This week Richard Bacon became the fourth Tory MP to get evicted from his seat by party members. What’s behind the wave of deselections? Tory members emphasise local concerns, but something else is afoot.
A fringe group, the Conservative Democratic Organisation, is actively attempting to unseat MPs that it considers are insufficiently Right- wing.
It has prominent support. Former Cabinet ministers Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg will attend the CDO’s “Take Back Control” conference and gala dinner on the night of the Eurovision final.
The group, led by Boris Johnson ally Lord Cruddas, has suggested as many as 60 MPs are on the target list. Deselections are rare in Conservative politics but redrawn election boundaries, creating new seats and abolishing old ones, have given the CDO a chance to turf out “wets”.
The practice of deselection has previously been characterised as a sign of political radicalisation. In 2018 there was a great panic about Labour MPs being deselected because they did not support their leader at the time, Jeremy Corbyn. Some claimed that Left-wing Labour members planned to deselect up to 50 MPs on the right of the party.
Civil servants respond to TikTok ban
Civil servants were bemused yesterday by the move to ban TikTok from government phones — most of them can’t download it on their work mobiles. “We can’t even get Instagram,” moaned one mandarin. Another told us: “Most people in government didn’t have it on their work phones, but the politicians and their advisers did — and their content was exclusively embarrassing.”
The News Agents podcast inspired Jeremy Hunt
Like the new childcare policy from Jeremy Hunt? Thank Emily Maitlis. The Chancellor revealed yesterday that Maitlis and the team on The News Agents podcast “gave me ammunition” in arguing for Budget reforms. “I listened to your podcast on childcare, it was about the time we were making big Budget decisions,” he said.
‘Impartiality is a myth’ says CNN chief
Will the BBC be taking lessons from CNN? The US network’s chief correspondent Clarissa Ward was in London last night for a talk series at Frieze hosted by fashion designer Edeline Lee. She told the audience that impartial journalism is “a myth that was based on one world view, one perspective and we were selling it as the voice of God.” Author Afua Hirsch chimed in, describing it as the “perspective of the white middle-class middle-aged man.”
Gary Lineker gets a break
After a hectic few weeks, Gary Lineker chilled out last night at the opening of Apollo’s Muse, a new private members’ club in Mayfair. He was joined by singer Paloma Faith and Lady Mary Charteris. Actor Daniel Kaluuya and model Jourdan Dunn went to a party hosted by designer Kim Jones and Cat Deeley was at a charity event in Camden for breast cancer charity Future Dreams.
