Conservative Home on the A-list

Comment is free: Get your priorities right

Tim Montgomerie (founder of the Conservative Home blog site) reveals why he has named more than 70 of the 100 people on David Cameron's "A-list" of potential Tory MPs. The list includes the novelist Louise Bagshawe and "unashamedly metrosexual" soap star Adam Rickitt:

Last week 100 or so wannabe Tory MPs were told that they had made it on to the Conservative party's new list of priority candidates. As promised by David Cameron, more than half of those on the A-list are women and 10% are from ethnic minorities. The list also includes a number of gay candidates. The party is trying hard to represent all of modern Britain and this list is the most important part of that effort so far.

Unfortunately, however, because the culture of secrecy still dominates the Conservatives' mindset, the party's high-ups decided that it would not publish the names of this priority list. Without publication the public cannot see this diversity and party members are unable to inspect the quality of the selection.

In my observation, there are a lot of complaints that many of the new intake are newcomers or people who "forsook" the party in its "darkest days" after John Major's departure and before Cameron's arrival. They may be forgetting that a lot of voters, not just activists, deserted the party for this reason when they tried to import Australian "dog-whistle" campaign tactics, thinking they could pick up working-class votes by appealing to peole's worse natures. Frankly, I think taking on a few people untainted by the disaster of the Howard election campaign can do the party a lot of good. There are good reasons why people might want to support the party now but would have run a mile in the face of a Howard premiership.