A few weeks ago, if you’d asked me how I expected to spend my time on Thursday, I’d have answered without thinking: trying to win my seat. I was a Conservative candidate, and have poured a five figure sum of my own money into trying to get into parliament. But in the end, I didn’t get a seat, and it turns out that I’ve dodged a bullet. Even if I had won, I suspect I would have ended up in a much-reduced Conservative party that has totally lost its way, among MPs with little chance to effect change. Unlike many of those MPs, though, I don’t think it has to be this way.
When I told an MP I was finding it quite hard to deal with some of the people in the associations, he replied: ‘Yes, they are all mad’
I got sucked into the political world during Covid. I had supported the Conservatives for many years, but was finding it hard to rationalise the decisions that the Tory government was making. I am a businesswoman, running an investment and development company across the south of England. I am also the patron of a domestic abuse charity. Both these organisations were hit hard by the pandemic: the charity saw a 63 per cent increase in helpline calls, while I tried tirelessly to keep delivering private and affordable housing in spite of the blocks placed on development by local authorities. By January 2022, I was being encouraged to stand for Parliament by leading MPs in the Conservative party who I had contacted with my concerns about the Covid restrictions. In June of that year, I was in the candidate selection process, going through a parliamentary assessment board run by CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters). I felt worlds apart from everyone else there. They were all from a Westminster background: researchers, special advisers, think tank and charity workers and serving councillors. They all seemed to speak the same language and share the same perspective on the world: one I had scarcely seen in my 25 years in business. I may not be politically well-connected, but I know the real world. It bore no resemblance to the weird one I’d just stepped into. I tried to leave.
The chairman and director of CCHQ summoned me back though, trying to persuade me that I was doing really well, and that I should keep going. They were right: by November, I had been given a comprehensive pass: the highest level for a candidate, which meant I could apply for any seat in the country.
In the following 18 months, I spent over 780 hours campaigning and more than £15,000. I became a borough councillor. I joined Women2Win (W2W), the group that tries to get more women into parliament. I also paid for as many training courses as I could. Some of them, quite frankly, seemed to be a racket. One coach, who charged between £5,000 and £15,000 for one to three sessions on how to win selection, gave me a desk sign that said ‘I’m a big deal’, and put me through a near pointless session on speech training. The W2W advice was much more useful, but still depressing. Its ‘getting selected’ residential course had an entire session on the perception of ‘strong women whose personalities are seen as bossy and unattractive’. Then there was the fashion advice on what we should wear to selections: feminine, preferably a blue flowery dress to look soft and Conservative.
At the time, I was infuriated, but as I started to go through the selection process, I began to realise that W2W was merely trying to work with the system that women found themselves in. And my God, what a system it is. You have to suck up to the members of local associations, all of whom dedicate their lives to the Conservative party. They deliver leaflets and campaign fanatically. There is a desperate sense of belonging which feels almost cult-like. But they are part of such a weird group.
One woman, who was involved in the decision making process for a seat I went for, genuinely thought the Liberal Democrats had been sent out to infiltrate our community and were dangerous. Another lady boasted that in her first general election, she made a coat and hat out of the posters of the candidate, and walked around the town wearing them. She was convinced this was why the candidate won. Prior to my final for the Dorking and Horley selection, I spent all day delivering leaflets and went straight to the local party’s curry night, where a key Tory activist got incredibly drunk and tried to break into the toilet that I was in. When I mentioned to an MP that I was finding it quite hard to deal with some of the people in the associations, he replied: ‘Yes, they are all mad, but once you are an MP, it’s amazing how little time you have to spend with them.’ These people choose our future MPs.
It became painfully clear that I was no more one of them than I had fitted in among the Westminster creatures when I first got into this candidate business. When I failed to make the long list for my local seat of Esher and Walton, I asked for feedback. The senior area campaign manager gave me a call, and told me that ‘you have a working class background and are a ‘Pompey girl’ so there is unconscious bias from the associations’. I didn’t think I had a Pompey accent (I am from Portsmouth), and said so, but was told: ‘People thought you were a cockney, so I told them, no, she is a Pompey girl.’ They also told me that ‘your business background can be a curse: your business is not considered gentrified’, and that ‘businesspeople don’t resonate as well as lawyers, barristers and special advisors’. When I said I wouldn’t be going for selection in Farnham and Bordon where I was a local councillor, I was told ‘I think that’s sensible’.
I am now certain that politics is no place for a businessperson
Apparently too common for Surrey, I tried to go for coastal seats instead. I made the final for Mid-Sussex coming a very close second to the local candidate; yet in Chatham, it became obvious that the local party thought that as a developer I was just there to concrete over the green belt. I wasn’t having much luck, even though CCHQ kept assuring me I was in their ‘top tier’ of candidates and that I needed to ‘keep the faith’. And then, the general election was called. Very quickly, CCHQ released all the remaining seats for application. Again, I went for coastal seats: Bognor, and then Bexhill and Battle. On 30 May, I finally got my call from CCHQ, saying they were ‘minded’ to give me East Worthing and Shoreham. I had never even been to this seat and had not applied for it. I asked if I could call back in 15 minutes, and hurriedly looked it up. It had a 7,441 majority and a 3 per cent chance of the Conservatives winning. I would have to move to the area to fight the seat, taking my family with me and leaving my business and team behind. I would do this for a seat where we might have a chance, but this was utterly futile and I felt duped. W2W phoned to tell me that it was ‘this or nothing’, and that if I did not take this seat, I would never be offered another, effectively being shunned by the party. I returned the call to CCHQ and politely declined.
I watched the campaign unfold from afar, feeling glad not to be part of it. Last week, though, I received a call from two senior officials at CCHQ. They wanted to see how I was and whether I wanted to stay on the candidates’ list. I was candid: I said that I did not think this was a place for a true businessperson and that I probably should have trusted my gut during the initial parliamentary assessment board. They did not disagree with me, saying those who had been selected from a business background ‘feel in a strait-jacket and find the system uneasy’. I was told, again, that I was a great candidate and top of the list. It was at this point that I asked the all-important question. If you genuinely thought I was a great candidate, was top of the list and was the only true businessperson, why didn’t you allocate me at least a marginal seat when the election rules kicked in? Why did you offer me a seat that, even if I fought like the fighter I am, had no chance of staying Conservative?
I think I took them both by surprise with this. They argued that I had no political footprint and that I needed to embed myself in more associations over the next five years. I explained that if I had no political footprint this time, then I would have no political footprint next time. I explained that as I have a business to run, an important role contributing to the economy and a responsibility to my team, I would never have as much time to suck up to the associations and embed myself in them as a candidate who didn’t have a full-time, real world job. I couldn’t just appoint a CEO of my business on spec without knowing if I was actually moving into a candidacy. I was told that ‘the hard work has to come prior to selection as so much needs to be done in a short space of time.’ I questioned this. Surely the hard work starts when you are elected as an MP?’ No, he replied, once you are an MP, you have years. ‘As an MP,’ he added, ‘you won’t ever effect change.’
I paused, confused by this. Into the silence, the other CCHQ official voiced his disagreement with that statement. But I am now certain that politics is no place for a businessperson, even though we should be able to contribute hugely to party politics and policy making. Small and medium-sized businesses make up the vast bulk of our economy and employment. And yet it is near impossible for people with any working knowledge of this to make it into parliament. Instead, the special advisers, the longstanding councillors and the Westminster researchers glide through a system that is set up for them, and that is full of weird people like them too. The ones who do manage to win their seats won’t even get to effect change anyway, if their own party campaign headquarters is right. I hope that they’re as wrong about that as they are about the way they choose their politicians.
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