Julie Marson: Hertford and Stortford opposition parties pour scorn on Tory decision to reselect MP as their candidate

Bishop’s Stortford’s Conservative MP Julie Marson has been labelled a “lame duck” by Labour.

The Hertford and Stortford party was responding to her reselection as a General Election candidate by rank-and-file members of the Tory constituency association.

Mrs Marson, 58, was forced to appeal for grassroots support after the executive voted against her automatic adoption.

Her Conservative colleagues’ crisis of confidence has presented Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Green Party with an open goal.

After Mrs Marson triggered the email ballot, there were 117 votes for her to be reselected and 71 against - 62% in favour. But of the 355 party members in total entitled to vote, just 32.9% backed her.

Josh Dean, Hertford and Stortford Labour Party’s parliamentary spokesman, said: “Our community needs change. Hertford and Stortford Conservative Association had the opportunity to deliver that change, but instead they bottled it, reselecting a lame-duck MP who would rather keep her home in Kent, her office in Harlow and use her expenses to fund a PR firm in Hampshire than in Hertford and Stortford.

“Julie Marson is fundamentally disconnected from our community and does our residents a disservice with her consistent inaction and errors of judgement; the local Conservative Party has endorsed her behaviour by reselecting her in a secretive process held behind closed doors.

“At the next General Election, the choice for residents in Hertford and Stortford will be clear: a Tory MP who takes their vote for granted or a local Labour MP who will be on their side. The polls say that Labour can beat the Tories in Hertford and Stortford and we look forward to challenging Julie Marson when the General Election comes.”

Helen Campbell, the Liberal Democrats’ prospective parliamentary candidate for Hertford and Stortford, said: “It is disappointing that local Conservative members, a group wholly unrepresentative of local people, have decided to overrule their executive and keep Julie Marson as their candidate.

“The local party leadership was right to try to remove an underperforming MP and one local people felt neglected by.

“The reaction on the doorstep when people thought she was going was one of relief interspersed with tales of unanswered emails and neglected issues. The news of her now not going has been greeted with a groan.

“Hertford and Stortford constituents need and deserve a Liberal Democrat MP who is visible and present and works hard on their behalf."

Cllr Martin Butcher, of East Herts Green Party, said: "East Herts Green Party is firmly convinced that our MP should be a local person, part of the community and one who is passionate about making East Herts a better place to live.

“They should be focused on the cost of housing, our ramshackle hospital provision, improving our appalling public transport, improving public health through combating air pollution and safeguarding our chalk streams and rivers from sewage dumping.

“Instead, we have an MP based in Kent who does what she is told at Westminster with no regard for her electorate or our district.

"She has repeatedly let us down on local problems while using a PR company to try to paper over her failings. No wonder people are disillusioned with politics. East Herts deserves better."