Iain Dale has disgusted Tunbridge Wells

Red faces at Conservative campaign headquarters.

Yesterday came news that Iain Dale gave up his LBC radio show to stand as the Conservative candidate for Tunbridge Wells.

Today came this from Adam Bienkov on Byline Times:

Departing LBC Presenter Iain Dale, who announced this week that he is quitting the station in an attempt to stand as the Conservative party’s candidate for Tunbridge Wells, previously told listeners to his podcast that he “never liked the place” and “would happily live somewhere else”.

Dale, who announced this week that he hopes to succeed Conservative MP Greg Hands as the MP for the area, said on his podcast ‘For the Many’ in 2022 that he had only remained in the area “slightly against my will”.

“I have lived in Tunbridge Wells since 1997, slightly against my will”, he told his co-host, the former Labour MP Jacqui Smith.

“I’ve never liked the place. Still don’t, and would happily live somewhere else”.

If it's any consolation to Dale, who was helpful to me in the far off early days of political blogging and whose style influenced mine, he won't be the last of the many Tory candidates appointed at the last minute whose online life will cause them embarrassment. I can see it being a theme of the campaign.

Meanwhile, reports LBC, the Tory deputy chairman and candidate Jonathan Gullis has been pictured campaigning with a convicted heroin dealer,

Jonathan Gullis lasted a year as a Conservative councillor and told people to vote Labour when he resigned

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No one seems to have picked up on the early political career of our new minister for school standards.

Jonathan Gullis, for it is he, was elected as Conservative councillor for the Shipston-on-Stour ward of Stratford-on-Avon District Council in 2011

He resigned the following year when he got a teaching job in London, but things did not go smoothly.

Labour List reported at the time:

Conservative politics in Shipston-on-Stour has entered the world of Catch 22, with a Tory councillor saying he’ll resign when they find someone to replace him – and the local party saying they can’t replace him until he’s resigned.

The blog linked to a story in the local newspaper, but the link is now dead.

A month later Labour List revisited the story:

In the end, the hapless councillor - Jonathan Gullis - resigned three hours too late for the by-election to replace him to be held on November 15th (the date of the PCC elections). That error cost the local council in excess of £5,000 when the by-election is held two weeks later. 

So annoyed is Gullis at the way he has been treated by the local Tory Party – he’s now urging local people to vote for Labour, instead of the Tories, in the by-election: 

"I back Jeff Kenner, the Labour candidate. There was no love lost between Jeff and I in election campaigns, but if the town wants someone with passion and pride in Shipston, Jeff Kenner is their man at this stage."

Again, there is a link to the local paper that no longer works, but this time you can still read the report in the Cotswold Journal.

So the Tories aren't just scraping the bottom of it to find ministers: they are struggling to find loyal parliamentary candidates.