Cllr John Moss is a campaign consultant at the College Green Group, a councillor in Waltham Forest and Chairman of the Chingford & Woodford Green Conservatives
After the General Election in 2024, the membership of the Conservative Party was unhappy about many things, but it was pretty much universally furious about how the process of selecting parliamentary candidates had been managed. For the third election in a row, a snap election resulted in local associations being pushed aside. If they were not winnable seats, they were handed candidates picked for reasons many found unfathomable. Where they were retirement or target seats, they were given a limited choice, but the Party decided who they got to choose from, often excluding popular local candidates.
There was very real anger and well-founded suspicion the process had been hijacked by ‘CCHQ’, MPs and others to favour ‘their mates’. It was too slow (despite the excuse of the boundary review) and many suspected that this was intended to favour displaced MPs and ministerial SpAds, who could be slotted in to winnable or retirement seats at the last minute without any real challenge.
Like most things, there are two sides to every story, but rebuilding the membership’s trust in the approval and selection process was a real challenge. Under the stewardship of Julian Ellacott and Clare Hambro, that trust has largely been rebuilt through a very open engagement with members, regular updates and meetings; a refreshing change from what has happened in the past!
As the Party commences the selection of candidates in the autumn, I believe the changes they have made will further help to mend that relationship between the centre and the constituencies. It is clear Clare is taking a firm but fair hand with candidates and constituencies and has been incredibly active in the process. There is now a real commitment to leave the constituencies to choose their candidates from all those who apply.
It has been confirmed that seven ‘tranches’ of seats will be advertised from September through to January. So where do we stand?
Much is the same.
The Candidate Portal manages the relationship between the Candidates’ Team and approved candidates, including the applications for individual seats. It is perhaps a hangover from the HR-driven focus of the previous chair of the Candidates Committee, but it works, so why change it?
The four sections of the individual seat application that applicants need to complete also remain the same: Why me for this vacancy, Personal achievements, Career summary and Voluntary and community activity. The first change comes next.
To ensure fairness, anyone intending to apply must not participate in the selection process. This begins with the local Executive Council, which is responsible for determining the membership of the ‘Sift Committee,’ whether to invite candidates to local campaigning sessions, and the method for the final decision.
The Sift Committee is bigger and there is greater clarity about who is eligible to be a voting member. Its decision will be made locally, not at a meeting at CCHQ and, hopefully, without any of the ‘strong suggestions’ or presentation of new applicants that previous members of the Candidates’ Team were alleged to have been fond of. That committee will choose eight applicants (plus two reserves) to go forward to the next stage. All ten applicants will then go through a further round of vetting.
For competitive constituencies, this stage remains as before; the Selection Council interview. In almost all cases this will be the constituency Executive Council or those officers of a Federation who live in a constituency. They will, as before, choose whether to pass three or four applicants forward to the final stage (plus a reserve) after a 30-60 minute long interview. That final stage is changing.
Constituencies will be given the choice between; a traditional members’ meeting, where you must attend to vote and where each candidate presents themselves to the members before an elimination vote in the room, or, an online vote after a series of ‘hustings’.
The merits of the latter approach are that it gives members more opportunities to see the applicants. At least one, in-person hustings meeting must be held but the opportunity exists to do more and do them online, potentially substantially expanding the reach into the membership. There is also a strong assumption that applicants will submit a pitch document and create a three-minute video for circulation together with their application forms.
One of the downsides is that the vote is online, so those who may not be digitally savvy might still be excluded, but there is guidance on how to make sure such members are supported to ensure they can vote.
A more significant complication is that where the first ballot does not produce a clear winner – getting 50% of the votes plus 1 – a second round of voting will be required. As this must be launched within 24 hours of the close of the first round of voting, and concluded within 48 hours, this requires members to have an email address to which their voting codes can be sent. There is no letter option.
Should a constituency choose to stick with the traditional members’ meeting, they are also strongly encouraged to invite applicants to submit a pitch document and create a video and, again, these will be sent out to those invited to the meeting, but only by email. Whilst the notice of the meeting must be 14 days, this email may not arrive until just 5 days before the meeting itself. Will that be sufficient time to inspire more people to attend?
One other innovation, designed to spike Michael Crick’s guns, is that the names of those going to the final choice will be made public by the Party. I suspect he will still be very interested in the names going forward to the earlier round.
In the last Parliament, too many selections were rushed through, with some constituencies holding interviews and finals on the same day. This wasn’t fair on the members or candidates and I am hopeful it will not happen again. Whilst there is a need to get candidates in place, if members are to have a genuine choice, they need time to see people at campaign sessions and at hustings. I hope Associations will seek to maximise this opportunity as selections progress, not try to run through all stages in a few short weeks.
What does this mean for potential candidates? Be active, be visible, have a website and Facebook Page as a minimum digital presence. Prepare the 60-70 percent of your application forms that will be standard across all seats now, but do your research on the seats you are most interested in, and don’t book any holidays!
Cllr John Moss is a campaign consultant at the College Green Group, a councillor in Waltham Forest and Chairman of the Chingford & Woodford Green Conservatives
After the General Election in 2024, the membership of the Conservative Party was unhappy about many things, but it was pretty much universally furious about how the process of selecting parliamentary candidates had been managed. For the third election in a row, a snap election resulted in local associations being pushed aside. If they were not winnable seats, they were handed candidates picked for reasons many found unfathomable. Where they were retirement or target seats, they were given a limited choice, but the Party decided who they got to choose from, often excluding popular local candidates.
There was very real anger and well-founded suspicion the process had been hijacked by ‘CCHQ’, MPs and others to favour ‘their mates’. It was too slow (despite the excuse of the boundary review) and many suspected that this was intended to favour displaced MPs and ministerial SpAds, who could be slotted in to winnable or retirement seats at the last minute without any real challenge.
Like most things, there are two sides to every story, but rebuilding the membership’s trust in the approval and selection process was a real challenge. Under the stewardship of Julian Ellacott and Clare Hambro, that trust has largely been rebuilt through a very open engagement with members, regular updates and meetings; a refreshing change from what has happened in the past!
As the Party commences the selection of candidates in the autumn, I believe the changes they have made will further help to mend that relationship between the centre and the constituencies. It is clear Clare is taking a firm but fair hand with candidates and constituencies and has been incredibly active in the process. There is now a real commitment to leave the constituencies to choose their candidates from all those who apply.
It has been confirmed that seven ‘tranches’ of seats will be advertised from September through to January. So where do we stand?
Much is the same.
The Candidate Portal manages the relationship between the Candidates’ Team and approved candidates, including the applications for individual seats. It is perhaps a hangover from the HR-driven focus of the previous chair of the Candidates Committee, but it works, so why change it?
The four sections of the individual seat application that applicants need to complete also remain the same: Why me for this vacancy, Personal achievements, Career summary and Voluntary and community activity. The first change comes next.
To ensure fairness, anyone intending to apply must not participate in the selection process. This begins with the local Executive Council, which is responsible for determining the membership of the ‘Sift Committee,’ whether to invite candidates to local campaigning sessions, and the method for the final decision.
The Sift Committee is bigger and there is greater clarity about who is eligible to be a voting member. Its decision will be made locally, not at a meeting at CCHQ and, hopefully, without any of the ‘strong suggestions’ or presentation of new applicants that previous members of the Candidates’ Team were alleged to have been fond of. That committee will choose eight applicants (plus two reserves) to go forward to the next stage. All ten applicants will then go through a further round of vetting.
For competitive constituencies, this stage remains as before; the Selection Council interview. In almost all cases this will be the constituency Executive Council or those officers of a Federation who live in a constituency. They will, as before, choose whether to pass three or four applicants forward to the final stage (plus a reserve) after a 30-60 minute long interview. That final stage is changing.
Constituencies will be given the choice between; a traditional members’ meeting, where you must attend to vote and where each candidate presents themselves to the members before an elimination vote in the room, or, an online vote after a series of ‘hustings’.
The merits of the latter approach are that it gives members more opportunities to see the applicants. At least one, in-person hustings meeting must be held but the opportunity exists to do more and do them online, potentially substantially expanding the reach into the membership. There is also a strong assumption that applicants will submit a pitch document and create a three-minute video for circulation together with their application forms.
One of the downsides is that the vote is online, so those who may not be digitally savvy might still be excluded, but there is guidance on how to make sure such members are supported to ensure they can vote.
A more significant complication is that where the first ballot does not produce a clear winner – getting 50% of the votes plus 1 – a second round of voting will be required. As this must be launched within 24 hours of the close of the first round of voting, and concluded within 48 hours, this requires members to have an email address to which their voting codes can be sent. There is no letter option.
Should a constituency choose to stick with the traditional members’ meeting, they are also strongly encouraged to invite applicants to submit a pitch document and create a video and, again, these will be sent out to those invited to the meeting, but only by email. Whilst the notice of the meeting must be 14 days, this email may not arrive until just 5 days before the meeting itself. Will that be sufficient time to inspire more people to attend?
One other innovation, designed to spike Michael Crick’s guns, is that the names of those going to the final choice will be made public by the Party. I suspect he will still be very interested in the names going forward to the earlier round.
In the last Parliament, too many selections were rushed through, with some constituencies holding interviews and finals on the same day. This wasn’t fair on the members or candidates and I am hopeful it will not happen again. Whilst there is a need to get candidates in place, if members are to have a genuine choice, they need time to see people at campaign sessions and at hustings. I hope Associations will seek to maximise this opportunity as selections progress, not try to run through all stages in a few short weeks.
What does this mean for potential candidates? Be active, be visible, have a website and Facebook Page as a minimum digital presence. Prepare the 60-70 percent of your application forms that will be standard across all seats now, but do your research on the seats you are most interested in, and don’t book any holidays!