Oakley replacement in four weeks

9:15am Thursday 20th November 2008

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The Conservative Party is to announce who will replace Ian Oakley as the party's candidate at the next general election after a series of interviews next month.

Applications to become the Tory parliamentary candidate for Watford have now all been sent to Conservative central office after the deadline passed today.

And as rumours of a possible election next Spring continue to circulate, the Tories have ditched the American-style “open primary” system to speed up the process.

A decision should now be made in the next four weeks.

Steve O'Brien, Chairman of Watford Conservative Association, stressed it was important the party can come to a decision in the next few weeks.

However, he said he saw no reason why the party could not use the open primary system – infamously used to select Oakley - again.

He said: “Quite frankly if we had an open primary we would have to advertise it for two weeks and then after that we probably wouldn't have been able to hold it until after Christmas.

“Then it would have had to be in early January and one can never tell when a general election is to be called.

“We want our candidate in as soon as possible.”

In November 2006, Oakley was selected as the party's representative by members of the public after a public hustings was held in Watford.

This time, 20 names – ten men and ten women – will be chosen from the raft of applications by local party's executive on Monday.

The election hopefuls will then undergo a demanding interview before they are again whittled down.

The remaining candidates will then be interviewed by a range of local people, including a vicar, before a candidate is eventually chosen on December 13.

And with around 400 names on the national party's approved candidate list Mr O'Brien is expecting to have seen a great deal of interest in the position.

He said: “Bearing in mind that there will be no more available seats between now and the general election I would imagine we will have had a lot of people applying – particularly as Watford is a very winnable seat.”

He added: “My guess is we will have a lot of people to sift through on Monday to get down to 20.”