Clare Golby is a former councillor on Nuneaton and Bedworth Council
Standing for selection as a Conservative parliamentary candidate has been an exercise in frustration and fury for many. After years of jumping through endless CCHQ hoops, I and others have faced a selection process that is nothing short of disgraceful. A lot of us are completely disillusioned. The systematic sidelining of people like me – hard-working candidates, and especially women – in favour of Westminster chums and associates has been utterly shameless.
A seasoned local politician, including time in political leadership roles, a founder of my own communications business, and with over 20 years of experience in the corporate digital and IT world, I bear more than my fair share of scars from both the corporate and political battlefields. I’m also a no-nonsense northern woman who is eminently capable of being an MP, particularly when compared with some who have up until recently been elected to parliament.
We Conservatives are supposed to be a meritocracy, where the best person for the job is chosen. Not as in the candidate selection in Basildon and Billericay, be the architects of a situation where the party chairman is put forward as the only person for the job.
This visceral fury of candidates I spoke to on this was undeniable.
It’s infuriating to see how those who contributed to our party’s downfall have been parachuted into the safer seats. This blatant disregard for merit and hard work beyond the chumocracy is deeply troubling.
It’s hard to dispute charges of moral bankruptcy when we are seen to be behaving in this way. It’s contemptable. Holden should, in my opinion, spend the remainder of his time in parliament on the back benches, far from any decision-making process.
But his situation is unfortunately symptomatic of a wider problem. He isn’t simply a plucky Northern fellow risen from obscurity to win a red wall seat in 2019 and elevated to the Party Chairmanship. He has been part of CCHQ machine since he left university, a perfect example of the ‘Westminster boys club’.
Only 34 per cent of Conservative candidates were women in the last general election, compared to Labour’s 47 per cent. This disparity speaks volumes about our party’s commitment to at least the most basic of equalities. People like me have no chance with the current CCHQ setup.
The demands placed on candidates by CCHQ, and the Candidates department have also been nothing short of ridiculous.
We are expected to traipse up and down the country to help in by-election after by-election, fund our expenses, and attend ‘training’ on how to speak, write, and even dress! If we don’t help, it’s logged and held against us. The carrot-and-stick approach is a farce: they dangle the carrot of profile-building while wielding the stick of exclusion if we don’t comply. The truth is the vast majority of candidates are de facto excluded anyway. They don’t stand a chance of selection and never will.
Candidates are used to doing all the leg work; they’re treated like cannon fodder and have to sit on the sidelines and watch as the Conservative parachute regiment reap the rewards having done none of the hard yards. Chocks away chaps!
Sometimes there’s an effort to throw a thin veil of respectability over proceedings. In Stratford-on-Avon, for example, the final shortlist consisted of one chicken running MP, one SpAd, and a local candidate who ticked the female diversity box.
The final selection went to Chris Clarkson, the MP. Yet the seat turned out to be not so winnable after all. It fell to the Lib Dems.
Timing is also very telling in this process. Despite there being plenty of notice of the need to select new candidates for Stratford-on-Avon and other plumb seats, the selections were conveniently left until after the election was called, so CCHQ could start ‘emergency’ selection procedures. This enabled them to hand-pick shortlists guaranteeing their choice had a pretty good chance of winning the candidacy.
This scenario has played out repeatedly, not only losing seats we could have retained with strong candidates given time to embed but leaving many on the candidates list feeling used and discarded.
To add insult to injury, candidates are bombarded with relentless messages about giving up more time to campaigning, phone calls keeping tabs on our activity, e-mails, and WhatsApp messages, even after getting rejected again and again. If anyone needs to understand the lack of willing helpers during the general election they don’t need to look far. People have had enough of being taken advantage of.
In May, I warned that our approach would lead to significant losses in the General Election, and I was right. If we want to rebuild our party, we need people like me who understand the grassroots and aren’t afraid to speak truth to power. It’s time for a fundamental shift in how we operate, starting with changing the people and processes that have brought us to this point of failure.
The Conservative Party needs root and branch reform of CCHQ, the way it treats hard-working and extremely capable candidates, and the selection process itself. The current set up is not fit for purpose. To make any return to power we need to select good candidates who people have an affinity with, select early, and embed them. We must select more women in winnable seats, not just for optics but for genuine diversity in thought and leadership.
It’s time to move beyond the old Westminster boys’ club and embrace a future where merit and dedication are truly valued and extend beyond being a special advisor, think tanker, or policy wonk. Only then can we hope to start to regain the trust of our members and the electorate.
The system is rigged against people who are simply unable to be part of the Westminster orbit or who don’t have the time and resources to court associations miles away from their everyday lives. Until there’s a fundamental shift in how we operate, which includes changing the people who have got us to this place, or nothing will ever improve.
We are constantly told our party is a broad church but after the dust settles, I think it’s time we took a good look at who is in the pulpit because their sermon is all wrong.
Clare Golby is a former councillor on Nuneaton and Bedworth Council
Standing for selection as a Conservative parliamentary candidate has been an exercise in frustration and fury for many. After years of jumping through endless CCHQ hoops, I and others have faced a selection process that is nothing short of disgraceful. A lot of us are completely disillusioned. The systematic sidelining of people like me – hard-working candidates, and especially women – in favour of Westminster chums and associates has been utterly shameless.
A seasoned local politician, including time in political leadership roles, a founder of my own communications business, and with over 20 years of experience in the corporate digital and IT world, I bear more than my fair share of scars from both the corporate and political battlefields. I’m also a no-nonsense northern woman who is eminently capable of being an MP, particularly when compared with some who have up until recently been elected to parliament.
We Conservatives are supposed to be a meritocracy, where the best person for the job is chosen. Not as in the candidate selection in Basildon and Billericay, be the architects of a situation where the party chairman is put forward as the only person for the job.
This visceral fury of candidates I spoke to on this was undeniable.
It’s infuriating to see how those who contributed to our party’s downfall have been parachuted into the safer seats. This blatant disregard for merit and hard work beyond the chumocracy is deeply troubling.
It’s hard to dispute charges of moral bankruptcy when we are seen to be behaving in this way. It’s contemptable. Holden should, in my opinion, spend the remainder of his time in parliament on the back benches, far from any decision-making process.
But his situation is unfortunately symptomatic of a wider problem. He isn’t simply a plucky Northern fellow risen from obscurity to win a red wall seat in 2019 and elevated to the Party Chairmanship. He has been part of CCHQ machine since he left university, a perfect example of the ‘Westminster boys club’.
Only 34 per cent of Conservative candidates were women in the last general election, compared to Labour’s 47 per cent. This disparity speaks volumes about our party’s commitment to at least the most basic of equalities. People like me have no chance with the current CCHQ setup.
The demands placed on candidates by CCHQ, and the Candidates department have also been nothing short of ridiculous.
We are expected to traipse up and down the country to help in by-election after by-election, fund our expenses, and attend ‘training’ on how to speak, write, and even dress! If we don’t help, it’s logged and held against us. The carrot-and-stick approach is a farce: they dangle the carrot of profile-building while wielding the stick of exclusion if we don’t comply. The truth is the vast majority of candidates are de facto excluded anyway. They don’t stand a chance of selection and never will.
Candidates are used to doing all the leg work; they’re treated like cannon fodder and have to sit on the sidelines and watch as the Conservative parachute regiment reap the rewards having done none of the hard yards. Chocks away chaps!
Sometimes there’s an effort to throw a thin veil of respectability over proceedings. In Stratford-on-Avon, for example, the final shortlist consisted of one chicken running MP, one SpAd, and a local candidate who ticked the female diversity box.
The final selection went to Chris Clarkson, the MP. Yet the seat turned out to be not so winnable after all. It fell to the Lib Dems.
Timing is also very telling in this process. Despite there being plenty of notice of the need to select new candidates for Stratford-on-Avon and other plumb seats, the selections were conveniently left until after the election was called, so CCHQ could start ‘emergency’ selection procedures. This enabled them to hand-pick shortlists guaranteeing their choice had a pretty good chance of winning the candidacy.
This scenario has played out repeatedly, not only losing seats we could have retained with strong candidates given time to embed but leaving many on the candidates list feeling used and discarded.
To add insult to injury, candidates are bombarded with relentless messages about giving up more time to campaigning, phone calls keeping tabs on our activity, e-mails, and WhatsApp messages, even after getting rejected again and again. If anyone needs to understand the lack of willing helpers during the general election they don’t need to look far. People have had enough of being taken advantage of.
In May, I warned that our approach would lead to significant losses in the General Election, and I was right. If we want to rebuild our party, we need people like me who understand the grassroots and aren’t afraid to speak truth to power. It’s time for a fundamental shift in how we operate, starting with changing the people and processes that have brought us to this point of failure.
The Conservative Party needs root and branch reform of CCHQ, the way it treats hard-working and extremely capable candidates, and the selection process itself. The current set up is not fit for purpose. To make any return to power we need to select good candidates who people have an affinity with, select early, and embed them. We must select more women in winnable seats, not just for optics but for genuine diversity in thought and leadership.
It’s time to move beyond the old Westminster boys’ club and embrace a future where merit and dedication are truly valued and extend beyond being a special advisor, think tanker, or policy wonk. Only then can we hope to start to regain the trust of our members and the electorate.
The system is rigged against people who are simply unable to be part of the Westminster orbit or who don’t have the time and resources to court associations miles away from their everyday lives. Until there’s a fundamental shift in how we operate, which includes changing the people who have got us to this place, or nothing will ever improve.
We are constantly told our party is a broad church but after the dust settles, I think it’s time we took a good look at who is in the pulpit because their sermon is all wrong.