The Telegraph reports on a survey done by Conservativehome.com.

Becoming a Conservative MP can cost candidates more than £40,000 of their own money, a survey reveals today.

The figures have prompted calls for David Cameron to make it easier for poorer Tories to stand for Parliament.

According
to a survey on the ConservativeHome.com website, the average cost for
Tory candidates to get to Westminster is £41,550.

Bit of a bargain don’t you think? Once there, with the allowances and so on, they get £100,000 a year, they’ll be there, on average, for what, two or three terms? Bloody good pension plan, chance of a peerage and so on. At least a ten to one return on investment. There aren’t many investments like that floating around.

But ConservativeHome warned yesterday that to ensure real "candidate
diversity", Mr Cameron also had to look at helping people on limited
incomes to get on to the Tory benches in the Commons.

Ah, they seem to think this is a bad thing. That may explain why I’m not a Conservative.

It stressed the importance of "the value of recruiting candidates with backgrounds in the public and voluntary sectors –

Ah, even more. You mean they want even more MPs who have never actually created wealth? Yet more who have only ever sucked at the public teat? Why not call it Labour-Lite and be done with it?

Well, there is one simple method of reducing that cost of standing for election:

The figures, compiled from a survey of Tory candidates, include loss of earnings for the time spent on parliamentary ambitions.

Allow only the unemployed to stand. They have a much lower opportunity cost and no loss of wages.