The recent Power Inquiry concluded that our current democratic system is ‘killing’ politics and that a more responsive system is needed. New lows in voter turnout in recent council and parliamentary elections, and the growing debate about levels of trust between electors and their representatives, suggest that radical reforms to Britain’s democratic process are needed.
This concern about levels of trust in politics and voter apathy is not new. Labour, in both local and national government and as a party, has introduced a whole range of new ways of engaging the electorate, from citizens’ juries and supporters’ networks through to the Big Conversations. All have made a difference, yet trust in politicians and voter apathy has continued to be an issue.
Part of the problem is that candidates are often largely unknown to their potential electorates. This means that there is a sense of distance between the aspiring representative and the voter.
All political parties’ selection processes are at the very least opaque, and at worst secretive and difficult to understand. Contests to be the candidate in council and parliamentary seats often turn on just a handful of votes. The percentage of the electorate directly involved in the selection of a parliamentary party candidate will, on average, be less than one per cent. Such contests, therefore, inevitably focus primarily on the interests and aspirations of only a few of the potential electorate, rather than the interests of the whole community.
The Conservatives’ approach has been to select a list of so called ‘ideal’ candidates – an ‘A-list’ that local Conservative organisations are supposed to pick from. Our response should be the very opposite. We should reform our selection process – to root our candidates even more firmly in the communities they want to represent.
One alternative model could be primary elections, associated until now only with American elections – of Iowa, New Hampshire and ‘Super Tuesday’ fame. Primaries have the virtue of being very open contests, engaging supporters of a party, as well as activists, in the selection of candidates. The open nature of the contest, and the greater scrutiny it entails, helps to give the whole electorate much more information about the candidate, their ideas and their record long before the actual election campaign starts. They also force candidates, if they want to win, to focus immediately on the needs and aspirations of the whole community. In short, it keeps candidates listening to what the majority, not the few, think are the important questions.
Primaries, Labour-style, would need to be somewhat different to those of the party’s Democratic cousins. Labour was formed by a coalition of organisations grounded in the local community, and primaries would need to respect those traditions. Local party members, through their ward branches and confirmed by the general committee, could draw up a shortlist of candidates to put to all supporters in an open primary.
While the apparent decline of interest in party politics is an issue for all political parties, it represents a particularly acute challenge for our party, with nearly a decade in office and facing a newly rejuvenated Conservative party.
Keeping the electorate interested and engaged in what we have to offer in the wake of David Cameron’s public relations offensive, means we have to continue to change. Primaries offer one opportunity to both rebuild interest and trust in politics, and engage wider sections of the electorate.