The Cambridge shortlist has now been published and, contrary to some hopes and wild rumours, has neither a nationally known media star nor a BME candidate on it. But then no member of either group applied.
The candidates are all councillors or former councillors in Cambridge but, as the Returning Officer said, “The shortlisting committee was chosen by the local party and I was happy that it was a balanced one. They drew up the selection criteria and marked the applications independently of each other. We only came together to total the scores, the result of which showed that the 6 shortlisted candidates were well clear of the rest”.
This press release has gone to the local paper giving a mini biog of the six:
Share:Tim Bick
Tim Bick represents the City Centre on Cambridge City Council, having previously led his party on Warwickshire County Council.
An Oxford graduate in Politics and Economics, he has worked on the people side of business for his whole career, abroad for 10 years and, since 2000, with Technology companies locally.Belinda Brooks-Gordon
Belinda was a mature student at Churchill College and now works an academic at Birkbeck specialising in social policy and criminal justice.
A County Councillor for Cambridge’s Castle Ward, where she has lived for 15 years with her family, her priorities are the environment, social justice, civil liberties.Rod Cantrill
Rod runs his own financial advisory company, is a city councillor and executive councillor for customer service and resources. He is also a trustee of Wintercomfort for the Homeless.
Rod came to Cambridge to study architecture 25 years ago. He is married to an academic and has two children.Julian Huppert
I grew up in Cambridge, and have represented the diverse interests of the City; Universities and students, council estates, the knowledge economy.
I am a member of Liberty’s national Council, and a scientist at the Cavendish Laboratory. I was County Councillor for East Chesterton 2001-9, and Lib Dem Group Leader.Sian Reid
An Executive City Councillor, lives in Cambridge with her family. Having run telecomms companies across Europe, she now teaches management.
As a Councillor she has fought for affordable housing, bus services, and green space. She is passionate about climate change, and has driven down the Council’s carbon emissions.Julie Smith
Julie Smith is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations in the Politics and International Studies Department at Cambridge University and Fellow of Robinson College.
She is a City Councillor for Newnham and Executive Councillor for Arts and Recreation. She ran the European Programme at Chatham House from 1999 to 2003.
6 Comments
Looks like an excellent field of candidates. Good stuff.
Indeed, Cambridge is pretty spoilt for choice, all the people on that list that I know anything about would make outstanding candidates.
Pretty impressive – based on those biogs, I’d be glad to have any one of them on a short list in my constituency!
Interestingly , the Tories gor Michael White to chair their hustings – see the story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/dec/16/michael-white-tories-cambridge-candidate
We don’t do this often enough – publishing our shortlists in key seats and telling people a bit about the contenders. They do it on ConservativeHome and apart from the occasional rows I think it is actually a good way of showing they have some really capable people trying to become MPs and sometimes generates a bit of a buzz about certain people.
Anders, I agree. I know that in some seats there are very few candidates, but where there is a good shortlist we should certainly publicise it.