Tory intrigue over 'stitch-up' in selecting candidates for safe seats is real civil war

In January Health Secretary Victoria Atkins hosted a large reception in Parliament for the One Nation group on the liberal left of the Tory party. The event was meant as a welcome to the new One Nation candidates who have been selected to fight the next general election for Conservatives.

At a time when various cabinet ministers and former cabinet ministers from the left and right are publicly showboating their credentials to replace Rishi Sunak the gathering was more than a get-together of like-minded wet Tories, it was a show of strength.

As one Brexiteer from the right noted: “It looks like the One Nation lot have sown up the safe seats.”

It was a reminder that while the battle for the soul of the Conservatives is being played out in the public eye with the alternatives to take over from Rishi Sunak, the real fight is taking place in the undergrowth of the party.

With the Tories now expected to be dealt possibly their most crushing defeat in their 346-year history, the real issue about its future direction is who survives after the bloodbath.

Which MPs are reelected and what sort of new candidates win seats? Are they wet liberal social democrat types from the left of the party or economic or cultural conservatives from the right? Are they the ones who support Penny Mordaunt on the left or Suella Braverman on the right?

As a result, the competition for who gets selected for winnable seats – always intense – has had a new dimension added to it altogether.

Intrigue in Southend

Several tales around selections for key seats seem to suggest something potentially sinister is going on. As claims about one constituency over the weekend seemed to prove.

Over the weekend I was contacted by a Tory MP and an activist with the same story. The selection for the new candidate Rochford and Southend seat being vacated by Boris Johnson loyalist Sir James Duddridge had been “nobbled”, they both alleged.

The two sources, later confirmed by a third source, gave me the same three names on a shortlist allegedly drawn up for the seat by CCHQ. They were two people who are the offspring of significant Tory donors and a financial policy expert who ran in a Labour safe seat in 2019.

The list had supposedly been drawn up before the seat was even advertised and it was claimed that the plan was to use internal rules to impose an immediate shortlist because there were less than 150 members.

While Rochford and Southend technically would be swept away in the tsunami of the swing to Labour that seems to be coming in the general election there are reasons to think the Tories would hold on to it. There is a large well-off pensioner population, aspirational families move to the constituency because of its grammar schools and it was one of the highest proportions in favour of Brexit.

Express.co.uk asked CCHQ yesterday (Monday) about the allegations just ahead of party officials meeting the association chairman to decide what to do.

The fairly direct response was that the allegations were “bulls***!”

The association chairman was understood to be resisting the plan and – possibly helped by a media inquiry – apparently won the day, which means the seat will be advertised properly.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the same names appear on the long list of seven.

Controlling the Tory future

CCHQ also said that another claim to emerge over the weekend that a different Essex seat Basildon and Billericay is being lined up for seatless party chairman Richard Holden was also “bulls***!”

Essex has been known for having largely rightwing Brexiteer MPs. John Baron, who is standing down in Basildon and Billericay is a Brexiteer as is Duddridge in Southend. But the alleged CCHQ preferences to replace them come from the left of the party.

It comes down to previous concerns which have never gone away that the candidates department and shadowy Gareth Fox, who was installed by David Cameron and is still involved, have been weeding out actual centre-right conservatives for seats for years and pushing liberal centrists.

But more now, with the party at a fork in the road in its history, this is about who gets to control the rebuild of the Tories in Opposition.

Already significant One Nation figures are in place such as Rupert Harris, George Osborne’s former special adviser, who has been selected for Bicester. He has been described as “the shadow chancellor in waiting”. Theresa May’s former advisor Nick Timothy got Suffolk West. But candidates supported by Dame Priti Patel and Liz Truss have mysteriously been unsuccessful.

If the One Nation faction have an overwhelming majority of MPs remaining, then their candidates will be presented to the membership for leader. And if the membership somehow gets to pick a rightwinger then those same MPs can do to him or her what happened to Sir Iain Duncan Smith or Liz Truss and essentially launch a coup.

The playbook has been used too often for us not to know what will happen…as Nadine Dorries has been trying to tell everyone.

Is it about who you know?

There are many other stories about the shenanigans to try to influence who is selected. The issues around former FT journalist Sebastian Payne, a friend of Michael Gove, being pushed for Sajid Javid’s safe Bromsgrove seat still sting.

There is now a running joke in constituencies about Payne being added to shortlists when they come up.

Just this last week there were stories about a special advisor to James Cleverly and the child of a party donor causing a row. Although, in fairness to the person concerned, they have been working for the party for years.

But one Tory complained: “There is a question over whether safe seats are effectively for sale to party donors.”

History repeated

And of course, candidate list fiddling is not new.

One of the fears is that Rishi Sunak will shortly use the fact that it is an election year to force so-called by-election rules which means CCHQ will decide the three to choose from. This has already happened in Canterbury, a Tory target seat.

An example of how this worked occurred in a Tory safe seat in 2017 and played out while I was at dinner with one of the constituency members who had decided not to attend the selection out of protest.

The constituency concerned had wanted to select David Campbell Bannerman, a longstanding Brexiteer and at the time a soon to be former MEP. But CCHQ kept him, and every other Brexit supporting MEPs off the list and instead apparently turned to their diversity policies to provide a shortlist of people they did not want.

As the membership gathered the chairman of the association called my dinner guest and the conversation played out.

The chairman said: “We’ve got a gay man, a black man and a woman. The c*** here from CCHQ has told me that we have to select either the gay man or the black man but definitely not the woman. Everyone is very unhappy about it.”

My dinner guest replied: “Well you know what you have to do. Select the woman.”

Apparently, the woman won almost 100% of the votes. She easily won the seat and is now a minister.

The moral of the tale is that even the best-laid fixes can fall apart but most succeed.

The future of the Conservative Party will not be decided by who stands in the next leadership election but more likely by who gets placed in which constituencies as the party battles for survival.