Rifkind could be deselected

Is Kensington and Chelsea, that jewel in the crown of Conservative parliamentary seats, becoming the Bermuda Triangle of Tory politics? Thanks to the little-noticed workings of the Boundary Commission, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary, could soon find himself in a battle royal to remain in the Commons.

The local precedents are not good for Sir Malcolm. When Kensington was amalgamated with Chelsea in the run-up to the 1997 election, Dudley Fishburn stood down in favour of the Chelsea MP, Sir Nicholas Scott. The following year, Scott (by then suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s) nearly crushed a child while parking his car and was then too drunk to attend his association’s party at party conference. He was promptly deselected. K&C thereupon picked Alan Clark, but he died of brain cancer within two and a half years. He was replaced by Michael Portillo, who retired from front-line politics after his failure to be elected Conservative leader in 2001. Sir Malcolm succeeded him in 2005, returning to the Commons eight years after losing in Edinburgh Pentlands.

Now K&C is to be broken up again. There will be a new Kensington division, stretching from the northerly tip of the Royal Borough — David Cameron’s home turf — down to the Fulham Road. Then there will be a new Chelsea and Fulham seat, crossing borough boundaries, which comprises those bits of Chelsea that are south of the Fulham Road (such as the Royal Hospital) with those solidly Tory parts of Fulham in the SW6 postcode.

Since more than 60 per cent of Sir Malcolm’s existing seat will be in the new Kensington division, the party’s model rules would theoretically allow him a ‘bye’ into the final round of any selection. The incumbent, though, is hedging his bets. If Rifkind went for the new Chelsea and Fulham nomination, he might also be entitled to a bye.