Chester, Westmorland and Lonsdale, North Norfolk and now Plymouth … it’s clearly not a good time to be a Conservative Parliamentary candidate.
Chester – Tories call their own candidate an embarrassment and want to oust him.
Westmorland – Tories oust candidate (sort of)
North Norfolk – problems with homophobia in the selection campaign (oh, and the new candidate, Trevor Ivory, is – according to The Samaritans – “beyond the pale”)
and now …
Plymouth Sutton – where the person voted for in the selection contest, er …, doesn’t get to be the candidate



4 Comments
Twas bound to happen sooner or later with “open primary” style selections unless you made them binding. And the risk of the opposition hijacking them is probably too great to do that.
Even in America with the tradition of open primaries they are fraught with problems. Eg Joe Lieberman losing the primary but still getting elected and Gray Davis (former Dem Governor in CA) spending a fortune on the REPUBLICAN primary to help the least electable Republican candidate get the nomination!
At least they’ve got candidates.
The Tories have given up selecting one in Portsmouth South due to ‘lack of interest’!
There’s talk on ConHome about similar cases of Conservative Associations in ‘special measures’ in Wirral W, Carmarthen & potentially others too.
All not running smoothy …
You can read the local newspaper coverage at http://duncanborrowman.blogspot.com/2006/12/loser.html