Cuties, dinosaurs and half an hour to impress your local Tories

Joanne Cash, selected as Conservative candidate for Westminster North, resigned a few weeks ago and was promptly reinstated. I live in the area and I haven't seen many dinosaurs, even of the Conservative type: this was clearly one of the internal fights that often happen, regardless of how fragrant the candidate is.

How candidates are selected is often misunderstood. The idea that the party goes around the country imposing black one-armed lesbians on reluctant associations is absurd. In a survey of the past 20 selections immediately after my own for Spelthorne last month, it was found that 14 of the 20 candidates chosen were straight, white men.

True, more recently an Asian man, a black man, a man of Kurdish origin and a white woman were selected by local Conservative associations. But the black candidate was a former Goldman Sachs banker who had been president of the Oxford Union and chairman of the Bow Group.

His was a classic Tory CV of the old school, and that, I suspect, is precisely why the so-called "dinosaurs" selected him as their candidate. He defeated a local county councillor of nearly 10 years' standing.

In fact, Conservative associations are a lot more independent now than in the past. Harold Macmillan's diary tells of how the long-forgotten Arthur Salter, described by Winston Churchill as "the greatest economist since Jesus Christ", got selected for a seat in Lancashire in about 1950.

Salter, a London economist of nearly 70, was not what the local Tories wanted. Their association's executive committee was invited to London; they were plied with cigars, champagne and war stories by Churchill for three hours. Salter was adopted for Ormskirk.

Today, issues of race and gender have aroused controversy. But some accounts of recent selections read like early sci-fi descriptions of the Moon.

Selection meetings are unpredictable. Picture yourself on a late Saturday afternoon with between 100 and 250 Conservative activists in some hotel or conference centre. There will be six speakers, each of whom wants to be the candidate. Each has half an hour in which to make an impression. To give up four hours of a Saturday afternoon to go to a political event is not something done lightly. The people who turn up to these selection meetings are keen local activists. They are also very independent-minded.

In my experience, they will almost always do the opposite of what the central party would like. On at least one occasion, I think I was penalised by this. As a youngish black male, the audience were immediately sceptical about me. They thought I was a Central Office stooge. I wasn't.

The party invented A lists and other devices to ensure that women and, latterly, ethnic minorities get a fair hearing. They can influence who gets onto the shortlist, thereby making sure that favoured candidates get seen — but no more than that. At the meeting itself, it is the would-be candidates' performance that matters. It's more Laurence Olivier than Stalin, I'm afraid, when it comes down to who wins that nomination.

Kwasi Kwarteng is the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Spelthorne