Primaries are an idea whose time has come in British politics: the coalition agreement mapped out plans for 200 all-postal primaries in this parliament, and last year Bassetlaw Labour engaged 6,000 local Labour supporters in a primary to determine their MP John Mann’s vote in the leadership election. Now the party there is bigger, stronger and has just won back a majority on the council – no small achievement.
It is fair to say, though, that many party members remain sceptical about primaries, concerned they may lose control over the process and outcome.
To help allay fears, the party rulebook should build on a rights-and-responsibilities model, making clear that local parties retain the right to decide the shortlisted candidates who will eventually go to the electorate in the primary. Not only will this increase interest in the party, it will become an electoral necessity, as the boundaries are redrawn. Slashing seats to 600 will delay when we can select our candidates in crucial marginals. Too many MPs in the last parliament stood down as candidates late, which hardly helped Labour in closely fought contests. By contrast, where we had candidates in place 18 months before the election, and where they worked hard to engage the electorate, we did better and people won against the odds. Getting local voters to feel a sense of ownership over the insurgent Labour candidate will replicate that effect. Candidates being chosen by 100 members in a seat hardly throws open the doors to the wider electorate.
There is a way that Labour could mimic the Bassetlaw example to help mitigate all this, by using primaries to encourage MPs and local members to drive up membership and raise interest in the race.
We should introduce the requirement that, if the constituency party has not ensured that at least one per cent of the Labour vote at the last election are party members, and the candidate selection takes place within a year of the general election, then the decision is thrown open to a primary. Moreover, the minimum threshold to avoid an automatically triggered primary should rise in each year of a parliament, meaning, at year four, a local party would need to have transformed four per cent of its vote into members – otherwise the question is put direct to local Labour voters. This would also help prevent the last-minute parachuting in of candidates.
These are achievable goals. Take the four top Tory-held marginals where Labour is not selecting early. They have an average Labour vote of 18,796 each. That would mean needing 188 members by year one, 376 by year two, 564 year three and 752 for the final run. In the closest Liberal Democrat-Labour marginal, this would mean multiples of 137 for every year of the parliament that has passed, resulting in the need for just 546 members to avoid a primary.
This would incentivise us as members to ask people to join, ensuring the party is always outward looking and ready to win. It would encourage us to reach out and – if this is not being done – then local people win a greater say, hopefully resulting in more support for a candidate and, in turn, more members.
Totally agree in principle. In fact primaries should be considered at the very minimum for all super-marginals regardless of membership levels. Early selection can clearly benefit the campaign but the Tory experience is one of lots of candidates dropping out. I suspect attrition rates would be even higher for Labour without pastoral and financial support for some candidates. We’d need tough spending caps too.
Would be useful to address the issue of how voters registered and how to avoid richest candidate winning.
Big fear is that primaries’ electorate would be unrepresentative. I imagine turn out would be higher among politically aware in a primary than in final. If there are social gradients associated with differences in turnout in primary and final electorates it could lead to two problems. First, it could lead to biases in influence toward social groups who are more politically aware. Not sure political awareness should grant extra political influence. Second, it could give a bad guide to who is most electable. That is, primaries could select candidates who are as likely to lose as present candidate selection mechanisms. Your argument has lots of merits but it is risky. I would prefer another party to make the first move. Take care.
Putting aside the highly questionable motive of stripping party members of the right to select their own candidate, this is another article in favour of primaries that doesn’t even touch on their cost. There seems to be two possible models for a primary: an all-postal ballot or a vote at a public meeting. The latter is open to all sorts of manipulation from campaigning groups, or even our political opponents (the SWP for instance). An all-postal ballot – which is seemingly proposed here – would be prohibatively expensive for the party, especially as it would have to be outsourced to a company like ERS to avoid any suggestion of eletoral fraud. The cost of posting out ballots to every voter in a single constituency alone would surely reach five figures not to mention costs of counting ballots, etc. Not only is this totally unaffordable for the party, you’re risking falling foul of spending limit restrictions, (limits apply in the long-campaign once you hit the fifth year of a parliament). Every penny that is spent on selecting the Labour candidate is a penny that could be spent campaigning and removing this horrendous government. Primaries will not bring about the next Labour Government, effective campaigning could.
Interesting. But the question begs, if local Labour parties are unable to sustain even one percent of their vote as members (and I daresay this happened towards the end of our time in government) – then how could they possibly pay for a constituency wide referendum? And, presumably, the constituencies where this is most likely to happen are seats where Labour does poorly at local and general elections. If such a referendum were to be triggered, then the inference is that the referendum would attract a derisory turnout amongst the (few) Labour party voters?
might be an interesting idea but why not more widespread where we need to renew the party. What about piloting it in Scotland where we clearly need a period of rebuilding the party?
I do wonder how a small party is meant to fund a referendum. A dose of hard campaigning would be a better use of scarce resources.