Ed Miliband says the right things when it comes to engagement of Labour party members in selection processes. ‘You’ve got to leave it to party members to make their decisions. And that’s the way it should be’ he said in a recent interview with Mark Ferguson of LabourList.
Why then, when it comes to the largest selection process currently ongoing in the Labour party, the selection of candidates across the country for the 2014 European elections, does precisely the opposite seem to be the case?
Scant information was provided to party members before the process started, and the process itself is a strange one. Each region (south-east, north-west, Yorkshire and The Humber and so on) has a party regional selection panel. These panels interview candidates to fill the remaining places on the lists behind the sitting MEPs. So in the north-west, for example, a region that has eight MEPs, the selection panel will name seven candidates to fill the remaining places on the ballot paper behind the one sitting MEP who is standing again. The full list of candidates, including web links, can be found here. Only once the list is proposed do party members have a say, determining the order of the candidates on the list and hence which candidates are most likely to be elected as MEPs.
So what happens?
Selection panels seem to eliminate strong candidates whose politics they do not like, so as to give a few favoured candidates an easy run. The case is most stark in London, where Anne Fairweather, listed third on the list in 2009 and who topped the ballot of party members then, was not even asked to an interview by the selection panel. Carole Tongue and Rupa Huq, also viable strong candidates in London, were not shortlisted. In other regions, Kevin Peel (north-west) and Razvan Constantinescu (south-west) are notable omissions. A Facebook group has even been started to try to get Razvan reinstated.
It is not my place to judge who would make the best member of the European parliament for Labour, or whether Anne Fairweather or Kevin Peel or anyone else should deserve your vote. But it is my concern if strong and valid candidates are not even put to the membership, and if the selection process is not carried out in a fair and transparent manner. It seems, when it comes to selecting for European parliament lists, we have a long way to go before Ed Miliband’s vision becomes a reality.
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Jon Worth is a Labour party member, consultant and blogger, currently resident in Copenhagen. He tweets at @jonworth
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Photo: Dominic Campbell
The London panel has some really hard left union characters on it – how was the panel selected is what i want to know
What in this context does “hard left” mean, why is “union” a perjorative, and why the use of “characters” instead of ‘people’? I know nothing of the names involved in London, save Mary Honeyball and Claude Moraes.
Edward – you ask the right question, and I personally do not know. Depending on time I’ll try to look at this issue before the end of the week. Also note that it goes both ways – in the West Midlands, Left Futures is complaining it was all a Blairite stitch up for Sion Simon!
See above – I’m afraid the truth is mundane and democratic.
The truth is NOT mundane and democratic. Or at least not across the board. The process is opaque and open to abuse, and doesn’t prioritise members. And – in East Midlands at least – could even be corrupt.
Yea, how dare the unions (appearently) stitch up a selection, don’t they know that is Progress’s job?
Jon, I think you are on dangerous ground here. I was very surprised not to see Kev, Anne and others on the various lists. But I know that in the SE, the region I know best, there were a lot of very strong applicants. I also know all the people on the selection panel and your suggestions that people were not picked because of their politics is laughable – the panel are all people who would pick the best candidates. I have been an observer in a number of parliamentary selections over the years as well, and heard comments made afterwards about “fixes” or “candidates rejected for political reasons” – when the truth was that candidates who may not have been as well known, did better.
And the process is no different to any other selection – a shortlist is prepared by a smaller group and then that shortlist faces election by the wider membership. The SE had 70-80 applicants, and I think London got even more – are you seriously suggesting that all of those people should have been presented to the members?
Several of my friends didn’t get shortlisted (you’ve mentioned some here), and I am surprised that they weren’t, but I wouldn’t start throwing around hints of fixes without evidence. It’s in the nature of any selection process that “favourites” don’t always win. And we don’t always like the outcome of selections. But we can’t always get what we personally want, and as you didn’t see the CVs seen at long-listing or the interviews to make the shortlists, I don’t see how you can comment.
Martin – I have every right to comment. The process is deeply flawed, and I have the chance to raise the issue and hence am doing so. As has Peter Watt on LabourList.
As I say in the piece, I do not say Anne Fairweather should have been selected. But why was she not interviewed? She was number 3 on the list last time and topped the Members’ ballot! And why not, ultimately, give party members more of a choice?
Also it looks like a member of the board in East Midlands selected herself – see this.
So I take your ‘dangerous ground’ as a compliment – it means the critique I am making is the right one, because it is shining the light into murky corners of Labour business and I am absolutely right to do so.
The problem Jon is you are condemning a process when you were not involved in any way, and yet you speak with certainty. “The process is deeply flawed” and “murky corners”- how can you know that? The process seems to have worked perfectly well in my region. You have mentioned possible issues in 4 regions out of 11 – and only one allegation (if correct) is about procedural issues. The others are about individual choices made by panels. There have been lots of internal Labour selections and elections where I didn’t like the result, but that’s the nature of the beast with our party. And any interview process – I’ve been involved in interviews in my professional life and as a school governor, and sometimes I haven’t like the outcome, but I don’t cry stitch-up. In the Labour Party, there are accusations of stitch-ups when setting the selection process, before, during and after the selection.
You may not like the outcomes. I was surprised at some of the outcomes too, but as I was not in the rooms I am not going to say there were stitch ups (or not) It’s ironic that you quote Peter Watt. Your piece seems to be saying that the party machine was too involved and should leave decisions to members – Peter Watt’s argument seems to be that the party machine should have been more involved. Which sums up how subjective this all is quite nicely.
You still have not, in any way, made clear what criteria – if any – were used to determine on what basis candidates were chosen. Is it just OK that someone like Anne Fairweather is not even interviewed, for ‘political reasons’? No. If Ed Miliband is serious that party members should be trusted… then trust them!
And as for what the solution is then that’s for everyone to argue their case – I do not altogether agree with Peter’s piece, but it’s not as if I am the only one deeply concerned by all of this.
It’s not up to me to make clear the criteria Jon. I wasn’t on any of the panels.
But as I have been involved in and been an official observer on parliamentary selections and council selections, I would guess that the general criterion could be similar – would this person be a good MEP? Just like any interview panel for any job in any walk of life – can this person do the job?
The selection process is all laid down in the party rule book – regional boards elect selection panels, and regional boards are elected by regional parties. You obviously feel very strongly that the process needs to change and the selection criteria at each stage should be public, so why don’t you propose a rule change that says what you want? And ask CLPs to propose that rule change? CLPs have until June to propose rule changes.
OK, so having got some publicity for the issue then it might be worth having a go at getting the rules changed. Whether anyone is going to listen to a member of Labour International on that is another matter.
Of course the question “will this person be a good MEP?” was not at all the question asked, or not asked according to how I would define ‘good’. And if Anne Fairweather was good in 2009, why is she not good enough to even get an interview this time?
You can’t always get what you want,
but
if you try real hard
you just might find
that you get
what you need
Jon, should also say that the selection panels are made up of people elected to each party’s regional board at the regional conferences. I’ve been a board member in the past and am an observer now – the SE panel was elected by the board (there were so many people wanting to be on the panel). There was a secret ballot and I did the count, so can tell you the selection of the panel was not fixed by anyone and had a range of political views, as well as representing CLPs and unions and affiliates.
Martin – I think the experience in regions varies. The wider point is about transparency to members and choice. With respect to myself, I was not interviewed by the selection panel in London. I asked for the reason for this and was told it was a political judgement. I have received no further explanation so that is all I conclude about the matter.
Surely it is their perogative whether or not to interview a candidate, and this revolves around how they want to run the election?
“Selection panels seem to eliminate strong candidates whose politics they do not like, so as to give a few favoured candidates an easy run. The case is most stark in London”
So, is you argument that the Blairites who have been short-listed are not strong enough, or that the short list should have only included Blairites?
The selection process for MEPs has been much, much murkier in the past. Yet, searching your blog, I couldn’t find any complaints about it in previous elections. Many excellent candidates were excluded in 2009, 2004 and 1999 – why no complaint about that, either then or now?