Coastal Tories need quick selection

SUFFOLK Coastal Conservatives face a race against time to find a replacement candidate for John Gummer.

With speculation growing that Gordon Brown could go to the country as early as the end of March, the constituency will want a successor in place as quickly as possible.

The timing of Mr Gummer's decision looks likely to have circumvented Conservative Central Office's guidelines on choosing candidates.

From January 1, David Cameron can invoke by-election rules and impose a shortlist of three on any constituency where the MP announces he or she is standing down.

Now Mr Gummer's decision has been made public the constituency can draw up its own short-list and decide which six candidates can go forward to a selection meeting of the membership.

Constituency chairman James Butler said: “John has been a magnificent servant of Suffolk and this constituency for 30 years. But circumstances change and I fully understand and appreciate the reason why he is leaving.

“I have called a meeting of officers for next week and we will put in place the selection process. But I sincerely hope that the list of candidates includes a lot of local people who wish to be considered.

“I do not mind men or women but we need to be able to select someone from Suffolk if that is what we have to do.”

When Central Suffolk & Ipswich North chose Dr Dan Poulter to replace retiring MP Sir Michael Lord, many local Tories were angered that they did not have the opportunity to consider local people.

“There are a lot of people locally who would make excellent MPs and I am sure we should at least be able to interview them along with those on the national list,” said Mr Butler.