D-Day looming for MP in second war with local party

ANNE McIntosh’s long-running dispute with her local party will finally be brought to a close this Friday when the votes are counted in her de-selection battle.

Ballot papers were sent out at the start of this month to all 560 members of the Thirsk and Malton Conservative Association, asking whether they want Miss McIntosh to be re-selected as their candidate for the May 2015 general election.

Voting closes at noon on Friday, when Miss McIntosh and her opponents will gather at Conservative Party headquarters in Whitehall for the count. A result is expected by around 2.30pm.

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If she wins a majority, Miss McIntosh will be re-selected as the Thirsk and Malton candidate for 2015. If she does not, she will continue as an MP until the election – at which point a new Tory candidate will run in her place.

De-selection battles are extremely rare in British politics, with sitting MPs expected to be renominated by their local party members with little trouble. Miss McIntosh is one of only three MPs across the country to face possible de-selection this time round.

Astonishingly, however, this is the second time she has faced such a fight, after her local party attempted to de-select her in 2009 following the abolition of her previous Vale of York seat.

Ironically, on that occasion she was saved by some of the very people trying to have her removed this time round. One of her most prominent supporters in 2009 was Major Peter Steveney, who went on to chair the Thirsk and Malton association – and who now wants a new candidate.

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“We had absolutely no idea what they were all talking about,” he says of her previous opponents. “She’s a popular MP, very presentable; she comes racing with us; she comes to the (farmers’ auction) marts... we said ‘come on, we’ll vote for her’.”

But communication channels, he said, soon broke down.

“This thing has been rumbling on for years, this difficulty of working with Anne McIntosh,” he said. “All associations eventually fall out with her. Of about 10 past chairmen of first the Vale of York, and then Thirsk and Malton associations, I think all bar one have simply found her impossible to work with. Eventually it always ends in a complete ‘non-speak’.”

Today the Yorkshire Post publishes in full for the first time the internal Conservative Party report into Thirsk & Malton Conservative Association, and its attempts to oust sitting MP Anne McIntosh. Read the full report here