An offer to political parties

Both Labour and the Conservatives have moved to take away the whip – and effectively deselect – MPs that have offended public morality with their expense claims.

But is this really enough? Are we simply to be satisfied that a few examples are made of the most egregious cases of an abuse of parliamentary expenses and leave it at that?

Or is there a wider crisis the the quality of representation that needs addressing?

I think that this provides us with a fantastic opportunity to renew the entire political class in the UK. It is time for us to think about how we can reinvigorate widespread participation in political parties – old and new. For this reason, I’d like to propose that we – the voters – offer the political parties a new deal. It runs like this:

“We will double the membership of the local party that we support – but only if they will let us re-select our candidate.”

I’ve outlined how I think this can work on a new website – www.reselect.org and I would urge you to do anything you can to promote this initiative.

We have to do our bit. By offering to double the size of constituency parties, we can present political parties with a renew-or-die offer. We are also presenting them with the lifeblood of real members – a far better source of sustenance than the wealthy donors that all of the parties have come to rely upon.

The advantages of this approach are numerous. Firstly, this crisis has – to date – been treated almost as a crisis of consumption. They – the providers – have let us – the customers – down. We have demanded a refund and an apology and once that’s out of the way, we may leave it at that.

I’d argue that a more energetic and active political culture would never have allowed this situation to arise in the first place.

Secondly, there’s the question of ‘Planet Westminster.’ For me, the most striking (and eye-opening) aspect of this has been the attitude to living standards and what is acceptable in public life. The Labour Party has seen the growth of a gilded selectorate – Ministers and MPs who have a face that fits – ones that have jumped effortlessly from University, via a Think Tank or Special Adviser role into a safe seat, and ending up in the ministerial limo.

This is a political culture that has almost no roots in local politics at all. These people usually didn’t live anywhere near the constituency that they represented and had no real experience in local politics, dealing with ordinary people about bread-and-butter issues.

This is a crisis for party politics – and one that it is not certain to survive undamaged. Personally, I’m firmly of the view that the UK is among the world’s least tainted political cultures at a point in history at which there has never been such a low level of corruption. Those who wish to see alternatives to party politics woke up this morning to news of the alternative offered by Esther Rantzen. A reminder that we should be careful what we wish for?

It’s time to entirely renew the culture of all of our political parties. It’s time for us to demand that they take the one-off step of asking their MPs to stand for reselection in front of a larger -and more demanding – membership.

This crisis has been cheered on by The Taxpayers Alliance and others who openly detest parliamentary democracy.

Interestingly, the mover of the ‘no-confidence’ motion in the Speaker was the pro-Direct Democracy Tory Douglas Carswell.

(This article has been cross posted at the Liberal Conspiracy site and on Common Endeavour)