Late last year the Sunday Telegraph revealed concerns among senior Tories that Conservative headquarters (CCHQ) was attempting to ‘stitch up’ safe seats in favour of “blue prince” candidates aligned with Mr Sunak, ahead of an election expected this year.
More than 40 MPs, including Liz Truss, Suella Braverman, Sir John Hayes, and Jonathan Gullis, wrote to the Prime Minister urging Mr Sunak to stop an attempt to impose a “shortened” selection process for prospective MPs.
They are right to be concerned. In addition to his ‘duties’ as Number Ten’s resident psychopath on a 6-figure salary from Conservative Campaign Headquarters, Dougie Smith is listed as being on the candidate selection panel. In reality it is reported that he vetoes those he deems over sympathetic to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, or to Conservative principles. He wants yes-men with unwavering loyalty to Rishi Sunak’s technocratic style of government to be selected as Tory candidates.
The Sunak team is concerned that Smith’s high-handed and centralized control of the selection process will alienate the Prime Minister from constituency Conservative committees who think they should have more say in their choice of candidates.
In disputes between the centre in CCHQ and the periphery in the constituencies, it is usually the centre that wins because that is where the power is and where the money is. Given a likely general election on November 14th, expect an 11-month drawn out tussle between constituency committees who want local and colourful candidates to represent them and Dougie Smith who wants candidates loyal to him.
For a full account of this, read the exposés that Nadine Dorries made public in her book, ‘The Plot,’ and in her subsequent articles and speeches.
The Sunak team is concerned that Smith’s high-handed and centralized control of the selection process will alienate the Prime Minister from constituency Conservative committees
LOL
Rejected twice by the membership etc
Anyway none of the parties actually need members, they can hire leafletters and bods to stand around with signs saying “Vote Farnsbarns”, it’d probably be cheaper than feeding the members tea and sausage rolls.
Time was, there was no such entity as “The Conservative Party”, just 500-odd Conservative Associations whose elected members chose to caucus as Conservative groups.
Exactly what I was about to say, jgh. “The Conservative Party” is not the organisation which took Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, and Benjamin Disraeli to power. Anyone voting for it out of some kind of historic loyalty is fooling himself.
It’s rather sweet that the Tory apparat believes that complete annihilation is avoidable.
Richard pimping Mad Nad’s book?
Not saying she isn’t right on this. Like many other things. Shame she’s barking.
Britain seems to have an unending supply of unelected and sinister chancers whose power and influence is opaque. From his very brief wikipedia entry, Smith sounds dodgy AF. A former “hard right libertarian” apparently (and organiser of orgies), who seems to have converted to Blarite centrism. His wife Munira Mirza, a former commie and adviser to Boris, seems just as sketchy.
Reason 1,312 not to vote Tory.
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!
Someone should use AI to create a fake of Trump doing that speech
BniC – only if we can get Alec Guinness AI to do the King Charles bits.
Guinness lent a natural aura of regality to the character of Charles that the present incarnation lacks.
It’s like if Fredo from the Godfather was your king. Fredo’s smart, not like everyone says. He’s smart and he wants respect! That’s why he was hanging around Moe Green (Klaus Schwab), promoting a Great Reset.
OT I found this amusing: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/08/jeremy-vine-think-bike-campaign-aa-wing-mirror-stickers/
Jeremy Vine tells motorists to put ‘Think Bike’ stickers on wing mirrors
Well, I suppose you could put them on the side you can’t see. But if you put them on the mirror side, you’d be driving an illegal car that certainly won’t pass it’s MOT & is probably now uninsured. You’ve invalidated the homologation certificate was issued when the car was made. So it doesn’t now conform with the definition of the car the policy was written to. In the case of door mirrors (cars haven’t had wing mirrors for decades) it would be obscuring your view of vehicles approaching from the rear. For instance idiot BBC presenters on bicycles? And is a nick.
Incidentally, it’s amusing Vine himself in the photo is ignoring advice to cyclists on road safety. Wear easily visible cycling clothes. In his jeans & suit jacket, he’s indistinguishable at a quick glance from the photographers behind him. So he could be taken as being a pedestrian crossing that road & not a cyclist moving along it. Thus resulting in an incorrect response from an approaching driver.
“bloke in spain
Jeremy Vine tells motorists to put ‘Think Bike’ stickers on wing mirrors”
Might I suggest “Fuck off Jeremy Vine” stickers would be more appropriate.
Things couldn’t be worse for any true conservatives remaining, when the Lego-head alternative seems likely to win.
But never mind, the globalists also have them under control, so nothing will change – it’s full speed ahead to dystopia.
Off-topic but “as I predicted” as some people are wont to say.
From Spudland…..
“Amongst the things that I did not predict would happen during the course of 2024 was that I would leave the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). However, I did on 28 March 2024…”
As I pointed out last year, the ICAEW had beefed up their Continuing professional Development requirements and it was no longer a box ticking exercise but people would actually be required to go on courses. Soon after the announcement, Spud published something about how he was considering his position because of some imagined failing on the ICAEW’s part and I predicted at the time he would resign rather than actually have to go on courses where his lack of knowledge would be exposed.
Spud goes on at pompous length regarding his reasons but we all know the real reason.
Is it just me, or has this been on top of newer posts for several days now?
No just you. Anyone new to the site might not page down and realise there is new stuff…
I have twice been involved in the selection of parliamentary candidates for the Conservative Party (normally we continue with the same one), and in both cases, in two different constituencies, the first stage of the process is to whittle the field down to serious candidates – in the first case from over 200 applicants! It’s quite possible that someone was dropped in from HQ, but if they were, they had to at least seem credible to get through various stages of sifting. Those early stages (and there are more than one, trust me) are done by panels selected from activists in the branches of the constituency. The final choice is made in a public meeting where paid up members not just the activists get a vote.
I’m not saying that HQ can’t drop their choice in if there is a last minute problem, but not in the systems I have been part of.
Over the last year, in part with boundary changes, I’ve been involved in confirming candidates to stand for the revised constituencies.
And I’m a political nobody. I’m the treasurer for a branch with a dozen or so members, have never been to the party conference, and don’t generally mix with politicians except at committee meetings held in church halls, or canvassing. Doesn’t seem much like centralised control to me.
Of course, what the bastards do once they are elected is another matter!
Bunch of effing chumps just like the effing chumps they’ll replace. Until the string-pullers are stopped, it matters not a jot who the front men-women are.
The Globalists behind the scenes are the problem, not the idiot placemen (& women) we’re offered as our representatives, ha ha, only an idiot would believe them.
I’m not a great believer in conspiracy theories, Ed P. Mainly because they require people to work together towards a common purpose & in my experience getting any group of people to work together towards a common purpose is bloody difficult. Most people primarily are interested in their own personal advantage, which takes precedence over the advantage of the group. The problem is, those with strings they can pull overwhelmingly tend to be the same sort of people from similar backgrounds. And, of course, that’s how they get access to the strings in the first place. Because people prefer to deal with people like themselves, so they give them preference. So what you have is not so much a conspiracy but people with influence where all their personal advantages align.
It’s something that maybe one gets a glimpse of in the rather grubby William Wragg affair. So he provided the blackmailer with a string of personal numbers of public figures. Are we to believe these personal figures were just chosen at random? Or might they be public figures of interest to someone in the shirt lifting community? And then has to wonder how such an indistinguishable figure as William Wragg rises to be a Tory MP & on the 1922 committee? Could that be because he has something in common with these influencial public figures with ?
Is anyone else getting a 403 Error when accessing Tim’s site via VPN?
Odd that this is still the lead item