I'll be brief as I am at a dinner honouring John Blundell of the IEA.
Liz Truss has survived her deselection by 132 votes to 37. You couldn't do much better than that. Congratulations to the sensible people of South West Norfolk and for showing those with questionable motives exactly how out of touch with reality they are. I hope the whole Association will now unite behind Liz and that this will be an end to the matter.
She now needs to prove that she will be the excellent MP they though she would be when they selected her.
31 comments:
Oh come on Iain, what do you mean "you couldn't have done much better than that?" Just how many sherries have you had?
If there were 37 votes against then she could have done 37 votes better.
Is this your Norfolk logic showing through again?
Well done to all involved. Sense reigns.
having watched Peter Oborne's excellent Dispatches programme on the Israel lobby just wondering if she will be one of the 80% of the Tory Parliamentary party who are members of Conservative Friends of Israel?
And now its time for the turnips to retire and move out of local politics. They won't be supportive and with this ringing endoresment for Ms Truss they won't be any help at all
Well done Liz! Lets hope the papers see this as a triumph of sensibility over narrow-mindedness.
Headline tomorrow
"Liz Trusses Norfolk Turkeys"
Definately the right result. Sanity prevails.
Watched Channel 4 News covering this and hope that twat John Snow is embarrassed by the vox pops in which locals were all agin' Truss and CCO.
Also one in the eye for NuLab stooge Tom Baldwin in The Times telling us that the local association (and others) were going to give Cameron a thick lip.
Well done, the Turnips!
The serious message is that whatever the issue, be it Europe or Candidate Lists, tories are going to be pragmatic about what it needs to win the coming general election.
Come on mate, where's your post rubbishing Peter Oborne's devastating destruction of the Tories and CFI on Channel 4?
Oh, I forgot. You took the schekels as well, didn't you?
Meanwhile, it's been delightful watching the sore losers melt down. Though it does bemuse me that some folks who take such a high moral tone about Liz Truss' private life don't think twice about using low language like "strumpet", "home-wrecking slut" and worse to abuse her under the cloak of anonymity. Apparently civility and the courage to sign your name to your vileness aren't Tory values out in the backwoods.
I wouldn't vote for anyone who hadn't recanted her former advocacy of the abolition of the monarchy ("youthful indiscretion" doesn't answer the question). I leave that to the party of ageing Eighties Rightists who still hate the Commonwealth; the party that let go, and would not restore, the hereditary peers whose ranks Attlee was proud to join.
I wouldn't vote for anyone who didn't believe that adultery was wrong, whether or not she had ever done it, which is something else entirely. I leave that to the party that entrenched economically the 1960s collapse in moral standards that had been egged on by the man behind first pirate radio and then the Institute of Economic Affairs.
I wouldn't vote for anyone who despised the countryside and its inhabitants. I leave that to the party of the viciously anti-agrarian "free" market, and of the evisceration of rural life since 1979. And I wouldn't vote for anyone selected from an all-women shortlist.
What does that make me? Old Labour. And proud of it. Or, if you prefer, a Turnip Talib. And proud of it.
London and Old Holoborn, like South-West Norfolk, after this evening's Dispatches Watford also needs, even more urgently than everywhere else, a candidate of any party or, far more probably, none who has an absolute commitment to the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy.
Who has a no less absolute commitment to the Welfare State (including farm subsidies), workers’ rights, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation (not environmentalism), fair taxation, full employment, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property from which every household can resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.
Who, unlike Claire Ward, does not feel the need for a second home on expenses in order to represent a constituency a mere twenty minutes from Euston and very largely inhabited by London commuters.
And who, unlike Richard Harrington, sees neither national sovereignty, nor foreign policy realism, nor a strong Parliament, as compatible with the purchase of British politics by the Israeli Hard Right or by any other foreigner. What is Harrington going to do? Send round Gerald Ronson?
Whats wrong with being a Conservative and supporting Israel through CFI???
At the heart of it, and I am ont a lobbiest, is it wrong?
Stunned to hear some Central office idiot saying that the people of South West Norfolk probably have no experience as employers. What does she think Swaffham is like? A handful of thatched cottages clustered round muddy streets? Does she think the famous market cross is still essential to local trade, all of it done by individual women in shawls? Yes, people in Norfolk do employ other people. And, in particular, it takes a special mind to think both that Jerry Bagge is a toff with a landed estate and that he has no experience as an employer.
This was more fuel for "Lunnon hasn't a clue".
Tania, It is you who is the "idiot". Neither of the women on Newsnight were anuthing to do with CCO. One was a former candidate who was deselected in 2005 and is now out of politics and the other is a Lincolnshire county councillor and was speaking up for the grassroots, not CCO as you were implying. Where you got that point of view from God only knows. I suppose some people just hear what they want to hear.
As a Norfolk resident I'm pleased and relieved by this decision. It's clearly a defeat for the Old Guard Tories, albeit after Cameron has suffered a bloody nose and probably a few sleepless nights.
Further reflections on my own blog:
http://xfactorcomms.typepad.com/x-communication/
Good for Liz. Just goes to show that despite the prattlings of a certain local nobody, the voters of SW Norfolk knew a good thing and great candidate when they saw her.
David, As a right wing Conservative, I was with you till your last three paragraphs. Old Labour and traditional Conservatives have a great deal in common and both have been desserted by the political class, as Oborne calls it.
We are both waiting for a new leader who will be back in step with public opinion (not as perverted by the main stream media and stooges like Tom Baldwin). Who, instead of trying to pursuade an ever decreasing number of swing voters, will talk again to those who have given up voting (like the 66% who didn't vote in Glasgow NE)?
This person certainly isn't Liz Truss or anybody else who thinks she's a great candidate. She's the business-as-usual candidate for the progressives of a former age who still think feminism is important. Her cheerleaders like Dale represent the old politics and the hegemony of the discredited political class. The sooner we get rid of them all the better.
Iain the moment the Torys lose their independent streak the party as an entity is doomed. Well done to Liz Truss for standing her ground and well done to the constituancy party for standing up on a point of principle. This shws that the Tories are the democratic party where central office does not get its own way easily.
Good for her! Mind you she now has to worry about the Association sabotaging her. I do hope her agent was one of her supporters....
So now they have to put their trust in their Truss.
Patriccus. You are getting ahead of yourself. The VOTERS of South West Norfolk have NOT had their say yet; that will come next May or June. And abusive comments like 'turnip' or 'neanderthal' will only harden the resolve of people to stand up for what they believe despite the gutless cave-in by the local party to the bully boys in London.
Just for the record Liz Truss WAS married whe she had the affair. The MP left his wife and re married. Liz Truss is back with her husband. I do not know if either have children, but of course no one thinks of them thesedays anyway.
'Tania, It is you who is the "idiot". '
Pretty harsh Iain. She made a mistake in identification. That does not make the comments she heard any less idiotic regardless of who they came from.
Calling somebody an idiot for mistaking a former candidate with somebody from CCO is not very helpful and possibly a little mean.
'I suppose some people just hear what they want to hear.'
She did suggest she was 'stunned' to hear it.
Hungover this morning or something?
For those of you who prefer local democracy and wish to form your own views rather than be offered a menu of PC/Media apparatchiks like Liz Truss, Helen Grant,and others I suggest you do
Deselect them - Vote UKIP
David Lindsay, whatever your beef with Thatcherite capitalism, do you really think that a return to Old Labour social democracy is a wise idea?
Johnny Norfolk.
"Just for the record Liz Truss WAS married whe she had the affair. The MP left his wife and re married. Liz Truss is back with her husband. I do not know if either have children, but of course no one thinks of them thesedays anyway."
May I suggest that you re-read your comment, and then explain to the rest of us what points you are seeking to make.
Mr Iain Dale,
Please give Liz Truss some media coaching, she gave a dreadful interview on one of the channels afterwards - she would have been best advised to say nothing at all. She was alright before on Newsnight a month or two ago - she walked straight into that elephant trap interview last night.
Whilst I dont think she should be barred from standing for 'the affair'. If she is supposed to be 'talent' I really worry about the Conservative Party. Keeping her trap shut would have have been a better line to take as it was obvious they were going to ask does she regret this that or the other - her responses made her look bad.
Apart from Cameron and a few other Bright stars i.e. Hague et al i really do worry about the Tories. Especially some of these so called A - List candidates. Frankly Boozed up I could put things across better than some of these folk, if I was sober I would whip their backsides! Some of them have no idea and crikey some of the non - elected officials need a bullet in the head! These folk who pride themselves on being a thorn in the side to the party are completly counter-productive: When did that all start? The Tory Party has not always been like that. I think the militant 'conviction' part commitee people were the start of becoming unelectable and it spread through into MPs.
Iain,
I judge from some of the comments on your post that Liz Truss must be Jewish.
Feel free to delete this comment if I am wrong.
I totally disagree with Israel's imperialism, but I loathe anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms.
Sometimes these forms are stark and violent; often insidious, a word here a glance there.
My favourite Turnip Taliban quote belongs to the esteemed Swaffham SS* area commandant Sir Jeremy "Bin" Bagge who denies he's anti-women. He says: "Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful three children appear? Women, you can't do without them."
Christ, welcome to the 18th Century Swaffhem!
*silly society
Re: Jeffrey
While I take the point re: the voters having their say come May/June next year, I certainly did not use abusive comments such as "turnip" or "neanderthal" as you suggest.
I think that on the whole the "neanderthal turnip taliban" come out of this rather well.
It seems pretty clear that Conservative Central office deceived the association by withholding from it information that was bound to cause it embarrassment (thinking they could not be trusted to treat it in the same mature manner that it had).
The association naturally rebelled against such such arrogant and contemptuous treatment and called for the matter to be re-considered in the light of the full facts.
As the real issue had not been adultery but deceit, when they saw that it was not the candidate but CO who were at fault, they confirmed her selection.
However, it still generated a great deal of bad publicity and ill feeling and the party should take care not to get in such a Pickles again.
Hamish.
Many people have comented that " she was not even maried when she had the affair"
I just wanted to put the record straight for no other reason.
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