The spectator combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.

Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12 week subscription in print and online

and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher absolutely free.

Go to spectator.co.uk slash summer.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectator's daily politics podcast.

I'm Natasha Fros and I'm joined by Katie Bors and Paul Goodman from Conservative Home.

Katie, we're going to talk about conservative candidate selection. What's been happening?

So it's slowly getting underway. There's lots more seats for which the candidates need to be selected.

I think Labour very much have a head start on it. But this week, for example, we had

Nick Timothy selected for West Suffolk, which is Matt Hancock's former seat.

And I think that that was interesting because he's probably one of only a handful of, when I say,

I'm not going to say household names, but I will say Coffee House Shots names in the sense that

listeners of this podcast may have heard of them before. Nick Timothy, of course, was one of the

co-chiefs of staff under Theresa May. He is viewed as being responsible for what became known as

the dementia tax. So I think there was a brief period where it was associated with some toxicity,

but has since been seen as a key figure in terms of the conservative debate.

And worked in the Home Office for a long time and obviously closely linked to Theresa May,

has gone for a seat previously, first time clearly, has been successful. And I think if you

probably combine Nick Timothy, I would say you then have Rupert Harrison, who's probably the second,

probably other Coffee House Shots name when you think it over works, which is, and he is a former advisor

to George Osborne, whereas so far in the selections. So those are two probably Westminster figures,

you could say, but the bulk have been local candidates, quite a few male counsellors,

...