Falkirk Labour party has dominated the airwaves for several months. Even BBC Question Time is heading to the Scottish town with its BBC panel. Egged on by bloggers, David Cameron has repeatedly attempted to bash the Labour party and Ed Miliband around the head with the spectre of alleged union fixing, stitch-ups and lack of democracy.
With no Labour candidate selected, in what has traditionally been a Labour seat, it is time for us to call Cameron’s bluff and let the people have a say. Nowhere in the country is more ripe for the first Labour party supporters primary than Falkirk.
In an ideal world, we would pilot primaries in selected council seats and then in the promised London mayoral selection. But with Falkirk, needs must.
Rather than having disputed numbers of Labour party members selecting a candidate from one faction or other, let the people of Falkirk decide. Nobody could complain. The would-be MPs will need to convince a wider audience of Labour voters. Every Unite Labour voter will have a say. Non-union members who support Labour will also help choose.
From our experience in Bassetlaw with our primary for the Labour leadership election, I would predict that a very high turnout of Labour voters will be engaged in the process. Many will go further and may well join the Labour party as individual members. The canvass records of the local party will be transformed overnight. Cameron, scared of the independence of Sarah Wollaston, the primary-selected MP, will be on the back foot. Even Len McCluskey will have to clap his hands in democratic acclaim.
There are two kinds of primary: an open meeting, or my style, which is an open meeting but a ballot paper for everyone choosing to identify themselves as a Labour supporter.
For too long our politics has revolved round ever-smaller groups of activists deciding the future. As a consequence our candidates are increasingly similar, all good and talented people in their own right, but increasingly similar in outlook and background. Whichever party makes a permanent leap into participative politics will have an ongoing political advantage by being more representative and will therefore have a clear electoral advantage because they are more in touch.
In my view the problems of Falkirk can be turned into an advantage if we turn the tables on the negative imagery of fixing and manipulation. A full open primary will show Labour to be confident, assertive and democratic. Falkirk should lead the way.
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John Mann is member of parliament for Bassetlaw
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Great idea.
On a practical level it would solve a problem in Falkirk and, as long as administrated well, dispel any debates about legitimacy. But it would also, as John points out, give the Labour supporters of Falkirk a candidate they have chosen, rather than one foisted upon them by the party’s internal machinery with its interest groups and institutionalised fixing.
The point, “our candidates are increasingly similar, all good and talented people in their own right, but increasingly similar in outlook and background” is especially pertinent. We need more people whose abilities are more about reaching out to the wider public than negotiating their way through Labour’s innards; primaries would achieve that.
http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/
Very perceptive comments, Ben, thank you.
My concern is that an MP derived from an Open Primary process may in fact turn out to be far from sensible.
Suppose a demagogue from Labour’s far Left was able to dupe the electorate, win votes and grab the seat via an Open Primary.
Could you countenace such a disaster?
People dupe the electorate all the time – how else would Tories get elected? It’s called democracy.
The problem though, is that primaries only work when they deliver one’s preferred candidate. Suppose another Galloway were to emerge? Or someone within the Falkirk community associated with the ‘wrong’ side?
Plainly, that just wouldn’t do.
What we need is a process that gives us the result we want. I’m not convinced that, in this instance, a open primary can do that.
There is also the issue of who is a Labour supporter. Party membership is so small in most constituencies that Open Primaries are the only answer and people register as Labour supporters and are sent a ballot form on which to vote. The American System is very expensive but at least results in one candidate per party for Presidential and Congress. I doubt if it would work in the UK. We also need to decide on a limit to the number of candidates standing in any constituency. The present system of imposing a fee means that any millionaire like Zak Goldsmiths father can run as many candidates as they like. Better to require them to have a 1000 nominees.
who will pay. Currently the system is like the local caucuses in the US at lease in the Democratic Party. In the other States the State pays. So should constituencies pay for primaries though Council Tax?
It is time that the taxpayer paid for our democratic system, from which we all benefit. The American system is out of control and will soon be so based on donations from multimillionaires that it will fail. We should ban all donations above £5000 from any organisation and limit that to once per parliament. The taxpayer would finance one Primary per Political Party where that Party had at least 5% of the average Polling from the large polling organisations at the time the Primary election was necessary (when an MP resigns, dies, decides not to stand, is deselected). Similarly at General Elections, the political parties with at least 5% of the averages of the Polls taken would be funded where they had that 5% poll in each parliamentary constituency (not blanket funding for every constituency in the UK because the party has 5% in the South East).