Change 'too much to stomach' for Tories, says departing deputy chair
North London Bubble #11: The chair of the Conservative Association resigns on the eve of AGM
It’s edition number 11 of the North London Bubble, the weekly politics column on NewJournal+ written by Richard Osley and Isabel Loubser. You can also read it at newjournal.substack.com and find previous columns under the Bubble tab on the menu bar.
Look out for our digest of news covering everything that’s been happening and coming up in Camden and Islington – sent out to all subscribers tomorrow.
Also available to read now is Frankie Lister-Fell’s feature on the rough sleepers being evicted from the pavement in Tottenham Court Road.
ON YOUR MARX…
CAMDEN’S Conservatives have made a habit of making their preparations for local elections more chaotic than they need to be.
The worst example was probably before the 2018 council elections when they excitedly released a list of candidates only for a whole heap of them to pull out for one reason or another.
Now, ahead of next May’s boroughwide elections, they have lost their deputy chair.
North London Bubble understands that Marx de Morais sent an email explaining that he was stepping down just before the association’s annual general meeting last week.
The slightly verbose message explained how he had been doing a lot of thinking while on holiday in Tarquinia – it’s a town in central Italy.
Some Conservative members said it was so long that they didn’t get to the bottom, but they all more or less got the gist.
“I did reflect,” Mr De Morais wrote. “On how power lingers too long. On how systems protect themselves. On how voices that speak too directly are often the first to be edged out – subtly, through small deals and the smooth workings of habit.
“Not because I was wrong - but because I wasn’t wrong enough. I stood up for change, transparency, progress. Turns out, that’s still too much to stomach in our Association’s politics.”
We won’t take the risk of an indirect defamation case by giving you a word for word, blow by blow account – he makes serious accusations about how the local party is run and its culture, even if he doesn’t name anybody directly. This includes what he thinks influences candidate selections.
“I have seen unelected individuals claiming powers they must never have, giving us a taste not of democracy, but of something dangerously close to its opposite,” he said.
It goes on…