"Conservatives Together" & Grant Shapps - Selection of Parliamentary Candidates

 

On 29 December 2025 the article below by Grant Shapps appeared on the ConservativeHome web site:

 Here is my response;

 Grant, CCHQ's responsibility is to conduct due diligence on candidates. No more no less. It is the right of the ordinary members of the Party to select their candidate without interference by CCHQ. Conservatives Together are training people to go through a selection process which should not be taking place. All it is doing is giving the Party Establishment the opportunity to manipulate the process of selection by eliminating people they do not like or whose views they do not like. If I may say so, the quality of candidates was much higher pre the new Constitution of 1998 when the Constituency Associations were autonomous and chose their candidate without CCHQ interference.

Recommendation to Constituency Associations:

Unless you want an Establishment clone, your Constituency Association should not include a Candidate who has had training by Conservatives Together. 

They will have been taught to present themselves in the best possible light, so you will not get the real persons’ views.

If they really wanted to be a Member of Parliament they would have found out what it entails before applying to be a Candidate, so why are they applying now?

A six month course but not a mention about Conservative objects, values or principles!   Do you really want a greasy pole kind of candidate who does not think for themselves but just trots out the propaganda they have been given?

 

You don’t win elections with just slogans and spin but by having enough credible people ready to stand.

by

Grant Shapps

Grant Shapps is a former Defence Secretary, Transport Secretary, and Party Chairman and was MP for Welwyn Hatfield 2005-2024

The most important Conservative revival work is happening outside the spotlight.

A few months ago, I found myself in a room with twenty Conservatives who had almost nothing in common – except ambition and impatience. One had been running a business since their early twenties. Another had spent years in local government, quietly fixing things without ever being noticed. One had given up a safe professional career because they believed politics could still be a force for good. None of them were household names. None of them were part of a faction. All of them wanted to serve.

What struck me wasn’t their ideology. It was their seriousness.

That room was the first cohort of the Conservatives Together Fellowship Since then, we’ve run a second cohort and are about to start our third, with applications remaining open until 31st December. Sixty people in the programme so far. Remaining on track, that will be 500 trained by the time the country next goes to the polls.

That number isn’t accidental.

It reflects something uncomfortable but obvious: parties don’t win elections because of slogans and spin. They win because they have enough capable, credible people ready to stand. People who can persuade voters on doorsteps, survive hostile interviews, and govern competently when they’re elected.

After the 2024 General Election, the Conservative Party has been doing what it should do: reassessing, arguing, renewing. But while ideas matter, infrastructure matters too. And one part of that infrastructure – how we identify, prepare and support future candidates – has been quietly underpowered for years. I know this because as a former Conservative Party Chairman I appreciated there wasn’t time or capacity in-house to do this longer term work.

That is the gap Conservatives Together exists to fill.

CTog is not part of the party machine. It isn’t a pressure group, a faction, or a rebrand of something familiar. It is a not-for-profit organisation, sitting outside the formal party structure, with a simple aim: to help grow a deeper, stronger pipeline of Conservative candidates, free of charge to those taking part.

Why outside the party?

Because it allows honesty. About what works. About what doesn’t. About the reality of standing for Parliament and being elected, as opposed to the myth. It allows us to focus on skills, judgement and resilience, rather than box-ticking or networking for its own sake.

The Fellowship is a six-month programme. It is demanding. Participants are challenged on policy, communications, campaigning and leadership. They are exposed to the pressures of modern politics as it actually is, not as it used to be. They are supported by an Expert Network that includes MPs, peers, former parliamentarians and specialists who give their time because they believe the future of the party is worth investing in.

What we do not do is select candidates. That remains, rightly, the job of CCHQ and the party’s democratic structures. What we aim to do is ensure that when selection panels meet, they are choosing from a broader, deeper pool of people who are actually prepared for what lies ahead.

This matters because politics is getting harder, not easier. Voters are more sceptical. Media scrutiny is relentless. Populism thrives where serious politics retreats. If conservatives want to win again – and govern well when we do – we need people who are grounded, capable and motivated by service rather than celebrity.

Which brings me back to that room.

At the end of the session, one Fellow said something quietly revealing. “I didn’t realise,” they said, “how much work this would be. But I also didn’t realise how much it mattered.”

That, in the end, is the point. The next Conservative revival won’t arrive in a briefing note or a clever line. It will come, slowly and unglamorously, from people willing to do the hard work. Conservatives Together exists to help find them – and to make sure they’re ready when the moment comes.