There were only two Conservative MPs who disenfranchised their local associations when it came to choosing a shortlist for their successor by announcing their retirement after January 1st.
One of them was Peter Ainsworth, who announced his intention to quit as MP for Surrey East on January 5th. Now, in his first public comment explaining his timing, he has insisted that there was "no conspiracy" in his leaving the announcement until the New Year and that he never opened the email sent to him by ConservativeHome in October highlighting the new selection rules in seats where MPs announced their retirement after January 1st.
He makes the comments in a valedictory interview featured in the new edition of the House Magazine:
When did you take the decision?
I was planning my campaign and writing my literature before Christmas, and I had no intention of standing down. But between Christmas and the New Year I began to think about it. There was no single trigger; it was just a whole accumulation of ideas and thoughts. I took the decision at home, with my family, on New Year’s Day.The timing has raised some questions…
There are people, all over the place, who have conspiracy theories. They are, frankly, bonkers. I hadn’t looked at the rules because I wasn’t intending to stand down – so they were of no interest to me. ConservativeHome rang me the day after my announcement. They said that, in October, they had told everyone that any Conservative MP standing down after January would trigger the new selection process.Like every other MP, I get about 200 or 300 emails a day. Do I prioritise opening the ones from ConservativeHome? I have to tell them that no, sorry, I don’t. I didn’t open it, and I didn’t know about the rule-change. It was unfortunate, in that sense, that I didn’t decide 48 hours earlier. I can assure you that there was no conspiracy, just cock-up.
He also seems to dispel any suggestion that he might want to remain in frontline politics, perhaps from "another place":
Would you not have liked to see your party in power and perhaps take ministerial office?
Obviously you go into politics because you want to win, and you want your party to be in government, and in that respect my timing was extraordinarily bad. I was first elected in 1992. John Major had a very slender majority, then we lost big time, and there are no prizes for being a shadow. Of course, a part of me would like to have been a minister in a Conservative government but, on the other hand, in a very small way, I was a minister in the last Tory government – and it wasn’t much fun then.
If you were still in the shadow cabinet, would you have stood again?
If I was still in the shadow cabinet then my life would continue to be managed by other people, my time would be allocated by other people, and I would continue to be travelling all over the country and dancing to other people’s tunes. It’s only when you stop that you realise how much you haven’t had a life of your own. I got my life back just over a year ago, and I’ve decided to do something different with it.
Jonathan Isaby