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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud with me, Lyndon Ken Cairn.

Each week we choose our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask our writers to read

them aloud. Coming up on the podcast this week, James Hill describes the mess the Conservative

Party has got itself into when selecting its parliamentary candidates. Svitlana Morinetz is in Ukraine,

witnessing firsthand the tragedy of how troops are dying for want of proper medical supplies and training.

Melanie McDonough discusses the art of kissing and when a kiss is not just a kiss.

And Richard Madele shares with us his diary, in which he ponderes Queen's Songs and Cancel Culture and the shocking

case of Lucy Lettby. First up is James Heel. You know the Conservative Party is in trouble

when it dared not use its name on leaflets. Instead, it took a two-pronged approach in the last two

general elections, a presidential campaign for the national

media and local politics of the doorstep. With the Tories now 20 points behind Labor, it seems

the strategy for next year's general election is to once again go easy on the conservative

brand and emphasize the local hero credentials of the candidates. All they need is to find

some local heroes. Voters want someone who is going

to fight for them and that's an easier conversation to have if they are a local resident,

so as one newly picked Tory candidate. It's a calculation that associations are making across the

country. The journalist Michael Crick has been monitoring selections as part of his tomorrow's MPs

project. He calculates that nearly two-thirds of Tory nominees are current or former councillors.

All politics is local in 2023.

MPs are expected not just to live in their constituency, but spend their week on its casework.

We've gone from legislators to super counsellors, says one senior Tory.

...