Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a weekly podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tollis, and to discuss the murky world of candidate selection,

which may have more of an impact on who becomes an MP, the actual elections themselves,

is Michael Crick, the veteran political journalist and the man behind the At Tomorrow MP's

Twitter account, which tracks candidate selections, as well as Luke Akehurst, a member of Labor's

ruling National Executive Committee, who sits on selection panels for the party's shortlisting

of candidates, and Jacksonton, a conservative parliamentary candidate in 2015 and 2017,

and the former chair of Beaconsfield constituency Tory party.

So I'll start with you, Michael. Just explain the tomorrow's MP's Twitter account, why you

kind of set it up and also why this time round coming to the next general election as opposed to any

other. Well, I've long been fascinated by parliamentary selections. I suppose it stems from the

days when I hope to be an

MP myself, but that's long, long ago. And it struck me that these are, in many political

careers, the most important moment in somebody's career. It's the moment when they become, really,

a professional. They take off. And people often struggle. I mean, we saw that

with Betty Boothroyd in her obitrits when she died the other day. People often struggle to get

into Parliament. She took 16 years, I think, and five different failings, plus load more

selections we probably will never know about. And it's the crucial moment. And all sorts of

things go on behind the scenes, fixes

and fiddles and accidents. And very little of this gets reported, especially these days,

either in the press, partly because there isn't much of a local press in much of the country now.

And effectively, reductions in safe seats anyway are the election of the MP.

...