The simmering anger over the apparent stitch-up of the selection of Labour’s candidates for next year’s European parliamentary elections burst onto the Times’ front page this morning.

Following dogged digging by the Labour blogger Jon Worth, who wrote for Progress last week, there has been a string of critical pieces on Labour Uncut and LabourList, the latter wondering whether these are ‘the least transparent and most open to abuse selections’ the party has conducted.

This unease goes far wider than fevered posts in the blogosphere. From Streatham to Camden, and Islington to Redbridge, wards in London have been passing motions asking the London regional board to explain why Anne Fairweather, who was the top choice of members in the capital four years ago and only narrowly missed being elected in the debacle that was the 2009 European elections, was not even deemed worthy of being interviewed by the selection panel on this occasion. Fairweather was apparently excluded because of her background in business. Her exclusion was a ‘political judgement’, she was told. A rather strange decision when shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has suggested he would like to see more such people going for selection in the future, a position which Ed Miliband endorsed barely a month ago.

In the north-east, too, the first choice of members in the last set of elections, Fay Tinnion, has been effectively excluded. The former parliamentary candidate will only get on to Labour’s list of candidates in the region if two of those already chosen by the selection panel drop out and, even then, she will be ranked in last place and thus will be highly unlikely to be elected. Tinnion’s parents, both long-standing party members and councillors, have resigned in disgust. They believe that their daughter’s life as a ‘service wife’ – her husband is an RAF Flight Lieutenant – counted against her. Again, a strange decision, given that last month Miliband talked of encouraging more people with military backgrounds to go for selection. In the east Midlands there are allegations that one of the selection panel ended up being selected.

Neither Fairweather, Tinnion nor a number of apparently well-placed potential contenders in other regions will be among the names whose position on next June’s regional lists party members will be asked to rank when ballot papers go out in the next couple of months. And, perhaps more crucially, selection panels in most parts of the country appear to have deliberately sought to narrow the choice available to members. Under the party’s rules, these panels – which consist of three representatives from the trade unions, three from constituency parties and a representative of the National Executive Committee – were allowed to let members choose from two more candidates than there are places on the list. Four regions have allowed party members the choice of one additional name; the rest have failed to do even that. ‘It really is a stitch up. I should know one when I see one after all,’ wrote Peter Watt, former general secretary of the party and Progress contributing editor, last week.

As Watt candidly admits, stitch-ups are nothing new, and no group or wing of the party has a spotless record when it comes to such antics. What is perhaps different this time is that this process so directly contradicts and undermines Miliband’s repeatedly professed desire that the party should act differently under his leadership: that it should ‘change from machine politics to grassroots politics’. Indeed, asked about selections by LabourList just before Easter, Miliband was categorical: ‘You’ve got to leave it to party members to make their decisions.’ One of the many frustrations former leaders of the opposition express is that, in seeking to prove to the electorate their potential prime ministerial mettle, there are so few things over which they have direct control or power. But managing their party is one of them: making sure its actions and culture reflect those attributes – efficiency, openness and fairness – that you wish to convince voters you will bring into government is thus absolutely critical.

So what should Labour’s leadership do now? First, restore confidence in this current process. There are, as Mark Ferguson of LabourList has suggested, a number of questions that the party should answer in order to do that:

•    What criteria was used to decide which candidates would be interviewed?
•    Were any candidates that were selected also on the selection panel in their region?
•    How many candidates stood in each region?
•    How were the selection panels selected?
•    Why were some candidates good enough to be candidates in past elections, but not good enough to be interviewed this time around?

Miliband should demand that answers to all of the questions, from every region, should be presented to the next meeting of the NEC. If the answers are unsatisfactory from any region, the NEC should order the process be rerun in that region.

Second, the process for future selections needs to be changed in order to ensure that Labour truly does ‘leave it to party members to make their decisions’. Two very simple changes would go a long way towards accomplishing this. First, European selection panels should be required to publish in advance the criteria by which they decide who they will longlist and hence who receives an interview. They should also publish the number of candidates who have put themselves forward and the number interviewed. Second, the panels should be required to give party members a choice of candidates to rank which has double the number of names on as there are places available on the regional list. The current zipping arrangement would also be applied to ensure a correct gender balance on the list.

Some will say that even a front page on the Times does not stop the sad story of Labour’s European selections being little more than a ‘Westminster village’ tale for party anoraks. But they would be wrong: the stakes are far higher. There is, quite rightly, a strong desire in the party that parliamentary selections produce a more diverse range of candidates that reflect the country Labour aspires to govern. Nothing could be less likely to further that aim than an old-fashioned stitch-up behind closed doors.

—————————————————————————————

Robert Philpot is director of Progress. He tweets @Robert_Philpot

————————————————————————————–

Photo: Rock Cohen