Jonathan Djanogly has been unsuccessful in securing automatic re-adoption by his constituency’s selection committee. He served as the MP for Huntingdon since John Major’s retirement in 2001. Sources close to Djanogly have informed ConservativeHome that he lost the vote by a tight margin of 9-12.
Michael Crick has suggested Djanogly’s lack of success owed something to recent unfavourable headlines. But we have heard that it also owed as much to boundary changes, a perennial theme of recent re-selection drama, as it does to headlines about housekeepers and avocados. According to comments from some of those there, these issues were not even raised at the meeting.
As with Damian Green in the Weald of Kent and Richard Bacon in South Norfolk, members from outside Djanogly’s previous boundaries seem to have disagreed with the idea that an MP who had only previously represented only part of the new constituency should be automatically re-adopted as the candidate.
Djanogly’s current Huntingdon seat is being merged with parts of Cambridgeshire North West to produce a new Huntingdon. According to Electoral Calculus, his new constituency works out as roughly 66 per cent of his previous one.
Local sources suggest this manifested itself as 6 local councillors from Cambridgeshire North West who are all thought to have voted against Djanogly at the meeting. As with Bacon, that, combined with those aiming for a fresh face after 22 years, looks like it was enough to prevent Djanogly’s re-selection.
He is reportedly bullish and looks forward to the ballot of the wider membership which will soon take place. The cases of Sally Ann-Hart and Theo Clarke saw an MP rejected by their selection committees re-adopted, and Djanogly has no desire to leave a constituency in which he lives and has represented for more than two decades.
Djanogly’s constituency has also changed more in the boundary review than at least two of those MPs that ConservativeHome revealed that CCHQ has already classed as ‘displaced’, and allowed to seek selection elsewhere. Although he is currently predicted by Electoral Calculus to face a tight battle for re-election, he does not want to stand elsewhere or seek adoption for the new St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire constituency that incorporates some of Huntingdon.
As ever, please contact me at william@conservativehome.com with any information about selections in your area.