UK politics, more bad news for the Cringeservatives
All parties must submit a list of their candidates to the Electoral Commission by the end of the week.Of the ~630 seats in Great Britain (ie excl NI) the Labour party have selected 620, so they’re well-prepared to submit their list.
The Conservatives? Well, they currently have 200 and counting spots to fill, having only ~400 candidates selected. For comparison, the Green party has selected ~570 and they’re a minor party!
Wait… “and counting”? Not decreasing?
Yes. So having 200 spots to fill by the end of the week is already a tall order, what is happening is that Conservative MPs are no longer willing to stand again for their party, but they’re announcing their resignations during the selection period, meaning that the party now has to find someone to replace someone that they thought they already had.
To make matters even worse, even people that they have selected as candidates are dropping out too!!
The thing is that nobody wants to be a loser. Sitting MPs would rather resign from the Government party than to lose their seat in an election. Candidates, similarly, don’t want their first foray into parliamentary politics to be them losing hard.
What is also happening is that allies of Rishi Sunak are being parachuted into safe seats across the country (in the UK, there is no rule that says a candidate has to live in the constituency they represent!), leaving any other party hopefuls to contest seats that they are likely to lose — leading to further discontent. This is also happening in the Labour party, but since the party is set to win, there’s less grumbling.
The Conservative party may face a situation where, by the end of the week, it cannot field enough candidates to cover the entire island — which would lead to a win to Labour or Liberal Democrats by default in those seats as the Conservative choice is removed entirely.
1
1
