Would primaries mean more women?

Lots of discussion on the TV last night and the radio this morning about Ed Milliband's suggestion of primaries for Labour Westminster constituency selections.

I'm all for primary selections and I don't much understand why anybody would be against them; after all, it is the whole constituency that you are going to be representing not just the 30 or so activist that can be bothered to vote.

But I think there are so many more benefits to politics that the obvious democratic one above.  For a start I think, despite being a vastly larger selectorate, I think it will make the whole process of selection less onerous for a candidate which can only be a good thing.  As someone who has spent actual years of her life attempting (and failing) to get selected in her home seat, I found as time went on the only way to do it was to woo each member individually and this sometimes took half an afternoon spent in their front room discussing all sorts of things, many of which frankly have no bearing on either what sort of candidate you'd make, how you'd run the campaign and even what sort of MP you'd make.  Just the whim of an indulged activist, one of 120 that need wooing in that selectorate (for some reason the region had decided that all 3 constituencies forming the local party, would vote in the selection).

I would say, that last time that I attempted selection that this tactic worked to the point that it got me equal votes in the selection with the eventual (and incumbent candidate), it didn't help much when they tossed the coin to see which of us would win! Indeed, although a failing candidate I had a troup of people come and ask for my best practice on how to run a selection campaign in the months after.

If you're selectorate is larger then you have no hope of winning by picking people off one by one in such an intense fashion, so you don't do it.  In fact the campaign you would have to run to win a primary is far more akin to the kind of campaign you would have to run to win the seat in an election and therefore actually worthwhile doing even if you don't win the selection.  One of the most frustrating things about my experience of selection (apart from not winning of course) was the amount of time and effort it took just to fail and that type of activity was not transferable but only relevant to dealing with internal party politics and power struggles.

So, I decided after the same thing happened in a by-election for a council seat (where I also lived) I decided that I wasn't going to waste my time any more, and as I'm in demand and have choices I went off and did something more meritorious instead.  Part of that as a masters at Law, hence my blogosphere silence for the last three years.  But it's not just my personal feeling about how I spent my time but the waste of effort on behalf of the most active of activists - I could have been out doing things that were going to wins real votes instead!

I also think there'd be less potential for squishing.

I've worked in big, national brand corporations for much of my working life and boy they are competitive places.  It's easy to see people squishing and being squished as a particularly ambitious individual makes their way up the organisation.  But, unlike in political parties, you don't tend get groups of people going around squishing people on behalf of the rising stars in the organisation.  This level of backstabbing, political shenanigans, perpertrated by those not even sacrificing anything in their life but viewing it all more as entertainment really puts people off.  It sure as hell puts me off.  I do still wonder how many hours I spent in front rooms being quizzed on the most fringeworthy of topics just to keep me wasting my time for longer.  And I've just giving you one of the nicer examples of how people behave - there are far worse!

You can say that it's all good practice for the realities of Westminster life but this is a circular argument.  Because we make it a condition of entry then we fill the place with people who think this is the best way to succeed and to legislate and eventually to govern.  We miss out on many, many people because we insist on parliament being like this.

I have no intention of standing for parliament again; even though when I did in 2005 I really enjoyed it and even though I think I 'd make a great candidate and an even better MP.  I'm not standing again because I don't have the stomach for the selection, because I did quite a few of them over a four year period and put my all into it, did everything that was asked of me and did it well and still failed.  So, twice that failure was down to pulling the wrong name out of a hat (can you believe it?) and maybe the next time it would have worked.  But I think the whole way that we as activists treat those who want to be candidates, our expectations of them and our preference for white middle class men means that I'm not going to take part until the process changes and somehow the culture of candidate selection changes.

I think primaries would be a smashing idea, I think it would produce more women, more people who have been doing demanding jobs other than politics and so haven't had the time to cultivate the local cliques in political parties.  I think it would produce a wider of variety of races take part, sexualities and (dis)abilities who, I think rightly, have more faith in the general public than the prejudices of a small group about what makes the best MP.  I think it would be a fantastic practice for an actual election and therefore have its own value, even failure would not be a waste of time.  Good candidates pursuing selection within the whole constituency would start to bring in votes even before they've been elected.

It's draw back is that it is expensive but really it has to be looked at as the start of the election campaign and is therefore not wasted money.  We should use it in our safest, most important seats so putting on a primary would actually bring a local party extra campaign funding and be a sign of status.

Our lack of diversity is shameful and the only thing that has ever created even 30% of women in a national parliament is quotas. Only quotas work, there is no special Liberal Democrat alternative route to diversity, there is just this one way.  However, although quotas can be easily implemented across gender but it is not as easy across other under-represented groups but primaries would help increase every sort of diversity and we like the Tories and Labour should really consider bringing them in.

The Tories rated Brian above Boris as well

Just thought I'd bring this little article to your attention: apparently the Tories would have chosen the excellent Brian Paddick as their Mayoral Candidate as well.

"Mr Paddick, a former senior Metropolitan Police officer, sent David Cameron an email asking if speculation that the Tories wanted him to be their man was true. The Tory leader quickly dispatched Francis Maude, a Shadow Cabinet member, for talks."They promised me the Earth, all the money I could spend and professional back-up," said Mr Pad dick"

Just one little problem he was already a Liberal Democrat! Ha!

This goes to prove that the Tories were desperate when they picked Boris and our now playing a very cynical game of celebrity politics with our £11billion London budget. No, they're very far from being the party that you would trust with you're money.

So, if you want a really good first choice candidate running London then place Brian as your first preference tomorrow.

Don't forget to vote for Lib Dems in the London Assembly election to and keep the BNP out.

Getting better at catching the rule breakers…

What Derek Conway did, in defrauding the tax payer, was wrong (obviously); he broke the rules but there is no need to change the rules as a result.

We don’t need to ban politician’s families from working for them…indeed it is one of the few areas where the valuable contribution that spouses often make to the careers of ambitious people is actually given a value. If someone is doing the work, they should be paid for it…it doesn’t and shouldn’t actually matter what their relationship to the employer is.

If someone breaks the rules, the fault will be down to their dishonesty and a lack of proper application and scrutiny of those responsible for enforcing the rules.

But the current media reaction: 'the rules must change!' happens all the time; a rule is broken, we are all aghast and then there are calls for the rules to be changed! Why? The rule itself works; it is its application that wasn’t working. But then changing a rule is easier and cheaper for those in charge then actually making existing rules and legislation work.

It is a particular disease of the Labour government but we in the Liberal Democrats are just as bad. When a number of local parties were struggling under the weight of potential candidates recruiting ‘phoney members’ to skew the votes towards them in selections instead of getting the returning officers, the local party and membership services to enforce rules that were already in place¹ to deal with this phenomenon, we banned new members from voting in parliamentary selections for the first year of their membership. This, in the case of the recent list elections in London disenfranchised about 25% of the membership from voting. So much for our much vaunted one member, one vote!

Creating new rules instead of enforcing ones that are already there is at best sticking plaster and at worst throwing the baby out with the bath water. Just like disenfranchising a quarter of our membership, banning family members from working for MPs would punish those who work twice as hard as a non family members and serve their community as much as their spouse does.

¹That is, the requirement on local parties to ‘agree’ to new members – which they can only do if membership services send them the details of their new members in time.

What sort of people do we want to be our candidates?

"We could avoid so many of these problems if we made it clear to all people who join us that they are expected to prove themselves by years of hard work on the ground before being put into positions of responsibility".

So says Martin Land in response to Cllr Faraz Bhatti’s defection to the Tories in the North West.

I don’t want to get into a particular discussion here about diversity, representation or even defections here but instead question Martin’s assertion that anybody wanting to be an elected representative should have to undertake ‘years of hard work’, (by which I presume he means focus delivery), before being allowed into a ‘position of responsibility’; it doesn’t seem clear whether positions of responsibility refers only to being a candidate / elected representative or does it also include being an organiser or party treasurer or the person who organises the local fund raising events?

But it got me thinking; is that what we really require of our candidates? That they are the winners of a humungous ‘I’ve delivered the most focuses ever’ contest? It seems to me that we required candidates even in 2nd tier seats (or whatever they’re now called) that they give up everything else in their life, sacrifice their career, their family and time with their friends in order to just get selected for the seat. In the last election one of the Tory websites estimated that it costs a candidate an average of £40,000 to stand for election in a non-target seat.

I am worried that we are making being a candidate such a frightful experience, such a hair shirt, that we are putting off all sorts of really good people. Whether they are male, female, white or minority ethnic, people who are talented will inevitably tend to have more than one choice of how they make some difference to their community and their country.

Over the last couple of years I’ve seen a number of people, who would make excellent candidates and even better MPs, take the decision that the sacrifices that we Lib Dems require of them is not worth the eventual reward. We expect our candidates to be working at full tilt from one year to the next perhaps over 2 or 3 electoral cycles – that's 12 years out of someone’s life! Or instead they make a decision to go for list elections rather than first past the post, as those place less focus on the individual and are therefore easier to sustain over a period of time.

Many, many of us enter politics to change the world and talented people will be offered many routes to changing the world; being a Lib Dem elected representative will only be one of them. It will not necessarily be a lack of determination or character that makes them turn away from us and choose to do something else with their life. It might be a view that they can be more effective somewhere else. And then they are gone, and we’ve lost them.

If you make being a candidate a function of time served, or focuses delivered or postcode then what you will get it is focus deliver who has been around the longest, in that ward and who has nothing better to do. There is a difference between being the best person for the job and being the one who wants it most (although it is wonderful when those two things coincide, which happily they often do).

I do think it is important to be committed to a cause and time served of course indicates a commitment. But we need to get our heads around that we don’t have hordes of highly qualified people queuing up to be candidates; the only place that happens is the target constituencies and wards. We need to really think about what are the most vital qualities of our candidates. Experience too is important, but experience can be gained elsewhere and transferred; in fact I think that is a good and very healthy thing.

I also think we need to do some work around the role of agent and organiser; Mark Valladares has already made a plea for creating more than one ‘career path’ in the party; in fact in fact, if you have a super duper, experienced and organised agent then to have those qualities repeated in your candidate is unnecessary; I think this is very much the model used for by elections. Or perhaps (tongue placed firmly in cheek) we could think of people running on double tickets of Agent & Candidates!!! (!!??!!) There's much to be said for making 'stars' out of agents as well as our candidates.

Good, talented, hardworking, committed people will have a number of choices; it is unlikely that the Lib Dems will be the only people that have spotted their talent. Their bosses, other voluntary organisations, their friends and families will all be offering them opportunities to make the contribution to society that they seek. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that they need us more than we need them.