Iain Dale drops bid to be Tory MP over clip saying he ‘by no means appreciated’ constituency

Long-time LBC presenter Iain Dale has abandoned his bid to become a Tory MP after a clip emerged of him saying he “never liked the place” he hoped to stand.

The radio host decided to throw his hat in the ring to become Conservative candidate for Tunbridge Wells earlier this week after more than a decade on LBC. But he was forced into a U-turn today after an old episode of his ‘For the Many’ podcast was unearthed.

In the clip from 2022, he said he lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, “slightly against my will,” as his partner is from there – and would “happily live somewhere else”. Mr Dale, 61, said he realised that the comments made it impossible to stand as a candidate there and would haunt him throughout the campaign.

He told LBC today: “I instantly recognised the problem with that. There is a context to it but nobody is interested in context or nuance in these situation. You have that little clip and it would be on every election leaflet that’s put out in the election campaign.”

Mr Dale said the comments were part of the banter between himself and co-presenter Jacqui Smith. He also realised he’d done thousands of hours of radio and podcasts, where he had criticised Government policy.

Asked why he didn’t tough it out, Mr Dale said: “I could have gone to the selection meeting tomorrow, I could have a done a ‘ra, ra, ra’ speech and got them whipped up and said, ‘we’ll beat these Lib Dems ‘. And I could have won. But what if they had something else I’d said?”

He said he wasn’t willing to suffer “death by a thousand cuts” and he recognised the political reality. Mr Dale said he didn’t hate living in Tunbridge Wells, adding: “I’ve lived there for 27 years and I would say, if I hated it that much, would I have stayed living there for 27 years? I don’t think I would.

“In many ways it is a lovely place.” But he added: “Everybody listening to this now would have some complaint about where they live. I just put it in far too graphic terms.”