Hart wins membership backing
PAUL MCLAUGHLIN
Following an online ballot of local party members, sitting MP Sally-Ann Hart has been re-selected to stand as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hastings and Rye at the next General Election.
The vote capped a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for Mrs Hart. In February, her political career appeared to be in extreme jeopardy when the Executive of her local Conservative Association failed to back her automatic reselection. With 14 members present on the evening, the executive was split 7-7 in a secret ballot and was therefore unable to put her name forward. Under party rules, this triggered a ballot of the wider party membership of the constituency.
Mrs Hart admitted that the Executive’s failure to endorse her candidacy had been unexpected and came as a shock. She was not alone. It appears that the Conservative Association was then convulsed with bitter ‘blue-on-blue’ infighting, and the Chairman, John Rankin, who represents the Conquest ward on Hastings Borough Council (HBC), resigned just a couple of weeks later, as the fallout from the putative coup engulfed the party in turmoil.
However, when put to the local Conservative Party membership, an online ballot of some 170 members backed Sally Ann Hart to be their preferred candidate with 89% of the vote. She said she was both relieved and delighted by the result, and humbled to have received such resounding support from the wider local party membership.
No grassroots rebellion
She blamed a small group of “disgruntled personalities” for the unrest, and said the vote proved there was not a grassroots rebellion against her. It was now time, she said, to “move on”…the matter has been “settled once and for all”. She said she was already looking forward to fighting the next election with a “great, unified local team working together for the people of Hastings and Rye.”
Rob Lee, former leader of the Conservative group on HBC and new Chairman of the constituency’s Conservative Association, said he too was “delighted” by the outcome. “Sally-Ann is an excellent MP, and we are united as an association to get behind her campaign for re-election.”
Mrs Hart will no doubt hope that these recent shenanigans will be forgotten by the time all the people of Hastings and Rye get the chance to vote on her future and not just Conservative Party members. Helena Dollimore, the Labour Party candidate, may be tempted to remind them – or perhaps not, given the internal revolt that simmered last summer around Labour’s own selection process in this constituency.
It’s a marginal, and thus the stakes are high. In 2019 Sally-Ann Hart retained the seat for the Conservatives with a majority of 4,043 over Labour, but it was a much closer result in 2017, when Amber Rudd squeaked home by just 346 votes. The nation-wide poll is likely to be called in the autumn of next year – certainly no later than January 2025.
For a clash between the respective candidates over clean water issues, see page 4.
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I’ve had occasion to email SAH several times over the past 2 years and she never, ever replies. I get a stock reply from some clerk. Even when I specifically requested a response from the MP who is accepting a huge salary paid for out of our taxes, this was ignored.