Could Flight claim unfair dismissal?

Turn my back for a couple of moments and all hell breaks loose. A quick recap:

Howard Flight, MP for Arundel and South Downs and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party made some indiscreet comments about the Tories public spending committments at a private meeting that was taped and leaked to the Times. He quickly resigned his position as Deputy Chairman and that would normally have been that.

Except that Michael Howard decided to limit any damage to Tory election prospects and announced that Flight would not be the Conservative candidate in the upcoming election. It seems at the moment that Flight's local Conservative Association will indeed accept Central Office's order to ditch Flight.

Question is, does Flight have a claim for unfair dismissal? Until 1996, Employment Tribunals had regarded parliamentary elections as sarcosanct, judging that it's the voters that decide, not the parties, but in that year, two male Welsh Labour Party members successfully claimed that they had been discriminated against by Labour's NEC setting up an all-woman shortlist in their constituency. The Sex Discrimination Act was altered in 2002 to make it legal to discriminate on the grounds of gender for the purpose of all-woman shortlists, but the fact that an Employment Tribunal regards some seats as being in the gift of the Labour Party remains. Arundel and South Downs must be the Tory equivalent of the Welsh Valleys, even in the Labour landslide years of 1997 and 2001, Flight still won very comfortable majorities (14,000 in 1997, 13,700 in 2001). I think it's clear that Flight, without official Conservative Party sanction would be toast as far as being re-elected MP for Arundel and South Downs is concerned.

So, based on that, I think that an Employment Tribunal would regard Michael Howard's decision as a dismissal. The question then turns to, is it fair? There are five reasons in which a person can be legally dismissed, the only two that could apply to Flight are misconduct and lack of capability. I think that Flight could be sacked for misconduct, especially if, as reported, he was told an hour before the meeting, not to go past Tory party policy in his remarks. However such dismissals are automatically unfair, if a proper procedure is not followed. A proper procedure is not announcing that you're sacking someone in a Sky News interview as Michael Howard did. I think that Howard Flight has a good case if he wants to cause trouble.