First MP jumps Tory sinking ship
Monday 13 August 2012
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EmailSo the first cracks are developing in Cameron and Clegg's coalition. After a lovers' tiff about Lords reform and constituency gerrymandering the previously smarmy couple have had as big a fallout as the love interest in one of Louise Bagshawe's raunchy chick-lit bestsellers.
This particular author is now better known as Louise Mensch and even better known as the first Tory MP who, after considering her long-term job prospects, has decided to jump the coalition ship and spend more time with Metallica - one of her new husband's bands in New York.
Mensch isn't just any Tory MP. She is perhaps the best known of the small band of A-list "celebrity" candidates specially selected by David Cameron himself for the 2010 election and dumped on unsuspecting constituency Tory parties up and down the country.
Mensch was landed on the people of Corby and East Northamptonshire and has proved good value for money for Cameron, if not for them.
She is a high-profile figure with frequent media appearances on programmes like Question Time. She even grabbed headlines by admitting a youthful use of class-A drugs.
Then the bombshell on August 6 - Mensch announced her decision to resign as a MP. This is despite rumours that she was likely to be promoted in the expected September government reshuffle as well as stories that she had cut the raunchier sex scenes from her latest novel so as not to embarrass the Prime Minister.
Tory backwoodsmen used her resignation to justify their disapproval of women, and particularly women with children in Parliament generally.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Norman Tebbit criticised Conservative Central Office for removing the right of constituencies to choose their own local candidates.
Other Tories, in various tweets and right-wing blogs, have demanded that the party select a traditional male Tory with some local knowledge to fight the Corby by-election - the first of this term. They know it will be a tremendous battle.
The election is widely predicted to be held on November 15, alongside the already organised elections for the new political police commisioners.
In reality it's likely to be a straight fight between the new Tory candidate and Labour.
Ukip didn't stand in the 2010 election in order to give the Tories a clear run. It may well have polled more than the winning 1,951 Tory majority.
The BNP, which polled just a little less than 5 per cent in 2010, has since worked closely with the local Tories.
Indeed the 2010 BNP parliamentary candidate Roy Davies signed one local Tory, Mark Taitt's, nomination papers for the 2011 council elections. He was one of two high-level BNP members who did so.
When questioned about this disgusting situation, Mensch developed a case of selective amnesia - claiming she had never heard of Roy Davies, one of just three candidates who had stood against her in the general election.
She consistently refused to offer any criticism of her Tory colleague and his racist supporters.
Labour selected its parliamentary candidate over a year ago. He is Andy Sawford, a son and grandson of Corby steelworkers.
Sawford's dad was steelworker turned Kettering Labour MP Phil Sawford.
What the Lib Dems will do is anybody's guess. Like Lib Dem organisations everywhere, the local party is haemorrhaging popular respect and support after Clegg's cosying up to the Tories.
The Lib Dems lost two seats in the 2011 town council elections leaving them just a pitiful three council seats.
In the same election the Tories lost four seats. Labour gained all six taking its total to 22 - a huge majority.
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