The selection procedure for North East Cambridgeshire is again raising questions about the Party’s handling of the A List.
It seems that the seat was not advertised to people outside the Priority List. In a major - and unpublicised - break from previous practise, candidates from the general list only found out that the selection process was open by reading about it on this website.
Up to now, it has been the custom for the Candidates Department to contact all approved candidates, while underlining to non-A Listers that they had to prove a strong local affinity with the constituency.
The clear effect of this change is to stop people with local links from putting their names forward, to the benefit of the “approved” candidates.
In particular, there were four or five wider candidates who met the deadline we publicised. These did qualify as locals, and the Association wanted to interview them. However, they failed to meet yet another unbroadcast deadline, set by CCHQ just for local candidates. That deadline was the very day we ran the news about the selection being open.
One known casualty was Lee Rotherham. The author and Eurosceptic campaigner grew up in the Fens and has family there, but was blocked from interview - apparently despite previously informing Candidates of an interest in the seat.
ConservativeHome continues to hear stories of CCHQ calling local Associations and encouraging the selection of women candidates. Associations are told that they'll receive regular visits from leading members of the shadow cabinet if they select women. Chairmen with parliamentary ambitions of their own are given special treatment.
Some Associations - like NE Cambridgeshire - continue to bravely resist these 'encouragements'. At the end of October the proportion of women selected was 30%.