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Rifkind could be deselected

24 May 2006

A pitiless Kensington and Chelsea Conservative plot

Is Kensington and Chelsea, that jewel in the crown of Conservative parliamentary seats, becoming the Bermuda Triangle of Tory politics? Thanks to the little-noticed workings of the Boundary Commission, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary, could soon find himself in a battle royal to remain in the Commons.

The local precedents are not good for Sir Malcolm. When Kensington was amalgamated with Chelsea in the run-up to the 1997 election, Dudley Fishburn stood down in favour of the Chelsea MP, Sir Nicholas Scott. The following year, Scott (by then suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s) nearly crushed a child while parking his car and was then too drunk to attend his association’s party at party conference. He was promptly deselected. K&C thereupon picked Alan Clark, but he died of brain cancer within two and a half years. He was replaced by Michael Portillo, who retired from front-line politics after his failure to be elected Conservative leader in 2001. Sir Malcolm succeeded him in 2005, returning to the Commons eight years after losing in Edinburgh Pentlands.

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