Clare Golby: We need to break the boys’ club to make the Conservative election a real meritocracy

Clare Golby is a former councillor on Nuneaton and Bedworth Council.

The Conservative candidacy for Parliament was an exercise in frustration and anger for many. After years of jumping through endless CCHQ hoops, I and others have faced a selection process that is nothing short of disgraceful. Many of us are completely disillusioned. The systematic exclusion of people like me – hard-working candidates and especially women – in favour of friends and colleagues at Westminster was absolutely shameless.

As an experienced local politician who has also served in political leadership positions, founder of my own communications company and with over 20 years of experience in the digital corporate and IT world, I carry more than enough scars from both the corporate and political battle. I am also a sober northern woman who is quite suited to being an MP, especially compared to some who have been elected to Parliament until recently.

We Conservatives are supposed to be a meritocracy where the best person for the job is chosen. We are not supposed to be the architects of a situation like the Basildon and Billericay selection process where the party leader is the only person put forward for the job.

The deep anger of the candidates I spoke to about this was undeniable.

It makes me angry that those who contributed to the downfall of our party have been relegated to safer places. This blatant disregard for merit and hard work beyond cronyism is deeply disturbing.

It is difficult to refute claims of “moral bankruptcy” when we are seen behaving like this. It is despicable. Holden should, in my opinion, spend the rest of his time in Parliament on the backbenches, away from any decision-making process.

But his situation is unfortunately symptomatic of a larger problem. He is not just a brave northerner who rose from obscurity, won a seat in the Red Wall in 2019 and rose to become party leader. He has been part of the CCHQ machine since he left university, a perfect example of the Westminster Boys Club.

At the last general election, only 34 per cent of Conservative candidates were female, compared to 47 per cent for Labour. This discrepancy speaks volumes about our party’s commitment to at least the most basic equality. People like me have no chance with the current composition of CCHQ.

The requirements that CCHQ and the Candidates Department placed on candidates were also downright ridiculous.

We are expected to travel the length and breadth of the country to help in one by-election after another, to fund our expenses and attend “training” on how to speak, write and even dress! If we don’t help, it is recorded and held against us. The carrot and stick approach is a farce: they dangle the carrot of profiling in front of us, while they dangle the stick of exclusion if we don’t go along with it. The truth is that the vast majority of candidates are de facto excluded anyway. They have no chance of being selected and never will be.

The candidates are used to doing all the legwork; they are treated like cannon fodder and have to sit on the sidelines and watch the conservative Parachute Regiment reap the rewards without having done any of the hard work themselves. Keep going, boys!

Sometimes people try to put a thin veil of respectability over what is going on. In Stratford-on-Avon, for example, the final shortlist included an MP who opposed the party leadership, a SpAd and a local candidate who had ticked the female diversity box.

The final choice fell on MP Chris Clarkson. But the seat was not so easy to win after all. It went to the Liberal Democrats.

Timing is also very telling in this process. Although there was plenty of advance warning of the need to select new candidates for Stratford-on-Avon and other seats, the selection was conveniently delayed until after the election so that CCHQ could launch an “emergency” selection process. This allowed them to hand-select lists of candidates that guaranteed their choice had a pretty good chance of winning the candidacy.

This scenario has played out repeatedly. Not only have we lost seats that we could have kept with strong candidates if they had had time to establish themselves, but many on the list of candidates have also felt exploited and discarded.

To make matters worse, candidates are bombarded with incessant messages to spend more time campaigning, they are bombarded with phone calls about their activities, emails and WhatsApp messages even after they have been rejected time and time again. If anyone wants to understand the lack of willing supporters during the general election, they don’t have to look far. People are sick of being taken advantage of.

In May, I warned that our approach would result in significant losses in the general election, and I was right. If we are to rebuild our party, we need people like me who understand the grassroots and are not afraid to speak truth to power. It is time for a fundamental change in the way we do things, starting with changing the people and processes that have brought us to this point of failure.

The Conservative Party needs to fundamentally reform CCHQ, the way it deals with hard-working and extremely capable candidates and the selection process itself. The current structure is not fit for purpose. To get back to power we need to select good candidates that people have an affinity with, early and mid-term. We need to select more women for winnable seats, not just for looks but for real diversity of thought and leadership.

It is time to leave the old Westminster boys’ club behind and embrace a future where merit and commitment are truly valued, going beyond the role of special adviser, thinktanker or policy expert. Only then can we hope to regain the trust of our members and voters.

The system is rigged against people who are simply unable to be part of the Westminster environment or who do not have the time and resources to maintain connections that are far removed from their everyday lives. Unless there is a fundamental change in the way we work, which includes changing the people who have brought us to this point, nothing will ever improve.

We are constantly told that our party is a broad church, but when the dust settles, I think it is time we took a good look at who is in the pulpit, because their preaching is completely wrong.