From my latest for Cif:
Will the chosen pair succeed? If they don't, will it have been because some voters reacted against their high visibility rather than being seduced? If so, in Cash's case it will partly be because she has ended up attracting the wrong sorts of publicity. It's hard to appear different from the old elites when you've become married to a wealthy Old Etonian contemporary of "Dave". Then there's the amazing saga of her short-lived resignation amid terrible tensions with members of her local association as recently as February.
Also:
Perhaps the most significant thing about Bailey...is that his politics seem generally unexceptional for a Conservative – pro-conventional family, pro-discipline, anti-"dependency culture". Even his economic background doesn't make him especially exotic, given that working-class Tories are not unknown any more than are politicians from unprivileged, lone parent families in any party: Labour's Alan Johnson and Jack Straw are two famous examples. The difference with Bailey is his ethnicity, his public enactment of a black "street" identity while wearing a blue rosette, and the prominence he's been given by the Tories.
The rest is here, including revealing highlights from Bailey's 2008 Radio 4 documentary. The closer I look, the harder I find it to tell the man from his packaging.
