Will pro-EU Tory candidates struggle to find seats in 2020?

That Tory activists are increasingly likely to vote to leave the EU rather than stay (see ConHome’s latest survey) in the referendum has all sorts of different effects on the party. But one is that it will make it more difficult for aspiring MPs who are quite in favour of staying in.

A number of pro-European Tory activists mulling standing in 2020 are concerned that their europhilia will keep them out of the limited number of winnable seats that will come up for the next election. Competition will be fiercer because of the boundary review, which will reduce the overall number of seats from 650 to 600, and the Tory leadership is trying to ensure that no current MP who does want to stand again gets shut out. This means very few seats will come up anyway.

I understand that a number of pro-EU prospective candidates have decided to try to avoid mentioning their stance on the issue at all, but others have concluded that this isn’t tenable, and instead are trying to sound like eurosceptics so that associations won’t suspect them.