David Cameron ducked a potentially embarrassing blow to his authority last night when one of his high profile parliamentary candidates survived an attempt to deselect her.
The Conservative leader was preparing to impose an all-women shortlist on recalcitrant activists in south-west Norfolk when they threatened to reject Elizabeth Truss after it was revealed she had an affair with a Tory MP five years ago.
Local Tories, dubbed "the Turnip Taliban" by senior Conservatives, turned against Truss, the deputy director of the think tank Reform, because they only learned of the affair in a Sunday tabloid the day after they chose her for the safe Tory seat last month.
But a letter from John Maples, the Conservative party deputy chairman, read out at an emergency meeting in which he apologised for the way Central Office handled the selection process, helped sway local members, who eventually backed Truss by 132-37 in a secret ballot.
The tussle over Truss, 34, who is married with two children, exposed an increasing gulf between Notting Hill modernisers and loyalists from the shires within the Tory party. The Conservative leader had publicly endorsed Truss in glowing terms while right-wing bloggers ridiculed Norfolk activists for their outrage over Truss's affair in 2004 with Tory MP Mark Field.
While Cameron has claimed localism to be a key principle, his opponents in the party accused him of attempting to control local activists' freedom to choose their own candidate.
Tory rebels said they were not opposed to Truss for moral reasons but because Central Office had failed to tell them about the affair. Truss claimed she told Central Office about the affair – which had been reported in the past and was easily searchable on the internet – but that information was never passed on to Norfolk Conservatives.
As Truss and a spokesman for the Conservative party spoke of their "delight" at the result, one of the leading rebels, Sir Jeremy Bagge, said grass roots members had been "deceived and betrayed" by Central Office.
"I'm not proud to be a Conservative at this particular moment," said Bagge. "Conservative Central Office deceived us and they betrayed us. They are very strong words and that's how I feel."
Other local activists said the furore was Central Office's fault but the right candidate had eventually been endorsed. "She's a very, very formidable lady and she'll be one of the major MPs in the future," said Roy Brame.
Cameron had staked his authority on Truss being selected, intervening to personally appeal to rebels to endorse her in a Guy Fawkes night telephone call to Bagge.
Truss said: "It has been at times challenging. At times very interesting. Of course there is an element of hurt. I want to work with everybody in the local party. All the people who supported me and those who didn't."