Watch out Bournemouth West

I supposed he was going to get selected eventually for somewhere, and finally it has happened.  Conor Burns, the Conservative candidate vanquished by Chris Huhne at the last General Election in Eastleigh, has finally found himself another constituency to stand in – Bournemouth West.

What I find interesting though is the local candidate dimension.  There has been considerable debate about how important it is for someone to be a local candidate.  The Liberal Democrats have tended to consider this more important than the other parties and then used the localness of their candidate as a major selling point.  The other parties have only started doing this recently.  But one person who did this in spades at the last general election was Conor Burns.

Conor Burns relentlessly used the slogan “Being Local Matters” throughout his General Election campaign in Eastleigh.  It was used everywhere, which was quite impressive for someone who had only lived in Eastleigh constituency for one year longer than Chris Huhne.  With him now being selected for Bournemouth West, Conor now clearly feels that being local doesn’t matter and all he wants is a winnable seat which he has realised Eastleigh isn’t anymore.

The last General Election in Eastleigh was a nasty campaign.  Lib Dem stakeboards were frequently vandalised.  Chris Huhne was followed to his London home so someone could take photos to try and prove that he wasn’t local.  His children were also followed to school for the same reason.  I am even told by a reliable source that one of the parties offered to pay the other’s election expenses if they agreed to run a very negative campaign against the Lib Dems.   I understand that it was the best funded Conservative campaign in a seat that they didn’t already hold with Lord Ashcroft pouring in huge amounts of money.  But what the Lib Dems were also up against was Conor Burns.  The Eastleigh Conservative Association had a history of failure, as still seems to be the case with the Tories there now down to single figures in councillors, although that is also down to the brilliant Liberal Democrat council which is very ably led by Keith House (someone who achieves that rare feat of being an excellent councillor, a very good council manager, a thoroughly nice person and also a true liberal).  But what Conor Burns did was to his bypass his local association and bring in people from outside to run the campaign.

That meant we had to deal with:

• The parachute leaflet, which was a glossy expensive-looking leaflet that arrived in an anonymous white envelope and which came across as impartial.  Instead it was actually sent out by the Conservatives implying that Chris Huhne had been parachuted in by the Liberal Democrats against the wishes of the local membership.
• This leaflet was then followed up by a warning that the Liberal Democrats were running a very nasty and negative campaign when that was far from the case.
• Someone, and we now think we know who, was working in the Lib Dem campaign team so they could take back to the Conservatives our future plans.  This meant that the Conservatives could get their attack in first.
• Despite a long quiet period when the Conservatives did little, huge sums of money arrived at the last minute which included paying for a billboard in Eastleigh town centre and a DVD delivered to every house.
• A Tory MEP alleging that he had received a leaflet through his letterbox during the election campaign that had been funded by the European Parliament.  Not only was it not delivered during the election campaign, the MEP didn’t even live in the constituency.
• Alleging that Chris Huhne was seeking two jobs, when he would be automatically resigned from his role as MEP if he was elected as an MP.
• Invented an opinion poll to give the impression that our campaign was going badly.

As a former high-flyer in Conservative Future, Conor Burns also has a lot of friends in high places, and as an arch-Thatcherite he also has a lot of supporters on the right of the party including Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher herself.

He clearly can be beaten.  After all he’s lost Eastleigh twice, he lost in the town council elections for his home area of Hedge End (where he was also beaten by the other Tory candidates too), and he lost his council seat in Southampton to the Liberal Democrats (the first Tory to ever be beaten in the ward, which is a fact that omits from his biography despite saying how he won a seat from Labour).  But don’t expect it to be an easy ride.