Andy McSmith's Diary: No logo - why Nadine Dorries won’t travel far on her joint ticket

 

Andy McSmith
Wednesday 15 May 2013 19:56 BST
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Nadine Dorries, that ever troublesome Tory MP, wants to be the first to be chosen to run for Parliament in 2015 on a joint Conservative/UKIP ticket. Her announcement, via The Spectator, must have had the Conservative Party bosses rolling their eyes and wondering why they ever readmitted her to the party. They say they will stop her doing it, because a change in electoral law means that no one can now run as the candidate of a party unless they have been signed off by party’s headquarters, even if their local association is prepared to back them.

There is also a glitch in the 2006 Electoral Administration Act which bars a candidate with a “joint description” from using any logo on a ballot paper, though that was a drafting error which the Government is in the process of changing. Tory HQ is putting its foot down for now, saying they simply will not allow anyone to run on a joint ticket, but if Dorries turns out to be only the first of many, that line could be hard to hold.

A proud ‘fruitcake’

Just over a year has gone by since the Tory MP for Monmouth, David Davies – not to be confused with the better-known Haltemprice MP, David Davis – predicted that David Cameron would be sacked unless he gave up his support for gay marriage, and made sure that foreign terrorists were deported.

Abu Qatada is still in the UK, gay marriage will soon be legal, and Mr Cameron remains Prime Minister. Mr Davies, pictured, did not return to these subjects in his contribution to the Queen’s Speech debate, but instead laid into climate change campaigners, prompting Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, to call him a “fruitcake”. This did not bother Mr Davies one bit. “It was the fruitcakes who warned about the euro for 10 years,” he said. “I am for fruitcakes. I am proud to be a fruitcake.”

A bit too much on his plate

It was a big story in the North-east when one of Northumberland’s leading Liberal Democrats, a former Royal Navy officer named Andrew Duffield, defected to Labour last week. He’ll now have to find a buyer for his 20-year-old personalised number plate, L16 DEM. He has told the Newcastle Journal that he is hoping to replace it with PRO6 RES.

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