The Tory candidate system is broken: I should know

A few weeks ago, if you’d asked me how I expected to spend my time on Thursday, I’d have answered without thinking: trying to win my seat. I was a Conservative candidate, and have poured a five figure sum of my own money into trying to get into parliament. But in the end, I didn’t get a seat, and it turns out that I’ve dodged a bullet. Even if I had won, I suspect I would have ended up in a much-reduced Conservative party that has totally lost its way, among MPs with little chance to effect change. Unlike many of those MPs, though, I don’t think it has to be this way.

I got sucked into the political world during Covid. I had supported the Conservatives for many years, but was finding it hard to rationalise the decisions that the Tory government was making.