Labour’s first primary must welcome in the capital’s million-strong Labour voters

Political scientists have been warning us for over a decade that political parties are in their death-throes. They may well be right. But no one has come up with a convincing alternative method of performing all the functions that a political party does in a democracy.

Parties serve to aggregate diverse political opinions, to make sense of elections by selecting and standing candidates, to create order out of chaos inside representative assemblies, and to create a platform for political leaders to stand on.

Voters seem to like the arrangement, despite their protestations. They vote for candidates on a party political ticket over so-called ‘independents’ almost every time. Let us not forget that Esther Rantzen came fourth when she stood in Luton South as an anti-sleaze independent, and lost her deposit.

This places ever-greater pressure on political parties to smarten up their acts. They have a special responsibility to reach out to disaffected voters, to encourage young people, to politically educate the citizenry, and to behave ethically.

Only one per cent of the population belongs to a political party, compared to 3.8 per cent in 1983. The latest figures suggest Labour has 190,000 members (with a huge proportion living in London), the Conservatives have 150,000 and the Liberal Democrats have 44,000. The Green party claims about the same as the Liberal Democrats, with the United Kingdom Independence party on 42,000. The Scottish National party has enjoyed a post-referendum surge to 93,000.

For all parties, this raises the real dilemma of who selects parliamentary candidates, especially in seats with healthy majorities where the sitting member of parliament is standing down. It also raises the broader issue of how parties can be representative with such narrow memberships, and for the parties themselves the question is: Who is going to do all the work?

Ed Miliband’s special conference in the wake of the Falkirk scandal voted overwhelmingly for the proposals in the Collins review. This created a halfway house between the Labour voter, of which there were 8.6 million even in 2010, and the card-carrying Labour member. This makes perfect sense in the digital age, where our ‘likes’ and ‘preferences’, expressed by the click of a mouse, are far more loose and informal than filling out a standing order and abiding by a set of rules.

Where local MPs have created these lists of supporters, they have proved successful. Nationally, Labour has a system of registered supporters which is free to join. For a fee, registered supporters will be able to vote in the next Labour leadership election, and in London they will help choose Labour’s next mayoral candidate.

Little has been made of this latter opportunity, due to take place in the first three months of the next parliament. But in London the potential is for hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters to help select Labour’s candidate for mayor. 992,000 people voted Labour in London in the 2012 mayoral election. Imagine if just a third of them signed up as registered supporters and paid a fee to vote for a candidate. That would raise nearly a million pounds for Labour, more than covering the cost of the primary.

The October 2014 meeting of the National Executive Committee set the rate at £3 per supporter. It, however, only gave them 12 days, following polling day on 8 May, to pay this £3 and be included in the primary.

A dozen days does not suffice, not least at the end of a long and gruelling campaign for members with shoe leather well worn out by the close of polls. Little to nothing has been put about the London party save the occasional footnote at the bottom of emails; no instruction has gone out to make sure the high level of doorstep activity currently taking place is harnessed to register supporters. Committed and hardworking party officers have been openly casting about within their constituency parties for advice about how to make the network a reality.

At the very least, the party should extend the window for registered supporters to pay the £3 admin fee to the same deadline as for signing up to be an affiliated supporter – 19 June – giving six weeks after the elections for people to become aware of the primary and decide to get involved. It is the busy, less political but firmly Labour voters who we most need to participate in these processes so that the benefits of the primary – taking politics closer to the people and giving Labour a candidate who will maximise the party’s vote – can be realised.

The list of party members is to be made available to all candidates from the moment they have secured the five nominations necessary to progress to the longlist. However, affiliated supporters through the union and socialist societies and registered supporters will not be provided until after the 19 June deadline. This delay is arbitrary and candidates should be regularly updated with lists of all selectors.That way there is a level playing field for all.

The imperative now is to make it work. Remember the success of the French Socialists’ open primary for their presidential candidate, which engaged 2.5 million supporters (as opposed to their 200,000 members) and raised over €3.5m in fees. A really bold candidate should be aiming to reach over the heads of 100,000 party members and beyond to 1,000,000 Labour voters in London. The candidate who energises this broader base will not only win the selection, but crucially will beat the Tories’ candidate in 2016.

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Photo: Juan Salmoral