Conservative candidates to be tested for conformity

Newsmoggie does not usually stray into Conservative territory, except to dig up gardens for essential purposes of course.

But it seems that the Conservatives really don’t want another repeat of their glorious leader Boris Johnson. They have introduced psychometric testing for new candidates. While Newsmoggie is not an expert on such tests, they do seem aimed to introduce conformality and normality, treating potential MPs like dogs to be trained and not like us free roaming cats.

Would Boris Johnson pass a psychometric test? Michael Gove? Matt Hancock? Or even Daniel Kawczynski, who has had to apologise after imbibing alcohol before ranting at parliamentary officers.

On today’s Conservative Home, Deputy Editor Charlotte Gill takes gives psychometric testing a bashing:

There is no such thing as an “objective” psychological measure, however much time and effort researchers have put into developing these tools (and some are very good). That’s because their authors have to make decisions on what constitutes constructs such as “intelligence”, “extraversion”, and many other traits, which inevitably means their own subjective ideas go into the framework.

Another flawed premise of psychometric tests is that you can decide what (by way of score, or personality traits) would make someone a good fit for a job/ political candidacy. But we know that any number of people can inhabit a role and bring something completely new to it.

It seems that the Conservatives are aiming to churn out identikit wannabe MPs for the next general election. Consistent. Bland. Dutiful.

Newsmoggie is sticking with the Lib Dems and to digging up Conservative flowerbeds.

* Newsmoggie – bringing you comment from a different perspective

Read more by or more about .
This entry was posted in Op-eds.
Advert

One Comment

  • Tony Harris 26th Jun '21 - 7:41am

    Rubbish. I used psychometric tests in IT recruitment for nearly twenty years. They were extremely good for doing seeding and preparing fir a structured interview. The important thing is not to depend on them completely but to use them as one of the tools in the interview arsenal. They are particularly good at highlighting issues that the candidate might want to keep hidden and that’s probably why the Tories are using them. We have been caught out recently by candidates not declaring bias and prejudice so perhaps we should consider them too?

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Mick Taylor
    A rather good council by-election week. I see the doomsayers are not saying that our performance is terrible this week, but they're not saying anything positive...
  • William Wallace
    Geoff: The situation in secondary schools is as bad as you fear. I've been into several in London and Yorkshire in the past six months to ask how they will adj...
  • Judy Abel
    @Nigel Indeed - lots of people know the current economic model is not working for too many ordinary businesses, including farmers. The Lib Dems could/should do ...
  • Jeff
    Pawel Urbanski 14th Aug '26 - 4:28pm: WHat bothers me is that the shortfall has to come from somewhere, and it lands on income and on high street bus...
  • Jeff
    Peter Davies 7th Aug '26 - 7:48pm: The broken part is not the provision of water (a commodity and natural monopoly supplied to households) but the di...