Not your ordinary, everyday Tory selection contest in Stratford-on-Avon

Last Friday (as I write) I chaired the meeting to select a prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Stratford-on-Avon. I say ‘chaired’ but the modern term is (I learned) ‘mediated’. My preference for the more old-fashioned verb will have been shared by almost all the assembled ranks of the Stratford-on-Avon Conservative Association: we were — very few of us, they or I — in the first flush of youth. We don’t do ‘mediated’.

But around 300 of them came (the selection was open only to party members) on a freezing Warwickshire night, for a meeting that would last from seven until around midnight. Some had brought Tupperware containers of sandwiches to help them through a long evening on utility chairs in a cavernous school hall. There were two comfort breaks, and tea. Mass-membership party-political participation may be dying in England, but it is not dead yet.

The meeting was presented with six hopefuls to choose from.