's Seats & Candidates blog

Andy Jennings adopted for Greenwich and Lewisham GLA seat

Cllr Andy Jennings was selected as the Conservative GLA candidate for Greenwich and Lewisham on Saturday night.  In the last GLA elections the second-placed Tory candidate won 20.4% of the vote - compared to the winning Labour candidate's 33.3%.  According to Greenwich Conservatives Andy beat Antonia Cox and Cllr Philip Briscoe.

Finalists for Ealing North

The four finalists for the open primary for Ealing North (projected Labour majority of 7,693) on 9th May are:

• Aidan Burley, a Hammersmith & Fulham councillor;
• Ian Gibb, Deputy Leader of Ealing Council;
• Mimi Harker, Chiltern district councillor; and
• Barrister Sheela Macintosh.

Source: Ealing Today.

First female GLA candidate selected

Councillor Shirley Houghton was last night selected on the first ballot for the London Assembly seat of Lambeth and Southwark (held by Labour's Valerie Shawcross). The Conservatives came third there last time but this is significant as she is the first female candidate selected to stand in the next Assembly elections.

Two of the nine current Conservative Assembly members are women, Angie Bray and Elizabeth Howlett, but Bray was selected for the extremely marginal Ealing Central and Acton parliamentary seat last October, and Howlett is standing down. Assembly candidacies seem to be increasingly competitive, with people like Kit Malthouse and James Cleverly (people who have been through to the final stages of selection for winnable parliamentary seats), being selected.

Also, I believe double-congratulations are in order for Shirley - she marries fellow Tower Hamlets Councilllor Philip Briscoe (who was in the final stage of this selection!) this weekend.

Update: Councillor Andy Jennings was selected for the GLA seat of Greenwich & Lewisham on Friday

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Stephen Mold selected for Derby North

Stephen Mold was selected on Sunday. Derby North has seen considerable boundary changes and is a Lab-Lib-Con marginal.

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Simon Jones selected for Dagenham & Rainham

Simon Jones was tonight selected to take on Jon Cruddas.

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Helen Whately selected for Kingston and Surbiton

Congratulations to Helen Whately and best of luck to her in the battle to overturn a projected LibDem majority of 9,048.

Commiserations to Kevin Davis - the previous candidate for the seat who was second last night.

Dagenham & Rainham shortlist

Jane Archer, Paul Bristow, Simon Jones and Claire Palmer were shortlisted from eight yesterday. An open primary on April 20th will decide on the final candidate (we've been asked to point out that the 50/50 male/female split is coincidental). Jon Cruddas has a notional majority of 6500.

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Keely Rogers selected for Birmingham Northfield

Overcoming opposition from three other Midlands Tories, Keely Rogers has been adopted today for the Labour held seat of Birmingham Northfield.  Keely, 25, describes herself as a community activist on the right of the party with a passionate belief in the social justice agenda.  She faces a projected Labour majority of 8,179.

Nigel Hastilow adopted for Halesowen and Rowley Regis

Our 2001 candidate in Birmingham Edgbaston has been selected for Halesowen and Rowley Regis.  Mr Hastilow needs to overturn a projected Labour majority of 4,140.

Nigel Hastilow is a blogger and offers some strong views in his regular postings.  Here's one of them from last Wednesday:

"No doubt most Guantanamo prisoners are terrorists. But if that’s the case, prove it. Bring them to trial – in a reputable jurisdiction, not a kangaroo court set up and run by the US military.  Charge them in public. Give them decent legal representation. Let the case against them – and the case for the defence – be heard. Let justice be done and let it be seen to be done. Justly, openly, fairly.  Until we insist on an end to arbitrary imprisonment without trial of this kind we are no better than the Iranians who captured our sailors and detained them illegally, to the outrage of an entire nation.  You can’t fight wars and pretend to support the self-appointed world policeman of the United States and retain any fig leaf of respectability if you behave with a complete lack of respect for the basic demands of legality and justice.  Guantanamo Bay reduces every nation which connives in its existence to the same low level as the vile terrorists it purports to defend us from."

He'll need to keep his blog under control if he's to avoid the bad publicity he caused William Hague when he was last a candidate.

Matthew Laban selected for Enfield Haringey GLA seat

More than two hundred Tory members chose teacher and Enfield Cllr Matthew Laban, Cabinet Member for Housing, to be the party's GLA candidate for Enfield Haringey last night.  Matthew overcame opposition from former local councillor David Conway, Tower Hamlets councillor Shirley Haughton and Kabir Sabar, previously parliamentary candidate for Walsall South.  Nearly 11,000 UKIP votes contributed to Labour winning this seat in the 2004 Assembly elections.

The European List opens but will it be worth joining?

This has just been emailed from CCHQ: "We will shortly be commencing the process for the European selections and it was agreed recently by the Committee on Candidates that a separate European List be established.  If you would like to be included in the European List, please email XX by the end of the month. It would be helpful if you could indicate in your email to XX your two preferred Party Regions.  We will write to you again by the end of May."

Related ToryDiary link on plans to disenfranchise members in the selection of Tory MEPs.

Keith Girling selected for Bassetlaw

Keith Girling, a Councillor in Newark, has beaten Emma McClarkin for the Bassetlaw nomination. He has a notional Labour majority of 8000 to overcome, but the local Association did win the Conservative Party's top award for campaigning excellence (and a trip to the USA!).

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Getting selected

Julie Moody, recently selected for Middlesborough South and East Cleveland, has started her new blog by describing her feelings on being selected:

"Getting selected last Saturday was a very humbling experience and it also made for a quiet drive home. My 2 daughters in the back seat have got so used to a tired grumpy mummy going home fed up with losing that they didn't quite know what to say when I'd won... I was so stunned that I was lost for words too - which is rare for anyone who knows me. In the end all I could say to them apart from the excitement of finding a constituency who wanted me and me also wanting them-a bonus in the mad world of politics-was that I felt that when they got older we would look back on that day and say life was never quite the same again..."

Deputy Editor