Monday, June 12, 2006
Great! - The chance to pay the Conservative party to help them choose their candidate!
This is a brilliant opportunity. All Londoners will have the chance to make a donation to the Conservative party for the privilege of helping them to choose their candidate for the mayoral election! What a fantastic opportunity!
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It's so often hard to tell without the usual cues of tone or body language, but I get the impression you are sceptical. However, I do not share your scepticism. I anticipate this will do the Tories nothing but good. If you disagree, perhaps you could explain why?
ReplyDeleteIt's the payment side which is highly experimental. Without weeks of saturation media coverage, a la Big Brother, it will be fascinating to see whether people actually want to PAY to vote for, say, Adam Rickitt or Zac Goldsmith.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I look forward to seeing the reaction of the Tory blue rinse members in London who see spotty oiks with mobile phones taking away their right to choose a candidate. That will be interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe rules don't support the stated intention to give all Londoners a chance to be the Tory candidate: "Candidates will not be able to spend more than £100,000 from the time they submit their application to be the candidate.
ReplyDeleteCandidates’ campaigns would not be able to accept more than £20,000, either in cash or in kind, from a single donor including the candidate themselves."
What sort of ordinary Londoners can spend anywhere near £100,000 on a political campaign?
Also, I think this will rebound on the Conservative party. It is important to have a consistent internal electoral process, which has been broadly agreed by the members of their conference representatives, in any party. When you start one-offs like this, established members will say they should choose the candidate as in other situations across the country. Once again, it is abundantly clear that the Conservatives do not understand party democracy. Which conference of the Conservative party voted to approve this text/phone method? I am not aware that anything other than the morning Cameron/Gove/Maude conference decided on this but I look forward to being enlightened. If it hasn't been approved by members, I think we can look forward to either "trouble at t'mill" or to this being a bit of a one-off.