Rifkind could be deselected

Dean Godson

24 May 2006

A pitiless Kensington and Chelsea Conservative plot

Now K&C is to be broken up again. There will be a new Kensington division, stretching from the northerly tip of the Royal Borough — David Cameron’s home turf — down to the Fulham Road. Then there will be a new Chelsea and Fulham seat, crossing borough boundaries, which comprises those bits of Chelsea that are south of the Fulham Road (such as the Royal Hospital) with those solidly Tory parts of Fulham in the SW6 postcode.

Since more than 60 per cent of Sir Malcolm’s existing seat will be in the new Kensington division, the party’s model rules would theoretically allow him a ‘bye’ into the final round of any selection. The incumbent, though, is hedging his bets. If Rifkind went for the new Chelsea and Fulham nomination, he might also be entitled to a bye. But he would then be pitted against one of the party’s most dynamic campaigners, Greg Hands, MP for Hammersmith and Fulham, who recaptured the seat last year. Hands is the architect of the Tory revival in that key swing borough — which also resulted in the party recapturing the town hall earlier this month for the first time since 1968.

If Notting Hill is David Cameron’s residential home, then Hammersmith and Fulham surely qualifies as his spiritual home. It embodies the sort of modern grassroots conservatism that he wants the party to be all about. Rifkind and Hands have not yet spoken to one another about a potential carve-up of the spoils, but if they fight each other, the smart money is on Hands — the young blood versus the ageing gun-slinger on the verge of his seventh decade.

But neither is Sir Malcolm a shoo-in for the new Kensington. Why? The potential anti-Rifkind coalition is wide and disparate. The charge-sheet of his opponents includes allegations that he is not as assiduous a constituency MP as he might be, considering the proximity of the Commons; he did not attend ward AGMs in the run-up to the local elections as often as they think he ought; and he did not campaign enough.

Others grouse that Rifkind neither lives in the constituency in the week nor at weekends nor in recess, residing as he does in Westminster and Inveresk, East Lothian; that he concentrates too much on foreign affairs; that he focuses too much on extensive outside business interests such as his non-executive chairmanship of ArmorGroup International plc. Critics also cite the website monitoring MPs’ performance, TheyWorkForYou.com: Sir Malcolm has attended just 48 per cent of votes in the Commons, making him 602nd out of 646 MPs; he spoke in 18 debates in the last year, and thus was 413th.