Date published: 2009/12/12
The UK general election is only a matter of months away, and bizarrely enough the Tory prospective parliamentary candidate for Cambridge suddenly resigned a few weeks ago. So the Conservative Party had to choose a new candidate. The Tory central office provided a shortlist of six people, and to help decide amongst them, they held a novel open meeting today where anyone who is resident in the constituency could attend and vote. This is a slightly dangerous strategy in that in theory people from opposing parties could try and game the system. It happens all the time in American presidential primaries. It did not seem to happen here.
Less than a hundred people showed up to the selection meeting, perhaps half members of the local Conservative association (average age 60+) and half not (average age 30+). The meeting was supposed to start at 9.30 but didn't start until 10. And the general organisation was rather amateurish. If this is how the Tory party is going to run the country after the election, then it is not a good sign.
They got Michael White of the Guardian to run the question and answer sessions with the candidates. White admitted up front that he knew very little about Cambridge. Then again, most of the candidates didn't know much about Cambridge either, although on the whole they had swotted up more than White had, for obvious reasons. In spite of his not being a Cambridge person, he did a fairly reasonable job of running the show.
For each candidate, White asked four questions, roughly "why Cambridge", "what are the economic priorities", "what about foreign affairs" and finally "what about public services". He then allowed some questions from the floor. And then the candidate was allowed to spend three minutes saying what they wanted.
The Tories should have a reasonable chance of winning Cambridge at the forthcoming election, since the sitting Lib Dem MP, David Howarth, is stepping down. He never really did much for Cambridge but did the usual MP chores well enough and did not get caught in the MP expenses scandal, so almost certainly would have won re-election.
In spite of this, the Tories chose not to send anyone suitably high profile, who might catch the public imagination. So it seems that Tory high command does not view Cambridge as that winnable. Of the six candidates, only one, Sarah El-Neil was local. She is chair of the Cambridge City Conservative Association, and rumour has it that it was she who engineered the downfall of the previous candidate.
The order in which the candidates were questioned was (supposedly) randomly chosen, and it is unfortunate that no matter how well people are intended, candidates who present earlier have a much harder time than ones who present later. It's just a natural human bias to be influenced by order.
The six candidates, in the order they presented, were Mark Higgins, Sarah El-Neil, Evelyn Conway, Nick Hillman, Chamali Fernando and Jane Gould. Not surprisingly, given that they had all been passed by Tory central office, they pretty much all toed the Cameron line on pretty much every issue.
One issue they all mentioned and agreed upon was that the number one economic priority was to reduce the debt. Of course they all then said that of course spending on this, that and the other was important, for example that the NHS budget and school budget should be "ring fenced". They all claimed that government waste could be cut. They did not explain how to square the idea that the debt should be cut but that public services should not be impacted. This is all straight out of the Cameron / Osborne playbook.
Another issue they all mentioned and agreed upon was that Afghanistan was the number one foreign policy problem. They pretty much all repeated the Cameron trope that Gordon Brown has allegedly not given a good story to the public about why the UK is in Afghanistan. And if only that was done then all would be well in Afghanistan.
They pretty much all opposed the so-called Cambridge congestion charge. This is a bit ironic given that it is the Tory Party, at the county level, that is scheming for this to go ahead. Of course they all said that congestion was a problem, but didn't have any real solutions to offer, other than the usual nostrums about better public transport (paid for by whom, they did not say).
Surprisingly Europe was only brought up once, by a questioner from the floor. And Copenhagen was only brought up once, again as a result of a question from the floor. And the phrase "global warming" or "climate change" was not mentioned at all by anyone. In some ways it is nice that the local Tory party, on this indication, is perhaps not rabidly anti-European. But it was rather amazing that climate change, which many people would say is the number one issue on the planet, was not considered to be more important than Afghanistan as a foreign policy issue.
Mark Higgins is a barrister. He seemed bright enough. He had no Cambridge connection but somehow tried to convince the audience that since he went to Oxford that was close enough. He claimed at one point that there could be cuts across all government departments (except for health, and presumably schools) without being "painful". That is rather deluded. He is blind, which possibly put some people off voting for him (on the idea that somehow that might affect his ability to campaign in a tough seat).
Sarah El-Neil was the only local candidate, which seemed to be the main plank in her platform. She seemed nice enough, but not obviously MP material. Someone in the audience asked her whether she would devote enough time to campaigning and being an MP, given that she is a consultant pediatrician at Addenbrooke's Hospital. None of the other candidates were asked the same kind of question, so it was a bit unfair just to ask her. But she point blank did not answer this (pretty simple) question, but just obfuscated. She mentioned that even the NHS should seek efficiencies (i.e. have their budget cut). But her justification for this was that at 3 AM on some Bank Holiday weekend she noticed that there were only 90 cars in the staff car park, and concluded that is how many people it took to run the hospital. Well, for one thing, a lot of staff are not allowed to park on site (even if they work crazy hours). And for another, it's pretty bloody obvious that there wouldn't be much in the way of medical care (e.g. operations) happening at 3 AM on a Bank Holiday weekend.
Evelyn Conway is a BBC journalist. She has no political experience and seemed almost embarrassed to be at the meeting. Although she, along with the others, said that debt was her major economic worry, she then proceeded to say she opposed the government's recent proposal to slash 600 million pounds from the higher education budget. Well, that's a good line to take in Cambridge, but with similar arguments you get to the point where the public debt is not dented. Needless to say, a future Tory government will slash the higher education budget, which will have a serious negative impact on Cambridge (which so far has largely been unaffected by the global economic crisis). She was not obviously MP material.
Nick Hillman is chief of staff for the MP David Willetts. He supposedly is interested in education above all else, as a policy issue. He certainly gave the most attention of all the candidates to this issue. He was asked by Michael White about the university fees cap (currently 3000 pounds per annum), and obfuscated in true political style by talking about an independent review (New Labour's answer to everything, and soon to be the Tory's answer to everything), enough so that he was asked explicitly by someone in the audience to state his own personal view. (This someone was the husband of Sheila Lawlor, who was one of the originators, along with David Willets, of the poll tax, way back in the 1980s.) And Hillman then stated he was personally opposed to raising the cap, although the review should not be prejudged. He had earlier mentioned that he thought Anne Campbell, the Labour MP for Cambridge until David Howarth took over in 2005, had lost her seat because of the Labour government's introduction of university fees. (Well, Iraq was probably a bigger issue.) So presumably his line on fees was because he did not want to anger potential student voters. Then again if university fees are not raised, it is pretty clear that universities, facing 600 million (around 6 percent) in cuts, will seriously suffer. He squared that circle by saying that university money (well, at least on the research front) should be more biased towards Cambridge. Well, it's hard to see that happening.
Chamali Fernando is a barrister, who was on the Tory shortlist for the mayor of London. She said that her connection to Cambridge was that she studied politics at some private crammer called Cambridge Seminars (not impressive). She was a recent defector from the Lib Dems and claimed that because of that she might attract Lib Dem voters better than other candidates. She did not mention the university at all, which is rather a shortcoming in Cambridge. But she was good on bluster, which seems to be her main selling point. But you have to wonder about the political sense of someone who puts on their flyer that they are "more than just a Cameron cutie".
Jane Gould was the last candidate. She used to be a senior manager in a local inkjet company, but has never lived in Cambridge (at that point she lived in Burwell), and for some time has not even lived in the area. She said she was impressed with the Cambridge City (Lib Dem) council website, and in particular the idea of local "recycling champions". Well, recycling is one of those activities that is largely pointless, but unfortunately the middle class people who run Cambridge (and the world) always are jolly keen on it. She has little political experience, just having been elected (for the first time) on the town council in Shaftesbury. She doesn't have to work for a living (she remarried recently and she implied that that is the reason).
There were three rounds of voting. In the first round, both Mark Higgins and Evelyn Conway were eliminated. In the second round, Jane Gould was eliminated. And in the final round, Nick Hillman won enough votes to become the prospective parliamentary candidate. He really was the most credible.
A couple of people mentioned that Cambridge was a three-way race. Well, in fact this time around it is a four-way race, because of Tony Juniper and the Greens. It is fortunate for the Tories that he is running, because he will largely siphon votes away from the Lib Dems, which might allow the Tories to win. It is all up to the Lib Dems now to win or lose, depending on whether they choose a credible candidate or not.
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