Open primaries

Conservative Chairman Eric Pickles. He was there. Wonder if wants these selection processes everywhere?

Mike Smithson of Political Betting has a report of an open selection process that the Conservative Party ran in Bedford the other night.

I’m not sure of Mike’s political affiliations (I have my suspicions though). I am more certain of the evening’s chair, Iain Dale. I suspect that both of them are being kinder about this event than it deserves – perhaps out of party loyalty.

Iain’s isn’t a dispassionate report as this aside illustrates:

There was a lot of humour during the course of the evening. When I was explaining the voting system someone shouted out: “Can we vote for you?” and got a round of applause. I laughed and suggested that they might get the chance if local MP Alastair Burt stood down!

But leaving that aside, I don’t know if any of this alarms you, but it does worry me. Mike is, of course, right to be worried about the impact that this will have upon party members and activists. If you pay your fees, stuff the envellopes and pound the streets, the least you should expect is the right to be able to confirm the decision of a meeting that may have been packed.

In a broader sense, though, I think this is a worrying development for The Conservative Party.

If they imagine that a wide base of participation is more important than the quality of representation, they may end up going down the road that the Labour Party did in the late 1970s – candidates being chosen because of their adherence to the kind of positions that can command a round of applause in a packed meeting (nb: the word ‘packed’ potentially has two meanings – it certainly used to in The Labour Party!).

Added to this, we have a communal politics in some parts of the UK that didn’t exist to the degree that it does today. In Scotland, for instance, local Labour Parties became religious-sectarian sinecures.

If local votes took place on local issues, this wouldn’t be so worrying. Parties would suffer if their selection processes threw up low-grade candidates. But these days, elections are largely decided on rosette-colour. Really, voters have the right to expect that the candidate actually represents the rosette that s/he is wearing.

Unless all party members have a say (and I’d argue that postal ballots / hustings are the best way of confirming this), we don’t know if the quality of the candidate will be any good – or even if their views are consistent with the party ticket that they are standing on.

In Bedford’s case, they seem to have picked someone who won’t be problematic in this case (one of Iain Dale’s commenters suggests – admittedly without any evidence – that the winner even benefitted from a ring-around by the party). But where will it all lead?