Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome has a running list of who's on the 'A' List. Click HERE. He explains why he's publishing it HERE. I said on Newsnight that if we have got an 'A' list we should surely be proud of it and be shouting about it from the rooftops. Instead, the Conservative Party is for reasons best known to itself concealing its membership. If we really are changing, then surely we should be more open about these things? There are some really good people on it. Let's tell the world.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Who's On the 'A' List?
Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome has a running list of who's on the 'A' List. Click HERE. He explains why he's publishing it HERE. I said on Newsnight that if we have got an 'A' list we should surely be proud of it and be shouting about it from the rooftops. Instead, the Conservative Party is for reasons best known to itself concealing its membership. If we really are changing, then surely we should be more open about these things? There are some really good people on it. Let's tell the world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
"http://genea.wordpress.com/"
Agreed. Although thinking it over I can see the other side of the coin. Probably not wise to give Labour a list of candidates to dig dirt on/monitor for three years until the GE...but I think still the risk might be worth it if the list shows the changes the Tories are making.
Oops, cut and paste gone awry! I should have quoted you saying: "Let's tell the world."
Then followed with my agreement!
If these candidates had been checked out properly, there shouldnt be any worry about Labour digging up dirt as the Party will be prepared for it.
Does anyone know what percentage of the A-List were state educated and how well it reflects the real world in that respect?
I'd love to know.
Mel Stride? As in Mel Stride of Balliol College in the early 1980s??? He was a Marxist.
Barking Bagshawe I have commented on at Guido's place...
Iain
Can I offer a comment which I hope isn't impertinent?
I would imagine that the majority of people who saw you on television last night would think that you went to a very smart public school. In fact I know that, like me, you went to a really good state school-though not the same one, I hasten to add. (I know this not because I am some sort of mad stalker but because I am sitting about four miles down the road from your alma mater and I picked up on a reference to it somewhere).
You have also stated openly that you are gay. However, you don't bang a big drum about it.
I think there may be a terrible irony that Dave the Old Etonian straight guy is (quite rightly in my view) trying to make the party look more representative of the country as a whole, but is picking people who "look" as though they are men of the people (like privately educated Corrie star Adam R) or as though they have alternative lifestyles- well different from Sir Bufton Tufton anyway-e.g. eco warrior and zillionaire Zac Goldsmith- rather than going for the real thing.
Just a thought.
Babara thats the problem with Cameron , everything is to do with presntation, I hate to keep banging on about rickitt, however, Ii have met him socially and while pleasent and very pretty is ..ahem ,stupid,so what if he gains a seat for the party(i doubt if he will)he has nothing to offer.
Ii cant even be bothered to say anymore, other than Cameron is a clown and the end of the Cconservative party, no bad thing , lets look forward to a new movement crawling out of the wreckage staffed by real people who have and do live in the real world.
No, let's not tell the world. That way when the "Priority" List is "topped up", most of the most important seats already having been filled, there will still only be one list and accusations from the opposition won't be able to make "B list" or "second rate candidate" smears.
That could even, hopefully, be in your interests, Iain!
Bit surprised at Fiona Bruce getting on the list.She didn't exactly set the world on fire when contesting Warrington South in 2005.
Guess it is pretty predictable for those left off the list to be critical of those on. When will you so-called Tories realised that years of infighting have caused so much damage for the Tories in the past and none of you are helping by just picking apart the very people who may well just get the Tories back into power? I think the list looks pretty good and they need our support now, not criticism - especially the women who are getting a load of stick for doing just what you all want to do, be an MP.
Agreed, Anonymous. I think the list is a step in the right direction. It’s unfortunate that Rickitt has been so loudly trumpeted, as I think he’s a bit of a red herring, but I’m pleased at the idea of more women and ethnic minority candidates and I think the A-list will play well with voters which is, after all, how we get elected. And if one or two malcontents announce their intention to “vote UKIP,” in protest, well good - that will only help the party shed its millstone of an image. I’m with the little chameleon fella on this one.
Boris, it's not the one or two malcontents announcing their intention to vote UKIP that you want to worry about. It is the floating voters - the soft Tories, soft Liberals and soft Labour folk - who think on balance they won't bother going for you after all and quietly drift off elsewhere.
The A-list does several things that are unhelpful. It feeds into Cameron's gimmick-meister image. It lumbers constituencies with people who get on famously with the big man in various Notting Hill winebars but are actually crap. And it condemns some hopefuls to political death - hell, they might even decide that there are other things to do with their spare time, and these are lynchpins, not minor footsoldiers.
Post a Comment