Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tollast, and this week we're taking another look at candidate's election,

the somewhat secretive elections that will really decide what the next Parliament

will look like, as all parties ramp up their processes to choose people to stand in seats

up and down the country as we get closer to a general election. To discuss how people become

parliamentary candidates, I'm delighted to say I have three of those vying to become MPs this year,

as well as the man who is doing more than anyone to shed light on these selections. With me as Michael Crick, veteran political correspondent and who runs the Tomorrow's

MPs account on Twitter, as well as Kobe Patterson Vallis, Tory candidate in Brighton-Kempton

Peacetown, and a pair of Liberal Democrat candidates, Josh Pavarinday, who are standing in

Eastbourne, and Ros Savage, who are standing in South Cotsoles.

So I'm going to start with you, Michael.

Just kind of talk us through what are the kind of candidate selection processes, just as briefly,

and then also what your account tries to do, the Tomorrow MPs account on Twitter or X, as we should call it now?

Well, the candidate processes are actually quite similar in that shortlist is drawn up.

In the case of Labour and the Conservatives, it's a shortlist drawn up with the National Party and the regional and the locals working together,

and then the members get to choose from that shortlist. And in the Conservative Party,

they still have the old-fashioned selection meeting, and you can't have a vote in the process

unless you go to the meeting and

listen to the candidates and listen to the questions and answers. In the other parties, they've

developed this so that they've got postal voting and in Labor. Labor, do a lot of online voting.

And indeed, in the selection that's happening right now, the really contentious one in Islington

North,

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