The Wardman Wire

Needing to replace the ridiculous Anthony Steen, the Conservatives are choosing their candidate for his Totnes constituency by an open primary: all voters in Totnes have (in theory) been sent a voting pack with information about the would-be candidates and explaining how to vote by post. Michael Crick did an excellent report on the contest (beginning at 16.25 mins) on Tuesday’s Newsnight, which is well worth watching. The process has had problems: Michael Crick suggested turnout may be very low, with some voters not having received voting packs and the whole process having been rushed; the selection may also be hit by a postal strike, the local newspaper suggests. Totnes Tories, Central Office and whoever insisted on this may end up looking very foolish.

Lawrie Cate/CreativeCommons

But they ought to be congratulated. Any innovation involves risk, and this could turn out badly. But an innovation it is, and I applaud it. Whatever happens, it was right to try it, and it will be right to do it again elsewhere. Choosing candidates this way will be good for voters, as it will give them more control over who represents them than the choice of evils a general election often presents; in a safe seat, an open primary may be the best chance you get to change who your MP is in the end. It will be good for politics generally, as it will reduce the power of party activists and insiders, and put pressure on streams of opinion that flourish within parties but which are unpopular outside. And it will be good for the parties themselves as it will open them out to the public – to their opponents, even – and help keep them safe from internal groupthink.

I have a few suggestions, though, for making open primaries work better. First, it’s important that wealth should not give anyone an advantage in this sort of contest (or any other candidate selection, incidentally), and it’s important that the costs of the process be kept as low as possible. Michael Crick estimates the cost of the Totnes procedure to be around £40,000, possibly much more – which strikes me as excessive. I think a selection like this could be much cheaper. For a start, it seems to me that postal ballots are far too expensive: I know e-voting isn’t easy or problem-free, either, but there must be potential for government to fund one central website, perhaps to be run by the Electoral Reform Society, on which every local primary could be conducted and at which people could register to vote. Once established I reckon that site could deliver voting more securely and more cheaply than arranging postal ballots for every primary individually.

Second, I admire Dr. Sarah Wollaston for spending absolutely nothing on her campaign: there’s no reason she should. I think candidates should be prevented from spending anything beyond personal travel expenses for themselves: there should be no leaflets and no posters in support of any candidate. Campaigning should be allowed online through blogs (on free platforms only), podcasts and vodcasts. I suppose there’s a risk rich candidates could outspend their rivals this way, by having fancy cameras and mikes – but I think ways round that problem can be found. There’d be local media – where local newspapers exist and can be persuaded to take any interest.

Mainly, though, the primary contest should be conducted by walkabouts and public meetings: those wanting to be selected should get among people on the streets, in shopping centres and everywhere they can be found. Local authorities should provide rooms free for parties wanting to hold public meetings, and I suspect quite a few churches and pubs could be persuaded to make rooms available, too. Those meetings should be run by party volunteers, and the main local expenditure by the party should be in promoting them. The revival of the public political meeting would be a serious contribution to reinvigorating politics, and keeping MPs’ feet on the ground. Open primaries could contribute to this revival.

A final point. I have no problem with Conservatives, say, helping choose who should stand as a Labour candidate, or vice versa; they will after all choose whether or not ultimately to elect that person and I think open participation in selection will make all candidates stronger. Few people are so sad and cynically partisan that they’ll deliberately vote for a bad opposing candidate. Anyway, parties should not be so foolish as to shortlist anyone they think is unelectable. But one thing that might well bring open primaries into disrepute is if political parties actually instruct their members to vote in particular way to manipulate their opponents’ primaries. That’s why it’s sickening that Adrian Sanders, the LibDem MP for Torbay, is so gleeful (19.40 mins into the Newsnight report) about his attempts to muck up the Tories’ first effort: doing this sort of thing should be made a disciplinary offence in all parties. Sanders ought to be ashamed of himself: if this is his attitude to democracy, then he’s not fit for his job.

I hope Totnes succeeds for the Tories, and confounds the cynics and Sanders – it deserves to.