Rifkind could be deselected

24 May 2006

A pitiless Kensington and Chelsea Conservative plot

Sir Malcolm responds to these charges with his trademark professionalism. He states that he attends those ward AGMs that he is invited to; that after returning from a week abroad which overlapped with the first week of the campaign, he was out several nights a week when the House was sitting and during the days when it was not; that he did mutual aid with Fulham; and that he was present at the count on the night of the local elections.

Rifkind further points out that many locals have second homes in the country; that his two predecessors did not live in K&C; that virtually all MPs specialise in particular areas, and foreign policy has been his major interest since his maiden speech in 1974; that his directorships only take up about 10 per cent of his time; that his voting record can be explained by his large number of constituency and outside speaking engagements; and that he comparatively rarely spoke because until December 2005 he was shadow work and pensions secretary. And his majority in 2005 went up markedly.

But the greatest sin in the Darwinian eyes of many Kensington and Chelsea Conservatives is that Rifkind is a loser. When he returned to the Commons last year, many expected that he would be a serious candidate for leader; had he won, all of these shortcomings, whether perceived or real, would have been forgiven.

Shortly before David Cameron became leader in December, Rifkind very politely wrote to him indicating that he would accept only the shadow foreign secretaryship. Cameron gave the post instead to William Hague. But some K&C members were unhappy that instead of serving the party from a front-bench position, Sir Malcolm coolly went off to do his own thing.

When the crunch comes, all eyes will be on the senior power-brokers in the association — and, above all, on the recently elected president of K&C, the Marquess of Salisbury. Salisbury has told colleagues privately that the old and the new associations need to think very carefully about what it is they want in an MP. He believes that they have not always done so in the distant past, plumping instead for glamour.