Cllr Phil King is the Deputy Leader of Harborough District Council, a councillor at Leicestershire County Council and the Conservative Area Chairman for Leicester & Leicestershire.
I recently stood, unsuccessfully, for election as a Vice President of the National Convention on a platform of three simple words: Listen, Trust, Win.
The election is over, but the principles behind that campaign remain. The controversy surrounding the Conservative candidate selected for Crewkerne South demonstrates why they matter.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine has served the sentences imposed upon him. Rehabilitation must mean something in a civilised society, and we should want those who have completed their punishment and genuinely changed to rebuild their lives.
But rehabilitation does not automatically confer an entitlement to represent a political party or hold elected office.
These are complex and deeply human questions. They involve punishment, repentance, forgiveness and the lasting harm caused to victims and communities. Such offences are not easy for any of us to forget or forgive. For those directly affected, forgiveness may be impossible.
A candidate for public office asks the electorate to trust their judgment and character. They also ask Party members and volunteers to campaign for them and defend their suitability on the doorstep. That requires a separate and demanding assessment.
The Conservative Party has developed ever more complex, costly and supposedly rigorous systems for approving candidates.
There are longer forms, additional checks, central assessments and more layers of procedure. Yet the Crewkerne fiasco still happened.
A complicated and costly system is not necessarily a competent one.
Rules and safeguards matter, but they can never replace sound judgment, political instinct and good old-fashioned nous.
Political decisions cannot be reduced to ticking boxes. Someone must stand back, consider the facts and ask the obvious question: is this sensible?
Perception is all-pervading in politics. The public judges decisions by what it sees, what it understands and what those decisions appear to say about the values of the Party.
Once confidence is lost, procedural explanations rarely repair the damage.
As National Treasurer and a board member of the Conservative Councillors’ Association, I was particularly concerned by the reported comments of the Party Leader suggesting that a lower threshold applied because the role involved matters such as parking and sorting out bins.
Of course, the roles of an MP and a councillor are different. The experience and knowledge required may also differ.
But there can be no lower standard of integrity. We have seen a surge in standards complaints with Reform UK.
Councillors take decisions affecting vulnerable children, adult social care, housing, planning, schools, roads, transport, community safety and local economies. They oversee major organisations, large workforces and billions of pounds of public money.
They support residents facing homelessness, families seeking help for vulnerable children and communities fighting to protect essential services.
Yes, councils are responsible for parking and refuse collection. Those services matter greatly to the people who rely upon and pay for them. There is nothing trivial about delivering basic public services properly.
Every Conservative candidate wears the same rosette. Every elected Conservative reflects upon the reputation of the whole Party.
If someone does not meet the fundamental standards required to represent the Conservative Party, the answer should not depend upon which ballot paper carries their name.
The question of second chances also arises in a very different context: whether former Conservatives who defected to Reform UK should ever be allowed to return.
The Party Leader has taken a firm position against allowing defectors back. I respectfully disagree.
Defection is serious. It can damage campaigns, demoralise loyal volunteers and feel like a betrayal to those who remained when the Party was struggling.
Nobody who defects should expect simply to walk back into a candidacy, elected office or senior Party position.
But a route back should exist.
An open door does not have to become a revolving door.
People leave political parties for different reasons. Some act out of ambition. Others leave through anger, frustration or a genuine belief that the Party has lost its way. Circumstances change, parties change and people sometimes recognise that they made the wrong decision.
There should be no automatic entitlement to return, but neither should there be automatic permanent exclusion.
Each case should be judged on its merits. The circumstances of the defection, the damage caused, the individual’s conduct since leaving and the views of the local Association should all matter.
The comparison with Crewkerne is not that political defection is equivalent to serious criminal conduct. Plainly it is not.
The wider point is that difficult questions of rehabilitation, forgiveness and return require judgment. They should not be settled through rigid universal rules.
We must also listen to why Conservative members, councillors and voters moved towards Reform in the first place. We will not rebuild our electoral coalition by permanently excommunicating everyone who became disillusioned with us.
Winning again means persuading voters to come home. In appropriate cases, it may also mean allowing former members to do so.
The Crewkerne episode is not an argument for weakening the candidate approval process. It is an argument for making it more intelligent, transparent and accountable.
The Party must listen to those affected by its decisions.
It must trust local Associations, while ensuring they have the full information required to exercise that responsibility.
It must apply consistent standards to every Conservative candidate, whether they seek election to Parliament or a local council.
And it must recognise that bureaucracy cannot replace judgment.
We need effective due diligence, clear standards, local knowledge and good old-fashioned nous. We also need a Party culture strong enough to acknowledge mistakes rather than seek to silence those who raise them.
My campaign for Vice President of the National Convention was unsuccessful.
But I remain convinced that the Conservative Party will rebuild only when it listens to its members, trusts its grassroots and remembers that both are essential if we are to win.