Flight seeks legal advice over sacking
Sacked Conservative MP Howard Flight has sought legal advice over his dismissal by Tory leader Michael Howard in a row over the party’s spending plans.
The Arundel and South Downs MP has refused to accept Mr Howard’s decision to bar him from standing as a Tory candidate at the forthcoming General Election.
Mr Flight, who resigned as Tory deputy chairman on Thursday after suggesting his party were hiding the true scale of their planned spending cuts, says it is up to his local party to decide whether he should stand as a Conservative candidate.
The MP insists there must be a general meeting of local Tory activists as only they can choose whether to de-select him.
“All I have said, and all my members want, is that there should be an extraordinary general meeting of our association, calling me to account, and for them to decide whether they in effect want to deselect me or not, and
I will abide by their judgment quite naturally,” Mr Flight told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I am advised that that is the correct constitutional position,” added Mr Flight, who says that local party officials in his Sussex constituency are arranging such a meeting.
Mr Flight said he believed it was “questionable” whether Mr Howard had the power to prevent him standing as a Conservative candidate.
But the Tory leadership insists that Conservative candidates have to be on its approved list.
“MPs are only on the approved list if they are in receipt of the Conservative Party whip. The Conservative whip has been withdrawn from Howard Flight and he will therefore not be a candidate in the forthcoming General Election,” said a party spokesman in a weekend statement.
“The decision by Howard Flight to consult his lawyers does not change the rules which govern the party.”
