Losing Hart?
BY HUGH SULLIVAN AND PAUL MCLAUGHLIN
The political insider website Guido Fawkes reported last Sunday that the executive of the Hastings & Rye Conservative Association has voted not to re-adopt sitting MP Sally-Ann Hart as their constituency candidate at the next parliamentary general election.
Selection of Tory candidates is ultimately a matter to be voted upon by the full constituency membership, and Mrs Hart will not be precluded from appealing to them in any eventual contest. However, failure to obtain the support of the Association’s officers within the party clearly wounds a candidate’s prospects.
No explanation has been offered so far for the vote or its outcome either by Mrs Hart or by her Association, so it is a matter of speculation at the time of going to press whether the reasons are personal or political.
During her three-year tenure of the Hastings & Rye seat she has generally shown herself a loyal follower of each successive Prime Minister – Johnson, Truss and now Sunak – in her voting record in the House of Commons, never taking an opposing stance on any issue central to government policy. However, she did identify herself as a Sunak supporter in the most recent selection process – which may or may not have had any bearing on her relations with the Association.
On the other hand it has been suggested that local party opposition may have been roused by Mrs Hart’s recently stated enthusiasm for the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) – institutions, based in Strasbourg, which are not part of the European Union but connected to the judicial body of the United Nations.
She was in Strasbourg at the end of January, attending a CoE meeting and also visiting the EHCR. She tweeted when she returned home that “the experience really brought home how important the European Court for Human Rights is for the 700 million citizens of the European continent.” Her comments drew some criticism, however, with one counter-tweeter asking her to explain why she remained in the Conservative Party, given that many of her parliamentary colleagues regularly call for Britain’s withdrawal from the court.
Her own party’s decision to oust her may of course merely anticipate rejection of any Conservative candidate by the wider electorate at the next general election, whenever that may be (a maximum of just under two years). Changes of the constituency boundaries which reduce its territory outside the borough of Hastings seem likely to significantly reduce the chances of the Tories retaining the seat, quite apart from current opinion polls which show the Labour party holding a double digit lead.
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