Man in a Shed: All token shortlists

David Cameron has said in response to questioning today that central office are looking at all token short lists and may well impose them before the next general election.

My guess is this will lead to widespread rebellion and might even cost him the election.

Be warned Mr Cameron - the members of the Conservative party want to appoint their own MPs and elect their own leaders. There have been many rumblings over the hand of central office in recent selections, but most of us have kept quiet. It wouldn't take that much for independent Conservative candidates to start running with the support of the people who provide the foot soldiers in local constituencies.

That won't last if you try to impose socialist token targets on associations.

PS Of course another problem with token shortlists of token candidates is how do you chose the correct token ?

Should there be more plumbers in parliament ?
More undertakers ?
More Engineers ?

When I see those from the those who argue for token shortlists but are themselves from groups that are they argue are over represented resign their seats to help re-balance the house then I'll take them more seriously.

Will David Cameron or George Osborne be standing down to be replaced by token candidates ? I thought not.

Other reactions:

Conservative home

All women shortlists are fundamentally unConservative and they have no place in a party pledged to meritocracy and localism.

Iain Dale

All Women Shortlists: Not In My Name

Nadine Dories MP

Every morning as I walk into westminster, I feel proud and humbled to be here. If I had been elected via an all woman shortlist I wouldn't

Be able to hold my head up as I would know the men I work with would be here on merit but that I had needed a hand. That's not equality.

The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman