My journey onto the Conservative Party approved list and onwards as a Parliamentary Candidate in 2024’s General Election was brutal and baffling and was clearly not the way to put forward a winning team. This experience partly inspired my decision to stand for the Chairmanship of the National Convention in August-September of that year, moved as I was to attempt to do something about it. 

My experience taught me that there are simple and uncontroversial procedural improvements that can be made in order to turn out the right team of candidates who, supported by the right manifesto and a united Party, will be fit and ready for the green benches.

So, what happened?

I’ll start at the beginning, which for my candidates journey was summer 2022, when I filled in the very detailed application form and sent it off. I was invited to an online ‘competency interview’ and inbox exercise which took place in September of that year. Both seemed to go well and, having indeed passed, I was invited to the in-person selection board. Encouraged by the candidates department of CCHQ to take the earliest possible opportunity and not to wait for a much more convenient London appointment, I found myself in October on an early morning train to CCHQ in Leeds.

I loved that day, in a room with a group of like-minded Conservatives, tackling group exercises and individual challenges, everyone so purposeful and mutually supportive. I was even able to give a short speech (in the coffee break hustings, for those familiar with it) about the challenges of neurodiversity, a special area of advocacy and passion for me – although the assessor who was judging our performances afterwards told me with wonderment that he had never heard of neurodiversity and that I had taught him something.

I felt good about the proceedings. Women can be their own worst critics and I am certainly typical for that, so if I felt good about my performance, I am comfortable that I had good reason. My political circles are wide, and friends and acquaintances familiar with what is required took for granted that I would receive a comprehensive pass, which would qualify me to apply for any seat – critically, including seats we expected to win. 

However, I was flat out rejected. Not even a lower, restricted category of pass. I was both baffled and deflated.

As it happened, on the day I received this news I was attending a United and Cecil Club dinner and found myself seated beside the speaker for the evening, Jake Berry MP, on a table made up mainly of MPs and others who had served in elected office. Only one person that night knew about my unexpected disappointment and I kept it that way. When the evening ended with a gaggle of MPs and others surrounding me, suggesting with great enthusiasm that I ought to become an MP, I took their kindness in the spirit in which it was meant, gathered a cheery response and kept my counsel.

Along with my rejection came an offer of feedback. I gave it a whirl, and I’m glad I did.

I may have been baffled before the feedback, but I was certainly baffled during. I simply didn’t recognise the characterisation of my performance at the selection panel in Leeds, and on putting my case back to the candidates department representatives addressing me, I could see that they were quickly losing conviction. ‘What would you like us to do, Joanna?’ I was asked. We agreed that I would put my case to the Candidates Committee to be considered for admission to the list. This I did.

In response to my petition, the candidates committee chose to put me on the approved list, but with a development pass, the most restrictive pass possible, given to people who are considered to be possible future prospects but in need of, well, development. With my experience and capabilities, I was surprised that I was considered to need extensive development, on top of the learning and striving for improvement that presumably are a given for anyone with ambitions to lead in public life – but at least I was on the list.

But first, a ‘candidates subscription’ payment of £100 was required. Fine. 

After this, there was access to an online portal, partly to keep a record of campaigning in by-elections and other activities. As the Chair of a thriving Association, I had plenty to record, but the clunky website was excessively awkward to use and time-consuming. It was clear, however, that adding to it was a priority as candidates who had nothing to contribute – or, like me, were simply too busy naturally doing as a matter of course the required activities to get onto it regularly – received emails threatening removal from the list. The threat of blacklisting felt very real and powerful and created unnecessary anxiety for good potential candidates.

As a development passholder, I was keen to progress up the ranks in order to achieve a pass that would allow me to apply for a seat I had a hope of winning. For this, I needed to show that I had accepted the need for ‘development’ by taking (at a time and financial cost) the prescribed Party training. This I did, of course. I was invited to petition the candidates committee again, which I did. At my first attempt, my case for an upgrade was rejected and I was told to try again after taking (and paying for) more of the courses. This I was going to do…but the 2024 General Election was called and the music stopped.

While all this was going on, I was busy running Holborn and St Pancras Conservative Association, as Association Chair. For several months, I had been asking for HSPCA to have permission to go ahead and select our candidate. I had heard nothing back. Of course, I would have loved to have been the Conservative candidate for HSPCA myself, and would have certainly put myself forward. I was well-known to and appreciated by the membership and I was the best hope for inspiring activist and donor support. I am also widely known the constituency, not least through the locally-based business I founded and direct. With television performances and extensive other media experience behind me, I knew there was no doubting my standing to face Sir Keir Starmer, then Leader of the Opposition. However, once the election was called, the Party constitution took us into by-election rules for selection. This meant that instead of creating their own shortlists, Associations were given a shortlist by CCHQ, or, as happened in many cases, were given one candidate only. Hobson’s choice. And this was the case in a huge number of seats – 191 according to Michael Crick, who specialises in candidate selection information.

So of course, I lobbied hard for the HSPCA candidacy. The HSPCA executive council was fully on board and, although Sir Keir’s majority was unassailable and we were never going to return a Conservative MP, members’ morale and sense of agency is what keeps parties going. When all else is lost, why not protect that?

I received a phone call from the candidates department. With no niceties, I was brusquely told to delete two tweets. I pushed that aside and seized my last chance to lobby for HSPCA. I was the best and only credible potential candidate, I argued firmly. ‘You’re not getting HSPCA Joanna’, I was told, ‘your Exec can do nothing about it’. And lo, a candidate was imposed upon us. Again, bafflement prevailed. And by the same token, I was about to be imposed in turn on another Association. ‘The committee is minded to give you Hackney South and Shoreditch,’ I was told. ‘But delete the two tweets, email us that you have done so, and do it before the committee meets in two hours’ time.’ What were the tweets? They were innocuously supportive of the Conservative Prime Minister of the time of tweeting. But that PM was Liz Truss. For the man on the phone, she was the wrong Prime Minister. I did as I was told.

Fortunately, I was welcomed like an old friend by Hackney South and Shoreditch and I absolutely loved being their candidate. They supported me massively and I embraced the Hackney vibe to create a lively and original campaign. It was hard simultaneously to run HSPCA but managed the juggling act as best I could. But the question is there: why on earth impose unknown candidates on Associations which are expressing a clear preference – as HSP was doing? Why demoralise Associations, activists and candidates? It makes no sense.

Mutual aid is an important part of any GE campaign and I was very willing to provide it. We all know how it works: if you are running in a seat you are unlikely to win (and I was facing the biggest majority in London and was well aware of my position, so there were no arguments from me), you will spend your time campaigning in a marginal seat, where the extra help may well be crucial to getting our candidate over the line. Nothing wrong with that. However, it needs to be well managed. Send candidates to help in seats that make sense to them geographically. Encourage us, support us, understand us; do not bully us. I was sent to Chipping Barnet and thoroughly enjoyed my time with Theresa Villiers and her team, but an hour at least in the car each way was not the greatest use of my time, when I could have walked or taken the Tube a couple of stops into Two Cities and spent more time on the doorstep, rather than driving. In discussing this, I would have preferred to have been addressed in a respectful way by my CCHQ managers. I didn’t need to be told that if I didn’t do my mutual aid exactly as instructed (when there was no argument from me on the principle and I was already doing it with stoic cheerfulness) I stood no chance of getting back on the list and I would be blacklisted by the Party. It was already a tough time: the election came out of the blue for almost everyone in the Party and we were all putting up an epic fight. Piling the stresses clearly felt by CCHQ managers onto those who were effectively the players on the pitch is no way to win. If anything, good managers absorb the stresses and protect their players, so the team can do their own job to the best of their abilities. Just ask Gareth Southgate.

Sadly, the proof was in the pudding and despite the very best efforts of candidates and Associations across the country, an epic battle turned into an epic defeat. 

My experience was shared by other candidates and would-be candidates, and I have concluded that for the candidate experience, changes are imperative. We must not prolong this failed status quo.

In order of the candidate journey timeframe, my conclusions are as follows:

1. Make the listing process more practical for potential candidates. Eg do not encourage people to travel long distances for the selection panel, with all the costs of time and money incurred, when they have a test centre on their doorstep.

2. Let’s make sure the assessors are fully alert to current issues (eg neurodiversity is hardly niche)

3. Potential candidates need accurate feedback. Feedback must chime with them, not baffle them, particularly as this is an important moment professionally.

4. Constituency Associations need to be given more agency in the selection of their own candidates. The imposition of candidates demoralises local activists and candidates are set up to fail if they do not have local Association buy-in. Ideally, ownership of candidate selection should be with the Association: a shortlist of their choice, to a timetable of their choice.

5. Mutual aid clearly failed. Candidates were deprived of choice in how best to spend their time and perfectly supportive and well-intentioned people were threatened with blacklisting if they failed to do as they were told – things that failed in any case. 

6. The Party was rocked back on its heels by the suddenness of the early election. The structures that were in place to select and support candidates were proved to be inadequate at bearing the pressure that this brought. This alone did not cause our dreadful defeat, but it certainly compounded it.

© 2025 Joanna Reeves, all rights reserved.