After this morning's story about how CCHQ is reducing the power of party members in the forthcoming candidate selections, here is news of another example of an association being stopped from proceeding as it wanted to during a selection.
On Saturday 18th July, 12 candidates had been due to be interviewed in Dudley North, but they all received an email on the evening of Thursday 16th from the association chairman, Martin Duffield, explaining that "following a meeting today with Gareth Fox (Candidates Department) and John Maples (Party Vice-Chairman) we have been informed that we cannot proceed with the interview process".
The reason was that the Dudley North association had opted to interview nine men and three women, in contravention of the rule stating that there should be a 50:50 male:female ratio throughout the process.
The association had taken the view that since only eight of the 44 applicants were women, to interview six of them seemed somewhat excessive and discriminatory towards the 36 men who had applied. Instead, they sought to interview the best twelve applicants, who happened to be nine men and three women.
But CCHQ refused to allow the process to continue although, according to the association chairman, it did not intervene to stop the process until five days after it had been sent the list of names, meaning that the candidates for interview had very limited notice of the change of plan.
Final confirmation of the abandonment of the process came in an email from Gareth Fox on July 21st, in which he simply said that "unfortunately the Dudley North Parliamentary selection will not now go ahead in this tranche and will be re-advertised at a later date".
Martin Duffield tells me that he is "bemused" at the turn of events and that he feels the association has been treated "shabbily", not least because they are yet to be given any official notice of the new selection rules revealed by ConservativeHome this morning, which will presumably apply to Dudley North. He said that the local party was "desperate to get started".
The previously selected candidate stood down at the beginning of March, but the selection was delayed until after the local and European elections. This further delay will mean that a candidate will not have been in place for most of this year in a seat which is 106th on the Conservative target list and held by Labour minister Ian Austin with a notional majority of 4,106.
Jonathan Isaby
