Penny Mordaunt is the latest prominent Conservative MP to be re-adopted by her constituency association for the next election.. We wish her all the best in Portsmouth North.
Whether fellow 2022 leadership election enthusiasts Boris Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi will join her – and where they might be standing – might be subject to a little media speculation. For now, we only know that the re-adoption of MPs is taking place at pace.
According to the party’s constitution, for associations with a sitting MP, the MP must write to the Executive Council of their association asking to be re-adopted. Hence all those recent headlines about MPs choosing not to run again. The motion to re-adopt is then put to a vote by the Executive Council, and a vote is taken accordingly. This must take place within two months of the request’s submission.
Since the deadline for notifying the party of an intention to stand again was at the end of November, we will soon know if all sitting MPs who wish to run again have been re-selected. Of course, in some constituencies, this will be more difficult than in others.
With the Government looking set to break the recent tradition of springing elections on the country before constituency boundaries have been updated, MPs such as Suella Braverman and Flick Drummond have found themselves in conflict, when their constituencies disappear and are subsumed into a new one.
But once the process of ironing out which MPs wish to stand again and where is completed, the candidates’ rodeo will swifty move onto the much more exciting story of who gets selected for those seats without sitting MPs seeking re-election. As ever, any insider info for upcoming selection battles is sincerely welcomed.