Last night Rother councillor Sally-Ann Hart was chosen by the Hastings and Rye Conservative Association to be its candidate in the General Election.

Mrs Hart won the support of a significant number of the members present at the selection meeting and promised to campaign hard and “campaign to win”.

She said the campaign would be a choice between “a way of life as we know it” and an “extreme form of socialism”.

“We need people out on the streets and knocking on doors,” she said after winning the nomination.

In an official statement from Hastings and Rye Conservative Association Mrs Hart said: “I am delighted to have been selected by the local membership tonight to represent the party at the upcoming election.”

She lists her priorities for this election as delivering Brexit, schools, health, the environment, transport links and the local economy.

“Hastings and Rye needs to continue to have strong representation in Westminster and I promise to do that if elected by the local people.”

Mrs Hart has been a member of Rother District Council since 2015 and boasts of having increased the Conservative share of the vote from 23 per cent to more than 34 per cent when she contested the North West Durham seat for the Conservatives at the 2017 General Election.

Responding to the news of Mrs Hart’s selection Liberal Democrat candidate Nick Perry said: “It has taken the Tories a while to get their act together, but they have now the Brexiteer they were hoping for.

“I welcome Sally Ann to the fray. But the gloves are off between us on Brexit. There is no better deal for the UK than membership of the European Union. I will scrutinise her every effort to try to spin the Conservatives’ terrible deal. Remainers should be clear: a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to stop Brexit dead in its tracks.”

It is understood that around 50 people applied to become the Conservative candidate for Hastings and Rye. According to the website Conservative Home there were two other candidates being considered on Friday night one of whom was Tim Clark the Principal of Skinners’ Academy in Hackney.

It says Mr Clark was previously Headmaster of Spalding High School in Lincolnshire and has written about education policy. In 2005 he stood against David Blunkett in Sheffield Brightside.

The website does not reveal the identity of the third candidate saying only that they were a late substitution after the original third finalist withdrew.

We’ll update this story over the weekend.

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