Running a primary for Labour’s London mayoral candidate would be a powerful signal of change, suggests Tessa Jowell

The Socialist party in France has held one. The Australian Labor party in Sydney has held one. Will Labour in the UK be the next centre-left party to hold a primary to elect its politicians? It should be – specifically for our London mayoral candidate for 2016.

Membership of political parties has been in decline for decades. In the early 1950s Labour’s membership was above one million. This year it sits around 200,000 – a rise of around 20,000 members since 2007, but still much lower than the heyday of mass membership. When you could draw on a membership of thousands to select a candidate, rather than a few hundred, the link between the democratic wish of Labour members and their potential member of parliament was clearer. Research conducted by Will Straw for Progress found that the median number of Labour members voting in a parliamentary selection is around 40. In an average constituency of 75,000 people this suggests a serious democratic deficit.

Meanwhile, worries grow and grow about how representative our candidates are of wider society. While our MPs do fantastic work no matter what their background, it is clear that there is still a long way to go before parliament is representative of society at large. According to the Nuffield Election Studies, since 1979 there has been a large decrease in the number of MPs who were formerly manual workers, from around 16 per cent of all MPs in 1979 to four per cent in 2010. While it can be argued that there has been a decline in manual work, this shift towards politicians coming from more professional backgrounds over the last 30 years is disproportionate compared to the change in the rest of the population.

Moreover, levels of public engagement with politics continues to cause anxiety. As Ed Miliband noted in his speech to Progress’ annual conference in the spring, when two-thirds of people fail to go to the polls, ‘politics is an increasingly minority activity.’ Fewer people are selecting unrepresentative politicians voted into office with fewer votes. It is getting to the point where it is hard to call the state of our politics terribly democratic.

But if people are turning away from politics, it does not mean they are not acting politically. Look at the work of London Citizens – a community-organising movement which has done so much in its short history to highlight important issues such as the living wage, sanctuary for illegal immigrants, and, most recently, the inspirational CitySafe campaign which helps to bring young people together with their local community to cut crime. It is politics which is stuck in the past, not people.

Closed primaries with registered supporters are part of a solution to the problems I have outlined. They could help to create a step-change in the public’s relationship with political parties. Take the French Socialist party’s primary as an example. François Hollande’s victory in May had roots going back to October 2011 when he beat Martine Aubry in the first ever public primary organised by the party. Over 2.8 million registered French citizens took part in the primary, paying one euro, or more if they wished, and signing up to a pledge to uphold ‘freedom, equality, fraternity, secularism, justice, solidarity and progress’ in order to participate.

The primary was important for Hollande’s victory in three respects. First, it created strong public engagement in a hitherto closed political process. Participation levels in French politics have remained consistently higher than in the UK. Nevertheless, the fact that nearly three million voters were willing to take part kickstarted a debate about what sort of economy the left was in favour of and gave it a renewed connection to the candidate selected.

Second, the primary enabled Hollande to stand with the backing of people who would not join the Socialist party, but who broadly shared its values. Labour’s sister party across the Channel has around 200,000 members, similar to our membership levels. As a proportion of the voting population, that is small. By giving supporters the right to take part, the Socialists built a bigger mandate for their candidate than Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP was able to do. In that sense, it united the left, which in previous presidential nominations had torn itself apart in the contest. The French right has now suggested that it too may establish a public primary for the next presidential election.

Third, it showed that membership parties can open up their internal selection processes without letting go of their values, or devaluing membership. In order to be on the ballot paper, candidates had to first gain the support of five per cent of any one of five different constituencies within the party: members of parliament, national executive council members, mayors of large towns, or regional and departmental councils. The need to sign up to a strongly progressive pledge also reaffirmed voters’ commitment to the party in a way which would be extraordinary in UK politics.

So, why is this relevant to Labour, and particularly in London? It is because this creates an opportunity to build on the proposals of Refounding Labour and reach beyond the membership to those who share Labour’s values.

Primaries are suited to personality elections, which London’s mayoral contest undeniably is. Mayors are different in character from MPs or councillors, tending to be more independent of their parties. This strength is something a primary could build on. It would send a strong signal that Labour is not prepared to take Londoners’ support for our party for granted if we were to run a primary to select our 2016 mayoral candidate. It would help to energise the London Labour party ahead of a 2015 general election, perhaps with a primary vote held on the same day.

There is understandable caution about changing selection methods, but the Parti Socialiste has shown how a strong centre-left party can seize new engagement methods to its advantage. The cost of primaries has often been used as a reason not to proceed, but the PS is estimated to have raised €3.5m – enough to cover the cost of the primary, and have some left over for the campaign. If we cannot persuade the coalition to cover the costs – it has quietly shelved its plan, outlined in the coalition agreement, for 200 state-funded primaries – then we could ask people to donate £1 to register to vote. If it were to be done by post, this could reduce costs even further.

One particularly exciting element of the French socialists’ primary was to enable all those who would be 18 at the time of the presidential election to join in the primary, including those aged 15 and over who were members of the party’s youth section. London is a young city and young people at the moment are bearing much of the brunt of the coalition’s cuts – one in 10 unemployed, education maintenance allowance abolished, money cut from all directions for youth services. Would it not be a fantastic opportunity to help engage a new generation of voters by asking them to vote in a primary? It would also help us to continue our reach into Tory outer London boroughs since much of our membership resides in safe Labour seats.

A primary, just like the campaign we fought in May, would send candidates in search of votes right across London. In a general election year, what a powerful message that would give about our intent to govern the country.

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Tessa Jowell MP is a former minister for London and was chair of Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaigns in 2008 and 2012

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Photo: Juan Salmoral