My friend, the Labour MP Tom Harris, has today opined on a subject about which I have been meaning to post something for some time: whether it should matter if candidates seeking selection for a seat (and indeed seeking election to Parliament if they are selected) have long-standing local links to that constituency.
Tom Harris thinks not:
"You come across this nonsense a lot: only someone who has lived in a constituency all his life is deemed suitable as its MP. All other qualifications – political beliefs, ability to string a sentence together, personal honesty, track record of commitment to the party – are of less importance than the shining, glorious Holy Grail of having a politically correct postcode.
"Certainly, if the choice is between two candidates who are broadly equal in terms of ability and experience, then the local person (if there is one) would have an understandable advantage. But it’s hardly the most important qualification. And when a local candidate is roundly beaten in a fair and open democratic vote, then local members obviously agree."
I agree with him.
On the margins, there is probably a small premium in a candidate having had long-term links with a constituency, as they will know more people there to start with and may already have a record of local service to the community to their name. This is true of a considerable number of the likely new intake at the forthcoming general election. That said, it should not be forgotten that it may mean them having local "baggage" as well.
However, any selectorate or electorate should surely be first and foremost seeking to choose the person who they feel can best represent them, empathise with them and understand their local needs - regardless of their own geographical origins.
Yesterday's selection at which I presided in Suffolk Coastal was a case in point. Therese Coffey wowed the audience by demonstrating that she shared their political hopes and concerns, despite having been brought up in an urban area in the North West of England and latterly lived in rural Hampshire.
We would have a very different list of PPCs if the most local candidate had won every single selection - and I would contest that the party would probably be worse off for it.
Where was Margaret Thatcher's local seat when she was looking to enter politics in the 1950s? Certainly not the constituency for which she was selected and subsequently represented in Parliament for over three decades. "Finchley was not an area of London that I knew particularly well," wrote Baroness Thatcher in her memoirs about her search for a seat in advance of the 1959 general election.
Would those Tories who decry "non-local" candidates on comments threads on ConHome suggest that Mrs Thatcher should have waited however many years or decades for her home town of Grantham to be seeking a Tory candidate and then opted against seeking selection elsewhere if she had not been successful? I trust not.
The Lib Dems are probably the party most obsessed by having local candidates - partly because they cannot get many of their number elected on the basis of national policies.
But to join in a battle of "who's got the most local candidate?" cannot be healthy for politics in the long term.
Jonathan Isaby
