A close friend of mine has been feeling very sorry for himself this weekend.  He has been a devoted Conservative all his life and when Cameron asked for a fresh wave of Candidates recently he decided to apply.  This weekend he heard that the first Parliamentary Assessment Board, (PAB), was taking place.  He was not on it and has concluded the Party don’t want him…..much to his dismay.

When he talked to me about applying to be a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate I advised him against it.  I steered that given what Cameron was saying and the PR messages behind what candidates should look like, someone with a Party background and years of experience as a councillor would not fit the current mould and to wait until the next Parliament.  The Party need to, from a PR perspective, show a raft of new candidates with fresh backgrounds.  In a previous blog I have called the new candidates the ‘Saint Squad’.  The Party will want people with respectable backgrounds like former policemen, civil servants, charity workers, nurses, doctors, teachers etc.  Where would be the sense of going with candidates who are Party faithful and ex councillors?  That would not represent a break from the past which Cameron wants to portray.  We have had those candidates for years and that is the make up of the MP’s now in the House.

Hence Cameron needs to say to the Party, here are the fresh breed, untainted by politics…who want to make a difference.  That makes great PR and will attract positive headlines.  Where would be the sense of, ‘Here are our new candidates, they are all Party Faithful with years of experience on councils’.  Wow that would be a PR backfire!

My friend, understood this but was in ranting mood.  ‘I have toiled blood, sweat and tears for this bloody Party’, they did not even have the decency to send me a rejection letter.  I hear about the PAB’s through the Daily bloody Telegraph…well f*** them.  I could add so much more value to the Party.  Look at that Chloe Smith.  Lightweight.  No gravitas.  I am gutted’. 

I sympathised but again stressed it was not the message the Party needed to send out if Party Faithful get the nod.  Cameron is underlining his credentials and his break from the past.  He needs those headlines of new ‘unpolitical canidates’. 

My friends time will come, (as will other readers of this blog).  Interestingly Charles Moore said in his DT article yesterday: ‘The range of bright, public-spirited candidates is impressive. This weekend, the Parliamentary Assessment Board is testing the new crop who have answered Mr Cameron’s recent call. Plenty, I gather, have experience of “real life” – ex-army officers, policemen, top-grade civil servants and people who have run their own businesses. They will look good when presented to the public at the party conference in the autumn.  But one cannot help asking if so many coming in for the first time, without having risen through the hard school of party politics, will know what to do if they find themselves supporting a Tory government. At present, the huge power of public-sector Leftists – in quangos, pressure groups, unions, the judiciary, green organisations, local councils and the BBC – directs disappointed anger on to Labour. After a Tory victory, all that will change. Like enraged addicts undergoing cold turkey, without their huge doses of public spending, they will trash the public space. Will the Tories have the tough foot-soldiers needed to fight this culture war? Will they have enough officers leading from the front? If voters spot this weakness in advance, will they support them’?

There comes the challenge…..and the last thing we want is a Parliament of mediocrity.  These new candidates will generate great PR and media headlines for us in the coming weeks and months….advantage Cameron and our Party!