Rachel Blake

WEARY old Harrington has spent many – too many! – years of his life gossiping late into the night with political types about who wanted which parliamentary seat and who sought to find a cosy spot on the council.

Trainspotters in our geeky world of local politics love to spot an ambitious riser and it often makes for some niche content for a diary page like this. I’m under no illusion, though: only the anoraks read these wry observations.

Which is why I’m intrigued by Michael Crick – the former Newsnight political editor and teller of a thousand exposés – and his decision to chart selection contests on a newish Twitter feed called @tomorrowsmps.

It is promoted as lifting the lid on why some people find it easier to get picked to be MPs than others.

That’s a fair enough quest, even if deep down most of us long for more of his dogged car park ambushes, rather than an overload of chatty speculation about who will get which seat and when.

When a recent Labour selection contest saw Rachel Blake chosen to stand in Two Cities, the most scandalous titbit we learned was that her promotional video talked about her experience as a councillor without being clearer that this was in Tower Hamlets rather than Westminster.

Harrington hazards a guess that the Westminster members were probably able to work that one out, but we will nonetheless be following Mr Crick’s tour of the country closely.