Tory civil war over future of heartland safe seat

Thirsk and Malton, one of the most beautiful rural Parliamentary constituencies in all of England, has been shaken to its core by a long-running and increasingly vicious schism between local Conservatives which threatens to tear the local association apart.

Allegations of vote-rigging, dirty tricks, whispering campaigns and long-held grudges are widespread in the country pubs and weekend dinner parties attended by local Tories. The prize at stake is one of the safest Parliamentary seats in England.

“This poisonous situation cannot be allowed to continue,” North Yorkshire businessmen George Winn-Darley and Victor Buchanan said, in a joint letter to the Yorkshire Post this month.

At the heart of the dispute is a dramatic falling-out between the sitting Conservative MP, Anne McIntosh, and her local party executive. The row will finally come to a head this Friday when the 560 members of the Thirsk and Malton Conservative Association decide via a ballot whether she should be allowed to continue as their candidate beyond 2015.

Even the grounds for the dispute are hotly contested. Miss McIntosh’s supporters speak darkly of a ‘takeover’ of the local party by wealthy aristocrats who do not want a female MP representing them. Miss McIntosh is the only female Conservative MP in the whole of Yorkshire – and one of just three across the whole of the North.

The gender issue is vehemently disputed by local party executives, however, who say they simply find Miss McIntosh “impossible to work with”. They allege she will not give them her mobile phone number or access to her diary, and that her manner is sometimes highly abrasive.

“It is almost entirely about communication,” one says. “She is extremely divisive.”

The internal inquiry into Thirsk and Malton – published today for the first time – does not make easy reading for Miss McIntosh’s opponents, however. The panel said criticisms of her work were “wholly unsubstantiated”, and could find “no evidence of any wrongdoing by her”.

Tellingly, it also warned the local association is “troubled by factions” and that the dispute has “spiralled out of control”.

Remarkably, the highly confidential internal report was until yesterday freely available on the internet, via the website of an award-winning bed-and-breakfast in Helmsley, on the edge of the North York Moors. Chris Parkin, the owner of the four-star Carlton Lodge, is a well-known local Conservative and supporter of Miss McIntosh.

He said last night the report had originally been password-protected on his website, and was only supposed to have been available to other local Tories involved with the internal inquiry. He has now removed it from the site.

Meanwhile a fierce lobbying battle continues across North Yorkshire, with both sides trying to recruit as much of the membership to their cause as they can as the final votes are cast ahead of Friday’s count.

Each side claims the other has an unfair advantage.

Under Tory Party rules, Miss McIntosh was allowed to write a letter to all 560 members to accompany the ballot papers when they were sent out earlier this month. Her opponents, on the other hand, are barred from writing to the membership while the ballot takes place.

In her 400-word missive she made her case for re-selection, reflecting: “It is a sad fact that those principles and traditional values for which I stand are not so prized today by some as they once  were by all true blue Conservatives.”

She also included supportive comments from Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague.

However, Miss McIntosh and her team have been refused a copy of the Thirsk and Malton membership list, making further targeted campaigning difficult.

Her opponents, on the other hand, are able to conduct targeted face-to-face lobbying of members.

Association chairman Peter Steveney said: “You’re allowed to go to a party, go to the pub. I’m going to a (meeting of a) couple of wards tonight. I’m going to speak to them.”

Both sides must wait until Friday to see which emerges victorious from this most bitter of disputes.

• 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

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