Just 70 local Tories could start Boris Johnson on his way to Number 10.

Fifty per cent of a Conservative association of only 139 members is enough to secure candidacy at the selection meeting at Ruislip High School on Friday evening (September 12).

The Mayor of London is pitted against Hillingdon Council deputy leader David Simmonds, Simon Dudley, also a deputy leader, of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, and barrister Suella Fernandes.

If no winner emerges from the first round of voting, the fourth placed hopeful is eliminated and voting starts again.

Whatever happens, by the time the meeting is over and the candidates emerge from the private meeting into the atrium of the modern school to talk to the press, one of them will be well on their way to Westminster.

With an 11,000 Conservative majority pocketed by Sir John Randall at the 2010 general election, Uxbridge and South Ruislip is among the safer Tory seats – hence Boris Johnson’s ‘whacking in’ of his application before last month’s deadline in a much anticipated move after six years out of Parliament.

But ‘parachuting in’ is one thing: winning is another.

Mr Dudley, for one, is confident. “I think it is all about who is the best candidate for this constituency,” he told his local newspaper today (Wednesday, September 10), The Maidenhead Advertiser.

“Someone who can dedicate 100 per cent of their time to the residents. I think I am that candidate, I know the place.

“It’s where I was born. I was born in Hillingdon and lived close to the constituency for 18 years until I went to university.

“It’s somewhere I have a very close personal relationship with.”

Meanwhile, Mr Simmonds told Wales Online at the weekend: “I am going to give the selection my best shot.”