AN IMPECCABLE HOST AND GUEST'
David Rennie explains why Kensington and
Chelsea chose Sir Nicholas Scott; because there are still some Tories who hate right-wingery
IT WAS the Sun, it seems, wot won it. Do not expect Sir Nicholas Scott to be terribly grateful.
It was the tabloid press, argues one senior Tory, that finally swung the good Conserva- tive ladies of Sloane Street and Holland Park Sir Nicholas's way, and handed him selection to the new, ultra-safe, seat of Kensington and Chelsea. The ladies may not greatly care for their MP's reputedly erratic private life, or for his less than obses- sive devotion to constituency duties. They are not vastly amused by the accusation involving a toddler with his Volvo after one too many drinks. But, if there is one thing they care for even less, it is being told what to do by Fleet Street. Faced with such head- lines as 'B-test MP in death crash'; 'Women and the fall of Nicholas Scott' and — a par- ticular highlight — 'Lying MP and the dis- abled bisexual', Scott's activists instinctively rallied round.
`Nick Scott's reselection last week is one more example of how the ordinary Conser- vative on the ground hates the tabloids,' says the senior Tory. 'A lot of people may have their doubts about Scott, but they were still determined to put one in the eye of the News of the World.' Instinctive rallying round was rather the theme of the evening at the Kensington and Chelsea selection. 'It was a fascinating collection of constituency members who turned up to vote,' explains one local Con- servative. 'A significant section were, shall we say, in their autumn years. Next to the ladies in hats, there were a lot of well- heeled professionals. But then, unusually, there were a number of citified young. These were not the bug-eyed ideologues you expect in urban seats. They were pin- striped stockbrokers. Two thirds of all of them, I should think, were from the old Chelsea seat.'
These were natural Scott supporters. In the party as a whole, Sir Nicholas's sup- port for immigrants, the disabled and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa has long marked him down as a dripping wet subversive. That suspicion runs deep. Sir Nicholas's enemies at the meeting took great pleasure in identifying one of his keenest supporters as Mr Keith Best, the former Tory MP briefly jailed after mak- ing multiple applications for British Tele- com shares. Mr Best, they gleefully report, punched the air in victory when Sir Nicholas won. 'I have a whole archive of material on Scott,' volunteered one quiver- ing Kensington Thatcherite during the research for this article. 'Would you like me to fax you a letter he wrote to the Times in 1981, defending the closed shop?'
Chelsea, Sir Nicholas's seat for 21 years, is very different. It is, perhaps, the last One Nation Tory constituency in the country. It is difficult to see how it could ever be anything else. Chelsea Conservatives are, in large part, both so rich and so efficiently insulated from the poor that not to be paternalist would be in rather bad taste. Gilmourite to the core, they are terribly grateful to have a Conservative MP who does not trouble their social consciences with noisy right-wingery. Sir Nicholas is, of course, accused of spend- ing too little time on mundane MP's chores. In 1977, indeed, three years after he won the seat, he narrowly defeated a bid by his own association chairman to oust him for `neglecting the constituency'. But here again Sir Nicholas's enemies seem to have mis- judged what his activists expect of him. `Many Chelsea Conservatives, on the whole, simply don't need a constituency MP,' sug- gests a friend of his. 'They have no need of letters to the DSS, or help with the council housing department — they would never dream of going to a constituency surgery. They want an MP of ministerial calibre, who can hold good parties and behave himself at their parties.'
If you want an impeccable host and guest, Sir Nicholas is undeniably your man. It is quite impossible to speak to anyone in either half of his new combined constituen- cy without the word 'charm' being used. Even the right-wing Young Turks — a group not famed for their appreciation of that trait — do not deny that Sir Nicholas was thoroughly charming at the last, vital selection meeting. Push them hard and they will admit that their great hope, the Thatcherite former minister Mr Michael Fallon, let himself down on that front when it most counted. `Scott was the only one of the four final- ists who seemed at ease,' recalls one observer. 'He managed to be boyish, avun- cular and statesmanlike all at the same time. His may be a grizzled, weary sort of charm, but charm always comes across bet- ter than intellectual brilliance. Old per- formers like Nick are magnificent when they are fighting for their survival, they can still turn it on.'
Mr Fallon, on the other hand, was reportedly under-powered and low-key, allowing himself to become bogged down in fierce questioning on his Eurosceptic views. In Mr Fallon's defence, it cannot have helped that, in the days before the meeting, a series of scurrilous (and quite untrue) rumours were circulating in the association concerning his private life. The other former minister to reach the final four, Mr John Maples, damaged his own cause with some panache. Mr Maples was known throughout his parliamentary career as a dripping wet disciple of Lord Walker's. Yet, during his bid for Kensing- ton and Chelsea, he turned quite foaming- ly right-wing, coming out against the single currency and wrapping himself in the ban- ner of Law and Order. Sadly, the wet half of the constituency did not agree with his sudden conversion, while the Thatcherites did not believe it. Both sides concurred in finding him too ingratiating. By the time one member asked Mr Maples about his business experiences in the Cayman Islands, he was already kicking a corpse.
Members hoping for a strong local chal- lenge from the fourth finalist, Joan Han- ham, leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, were badly disappointed. Seeming- ly stunned by the stress of the whole occa- sion, Councillor Joan Hanham babbled. `Someone asked her about the situation in Nigeria,' one member explains. 'She mis- heard and seemed to think it was a question about immigration.' To outsiders, this absence of strong local candidates might come as something of a surprise. Surely, you might think, the voters are eager for fresh, young talent to invigo- rate an exhausted Conservative Party. The answer is that the voters might well think that, but voters do not terribly matter in a seat like Kensington and Chelsea. Seats as safe as Sir Nicholas Scott's lay bare a polite fiction inherent in British democracy: that voters choose MPs. Voters choose govern- ments, but in the two thirds of British seats broadly considered safe it is constituency associations and committees which choose MPs. Once selected, those MPs have to behave quite imaginatively badly to get themselves sacked. The only body they really have to fear is the Boundary Commission as Sir Nicholas (whose seat's merger with Kensington provoked the whole reselection process) knows only too well. Most con- stituency associations in safe seats have little experience of the selection process, and only slightly more understanding of the enormous power that they briefly wield. Not so in Kensington and Chelsea. That seat, it is fair to say, is packed with creatures of hideous ambition — the selection committee alone contained several prospective parliamentary candidates. Mr Alan Clark, whose candidacy was only ever a moment of light relief for the selectors, described his inquisitors as `delightful, intelligent and politically sophis- ticated'. One of his fellow shortlisted candi- dates takes a slightly different view. 'They are,' he says, 'a nest of vipers.'
Yet only a handful of local young bloods challenged Sir Nicholas, despite the dis- dain many of them feel for their MP. This diffidence was not, of course, inspired by any sudden attacks of loyalty. 'I would have stood if I had thought I had a chance,' one confesses. 'But we are all still too young. And there is no way any of us would have allowed one of the others from our generation to take such a safe seat.' As a result, many young Tory stars dis- qualified themselves from the outset. One of the few to make a bid, Miss Melinda Libby (whose search for a seat was recent- ly chronicled by the BBC's Newsnight pro- gramme), does not seem to have gained much respect by her daring. 'If Melinda had had any sense,' sniffs one of her col- leagues, 'she would have done the same as us, and sat on the selection committee. That way, you get to question your rivals, and learn about them for future refer- ence.' Such pragmatic patience among the younger activists cannot have harmed Sir Nicholas at the final vote, either. As one veteran of such selection battles puts it, `Young cardinals vote for old popes.'
If the tabloids achieved the opposite of what they set out to do — driving waverers into the Scott camp by the sheer venom of their attacks — the record of their weightier cousins was scarcely more impressive. Right up until the vote itself, the broadsheets were confidently predicting victory for the Thatcherite Mr Fallon, on the grounds that Kensington and Chelsea Conservatives are clearly to the right of Sir Nicholas politically. Perhaps this is the ultimate moral of the story. Real-life Tories defy attempts to place them into neat categories.
At one point in the final meeting, a wit- ness relates, John Maples had his right- wing bluff called. As Maples fulminated against street crime, a questioner asked him to concede that muggers are nearly always black and their victims usually white. Maples queasily declined to agree. `The applause,' says the witness, 'was divid- ed. Some clapped the racist, some clapped Maples. But what interested me was that a couple who applauded the bigot then greeted Sir Nicholas with thunderous applause. That Sir Nicholas is a left-winger clearly did not interest them at all. They were Chelsea Tories, he is the Chelsea MP. Ultimately, it is all rather feudal.'
David Rennie works for the London Evening Standard.
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