Jack "gerrymandering" Straw

The Telegraph report that:

"This week, Justice Secretary Jack Straw pledged to commit the biggest act of gerrymandering since Caligula made his horse a senator, yet it received scant attention.

Straw wants to prevent prospective Conservative candidates in marginal seats from spending money in advance of an election campaign. More precisely, he wants to prevent candidates spending Lord Ashcroft's money. Before I go on, I must declare an interest. I was a Conservative candidate at the last election and received a small amount of funding from Lord Ashcroft's target seat campaign. He is also an investor in my new political magazine, Total Politics.

Being a candidate in a marginal seat rates second only to being Boris Johnson's diary secretary as the most nightmarish job in politics. It has a potentially enormous long-term reward, but party workers have wild expectations: they demand you buy a house locally, that you generate acres of media coverage, that you spend every waking hour door-knocking and that you single-handedly raise all the money to finance your campaign - or pay for it yourself.

A myth has developed that all Tory marginal seat candidates are financed by the Ashcroft millions. Nobody mentions Lord Sainsbury's donations of far more money to Labour, which is presumably channelled into its own marginal seats.

Most candidates don't receive a penny from Central Office. If they want to tell the electorate their views or achievements, they have to pay for a leaflet. Even those receiving money through the target seat campaign, which Lord Ashcroft partially funds, have to find at least 90 per cent of the spending themselves.

Labour wishes to silence candidates in advance of an election, but if they are not allowed to spend money, how can they communicate with electors? Many local newspaper editors refuse to cover candidates before an election, partly because they don't wish to upset the MP, with whom they usually want to foster good relations. So without finance to pay for leaflets a candidate is rendered mute.

Incumbents will become ever more powerful. MPs have a "communications allowance" of £10,000 a year to tell the electorate how wonderful they are. Straw's plans would make it impossible for new candidates to compete. This will inhibit political dialogue."

As the next Labour Prime Minister he will want his MPs to have every advantage in the forthcoming election.