This is probably little more than pre-election nerves, but Michael Crick has been having fun with it:
The Conservative Party high command is so worried about some of David Cameron’s Parliamentary candidates that they’ve started holding meetings every two weeks to monitor what they call a “watch-list” of those “have the potential to embarrass the Party”.
The interesting thing about this is a) what does it say about CCHQ morale that the minutes got leaked in the first place and b) what do they mean by “potentially embarrassing”? Based purely on anecdote (and admittedly I am hardly unbiased), they do seem to have more “embarrassments” than the other parties. Every other month a Tory candidate seems to resign for making a homophobic, racist or sexist remark – and let’s not even get into the MPs. Since CCHQ almost certainly know more about their own candidates than I do, the fact that they appear so concerned means we might have an entertaining 2009.