Writer wins fight for Tory seat

Journalist and author Michael Gove was today celebrating after he won the battle to become parliamentary candidate for one of the safest and richest Tory seats in the country.

A meeting of the association's 1,200 members selected him ahead of his two rivals, PR consultant Laura Sandys and fund manager Jacob Rees Mogg.

The Surrey Heath seat has a huge Tory majority but its local MP, Nick Hawkins, was deselected after a public spat with senior members of his local party.

A former president of the Oxford Union, Mr Gove's selection means that he is almost certain to become an MP and is bound to be swiftly promoted within the Tory party's front bench.

A regular media pundit, he is known for his appearances on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze and his close links to Mr Portillo over several years.

His victory was all the more impressive because Surrey Heath was the first parliamentary candidacy he had ever attempted.

Supporters of Mr Portillo will hope that Mr Gove will become a torchbearer for the liberal Tory policies they believe are the only way the party can reconnect with mainstream voters.

Surrey Heath is a plum seat with a majority of 10,819 and Mr Gove must now unite a constituency that imploded over Mr Hawkins' removal.

While his detractors said he had been impossible to work for, Mr Hawkins, 47, claimed that there had been a plot against him by the Freemasons. Although he protests he is not suffering from sour grapes, a Commons speech last month suggested that he was extremely bitter.

Using parliamentary privilege, Mr Hawkins launched an assault on those who removed him, branding his constituents "local cronies" and accusing his local agent of financial impropriety and the chairman of his association of importing women from Eastern Europe.

Richard Robinson, the chairman, later explained he had given a Bosnian economics graduate a job in his investment business. The MP was sacked from his front bench job the next day.

Ms Sandys had been a political consultant for more than 15 years and had worked as a journalist and policy strategist in the US. She is a daughter of Duncan Sandys, who was Harold Macmillan's Defence Secretary and the son-in-law of Winston Churchill by a previous marriage.

Mr Rees-Mogg also comes from a Conservative family. His father is the former Times Editor William Rees-Mogg. He was the only candidate to have been shortlisted as an MP in the past.

However Mr Rees-Mogg's chances were undermined by media ridicule at his previous performance as a candidate, when he campaigned in a Rolls-Royce accompanied by his former nanny.