Candidates. CCHQ is testing heavily for good campaigners – but being good legislators seems irrelevant

Yesterday, John Moss wrote for this site about the latest developments in the Conservative Party’s candidates process. Definitely well worth a read for any aspiring MP – but also, for anyone with a broader interest in Parliament, a little sobering.

Not because there have been any radical departures from the status quo, mind you; whilst there have been tweaks, broadly the content seems to be much the same as ever. But the emphasis of the training is very telling:

“Then there is the ‘Inbox’ exercise that challenges applicants to show how they would deal with scenarios MPs typically face, and to prioritise them. Unsurprisingly, you’re playing the role of an incumbent MP with a significantly reduced majority in a seat where control of the council has been lost by the Conservatives.”

He goes on:

“In the last parliament there were eight scenarios presented for this exercise, to complete over 45 minutes. That remains, but the new set appears to be slightly less intricate and, surprisingly, a little less focused on how one might translate constituency casework into local campaigns. Expect challenging diary clashes, tough casework, internal relationship management, and how to deal with proposals by the left-wing council, as well as some personal integrity issues.”

All of these things are doubtless very important on the campaigning side, and in what will on current polling be an extremely challenging general election one can’t blame CCHQ for trying to maximise the bang per campaigning buck the party gets from each candidate.

But between that, a “stronger emphasis on campaigning experience” in the interview, and the “the exercises to be done live in front of assessors” reportedly shifting towards “more campaign focused”, there is one quite big part of the role of a Member of Parliament which doesn’t seem to appear at all: being a legislator.

It remains, in theory, the primary function of MPs to draw up, scrutinise, and vote on legislation. But the word ‘legislation’ doesn’t appear once in John’s entire account – and I don’t suspect for a moment that the fault there is his.

Yet the experience of the past 14 years, especially towards the end, ought to have illustrated to the Party quite clearly the dangers of laying too heavy an emphasis on recruiting MPs as campaigners. Not only does it lean even further into the natural advantages as prospective candidates enjoyed by councillors, which form already too large a part of the typical Tory parliamentary cohort, but it will in general select for MPs who conduct themselves like councillors regardless.

Part of this is sadly inevitable, a feature of the post-Liberal Democrat character of politics. Voters like local candidates with a monomania for local issues; an MP who focuses on passing good national legislation – formally, remember, their actual job – is these days a creature which can survive only in a safe seat, of which the Conservative Party arguably lacks any.

But a responsible party, at least one which actually hopes to form a government, must still at least try to balance this against selecting candidates who will be prepared to actually vote for national policy even if it sometimes won’t be popular in their patch. The alternative is a repeat of what we got under Boris Johnson, when the Tories’ one serious attempt at planning reform collapsed because even MPs in safe seats prioritised being a Strong Voice for Little Whingeing over fixing a housing crisis which has all but destroyed the party’s appeal to people younger than their mid-50s.

Sir Keir Starmer is currently living the price that any prime minister will pay for taking office at the head of a party unreconciled to the need to make unpopular decisions, and any Conservative leader who hopes to take his job will, unless they are able to get at least some unpopular measures through the Commons, suffer the same fate.