Like a few other people, I am quite interested to see who else is on this Tory ‘A list’ of 100 elite candidates. The names announced so far are hardly likely to fill the Labour party with dread at the prospect of facing them in an election. Ever since Saddam’s “Elite Republican Guards” the word “elite” has lost a bit of its force hasn’t it?

But which constituencies are the ones which get to (have to?) choose from this list? Are they safe-as-houses, true-blue seats (thus guaranteeing that this representative supposed cream of the crop are almost guaranteed to be in Parliament) or are they marginal seats (using the logic that you want your best people in there to stand more chance of winning). I guess it depends on whether this list of 100 candidates is seen as a list of people who will make good MPs or a list of people who will be effective campaigners and election winners.

This is more than just mere political anorakiness for us in Crawley. Being the most marginal constituency in the country I would be interested to know if we will be getting one of these A-list candidates/D-list celebs here. If so, it would make life very interesting as we already have a couple of locals who would have their noses really put out of joint if an outsider was parachuted in. Since we in the Labour party aren’t having much luck inflicting damage on the Tories in Crawley, the prospect of some self-inflicted wounds will have to do.

Of course its possible that one of more of our local wannabes are on this A list anyway. For all I know Rehman Chishti could be on the list too – which would really make things interesting around here