When a political party
cruises at 50 percent in
the opinion polls, the renewal of local democracy struggles to rise from the very bottom of the ministerial intray. Should we be bothered that local democracy languishes in the third division of British politics?
As tempting as it might be, politicians and political parties across
all tiers of government cannot afford
to be complacent about the health
and vibrancy of our democracy. At the local level, our democratic institutions are often the breeding ground for tomorrow’s national leaders. Far more importantly, they are today’s problem-solvers, community-rationers, maker-
of-choices and front-runners in the drive to build strong and socially just communities. So much responsibility invested and yet traditional politics in our urban centres is dead.
The political parties themselves
have a considerable vested interest in getting this right. All the main parties are struggling to find the right calibre of candidates to fill 22,000 councillor vacancies every four years. A recent survey by the Improvement and Development Agency showed that little progress has been made since 1997
in addressing the representativeness
of councillors. Most continue to be white, old men.
If we are going to tackle the problem of effective representation
then political parties will have to think radically in the coming years about
the nature of representation and what
it means to be an individual party member. Given the new strategic
role that elected councillors are now expected to perform, do we need 22,000 councillors any longer?
Perhaps what we need are fewer elected councillors with the ones that remain being better resourced and supported
to provide strategic leadership for local communities. The quid pro quo might be a vast increase in the number of representatives within an area, providing new spaces for elected and non-elected activists within an area to get involved in local decision making.
Perhaps, most importantly, political parties will need to fundamentally rethink methods of selection for local and national representation. David Triesman’s recent revelation that individual Labour Party membership has plummeted to its lowest level since Tony Blair’s election as party leader
was a candid assessment of the scale
of the challenge facing political parties. Just 280,000 people are members of the UK’s governing party at a time when
it dominates nearly every level of local, regional and national government. There’s been a steady decline in party membership across all political parties over several decades from the high point of the 1950s when four million adults belonged to a political party.
To belong to a political party in Britain today is likely to result in a preservation order being pinned on you.
If membership of a political party
is to have any relevance at the start of the 21st century, then political parties need to radically rethink the purpose
of individual membership. The starting point has to be the role of the party member in the local community. It’s here that individual members should
be able to make the greatest contribution. In France party activism and community networking are
closely intertwined. When it comes
to recruiting local leaders to stand
for election, it is much more about identifying those individuals within
the community who would best make
a contribution to the governance of
the locality.
A radical way of bridging the gap between party membership and the electorate might be to introduce a system of registered supporters and primary contests for the selection of key party candidates at the local level. Primary systems are most commonly used in the US for all types of elections from the city mayor to the president. Electors are encouraged
to register as supporters of a party
(as distinct from being a member) and they are then able to participate with party members in the selection of the official party candidate through a primary contest.
A registered supporters and primary process would have the twin effect of giving real substance to a new type of relationship between the electorate and political parties as well as ensuring that the selected candidate is likely to be able to command a much broader base of popular support. Primary systems would provide an enormous incentive for parties to recruit registered supporters. Given the current debate on whether to introduce the state funding of political parties, such an incentive would be extremely timely.
In the UK piloting the introduction of primaries for the selection of mayoral candidates would be ideal.
We could start with the next London mayoral election in which a closed primary system for the selection of either of the two main parties candidates could potentially result in over 500,000 electors taking part in
the selection process. In time there’s
no reason why the system couldn’t also be applied to other forms of selection such as Members of Parliament.
If the Labour Party was bold enough to challenge its own internal vested interests to experiment with any of the above then it would be making a significant contribution to building
a broader and more inclusive political process that would have the renewal
of local democracy firmly at its core.