Plan for Gardiner meeting 'slipped through'

Conservative Central Office pressed the Reigate constituency association to delay for as long as possible a crucial meeting of its executive to decide whether to continue to support Sir George Gardiner as their MP.

On Friday it voted 15-14 against endorsing him. His future will be put to a special meeting of the whole Surrey-based association at the end of next month. If he loses, Sir George has threatened to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds - parliamentary shorthand for resigning his seat - and to force a by-election.

Fearful of the danger that would be posed to the party's small majority, Central Office was arguing as long ago as November for the executive to meet much later this year, so that if Sir George lost, a by-election would be made impracticable by proximity to the general election. A Reigate constituency official said that in November, "George had been saying should he be de-selected he would reconsider his position and letting it be known, privately, that meant the Chiltern Hundreds".

Central Office heard of his stance and growing hostility towards him.

A senior Reigate Tory said that since November Brian Mawhinney, the Conservative Party chairman, had been trying to persuade the executive to take its time and not to rush into anything but that "somehow it slipped through and the meeting was arranged for the middle of May".

The senior Reigate Tory blamed the local chairman, Michael Steele, for "political naivety" for allowing some activists to press for a vote now, a long way out from the general election and with sufficient time for there to be a by-election, which on present form the Government could well lose".

Despite that, and a plea by David Simpson, the Conservatives' South East Area agent, at Friday's meeting that they should be too hasty, the executive voted to call a meeting to decide Sir George's fate. "David Simpson ... said: 'Look, we are in danger of turning what is a difference of opinion into a ... disaster if we are not careful," said the official, who was at Friday's meeting.

Once the vote was cast, Mr Simpson tried to prevent the figures becoming public. "He said, to show the party is not split down the middle, we would not give the figures out, so we didn't disclose them." In the event, the figures did leak out.

Now that Sir George's threat to "blackmail" the local party was known, said the senior party member, it was unlikely he would win a vote of confidence if it were called tomorrow: anger about his attitude was running high.