Phillip Lee’s strategy of treating his local party members with contempt is not paying dividends. Last month he tried to brush off his local Association’s vote of no confidence in him as an “orchestrated, destructive campaign from outside the Party” and refused to even turn up to the meeting. Now his Executive Council have overwhelmingly passed a motion for Lee to seek reselection.

Lee can hardly accuse the Executive of being ‘entryists’, not that there is any evidence for it anyway, these are long-standing local members. They voted roughly 31-3 in favour of a motion for him to seek re-adoption. At which point he can be formally replaced as the Tories’ candidate for the next general election…

Due to the ambiguities of the Conservative Party constitution there is no time limit for Lee to do so until the next election is called, Guido understands that he has made it clear to local members that he will delay as long as possible. Given the numbers it looks like he’s just delaying the inevitable, if he hasn’t defected to the Lib Dems already by then…