Hazel Blears gave a speech to the Hansard Society last Wednesday in which she lambasted political bloggers for breeding contempt and cynicism about the political process. These remarks attracted a lot of comment. However, far more interesting were her remarks about the increasing gulf between politicians and the rest of us. She said, “There is a trend towards politics being seen as a career move rather than call to public service … Increasingly we have seen a ‘transmission belt’ from university activist, MPs’ researcher, think-tank staffer, special adviser, to Member of Parliament and ultimately to the front bench.”
It is strange that Blears doesn’t connect these two threads. She doesn’t recognise the possibility that the cause of our cynicism about politicians’ motives and ambitions is the sense that the country is being run by the strange careerist species she mentions whose loyalties are to self and to party rather than to us. She complains that politics is a career move rather than a call to public service. Well, let’s credit the population at large with the acumen to have grasped that.
The problem with our political culture is not bloggers, it’s accountability. The political geeks have taken over Parliament because we haven’t been given a say in the matter. In our system the parties choose their candidates for seats and only then the electorate chooses between what the parties offer. Local party members choose their candidates, in many cases for a seat which is as good as won already. A third of seats are won with more than fifty per cent of votes cast. The tiny number of Labour Party members in a safe Labour seat get to choose their MP. They know there is no chance of their opponents getting in, as even if Labour voters don’t like their candidate, they’ll still turn out to block the Tories. So all Tories, Lib Dems and Greens are effectively disenfranchised in safe Labour seats, and the average Labour voter is stuck with whoever the local party select.
The solution to this problem has been presented from both sides of the house, and it is time for it to be debated. In a pamphlet written earlier this year for Policy Exchange, Frank Field proposes we adopt a system of open primaries. In this system all registered voters in the constituency would be able to vote for who was to contest the election for any party standing. This would instantly enfranchise the frustrated socialist in the Shires, or the conservative living on a council estate in Liverpool. Rather than having to convince those few, strange individuals among us who join political parties that they were a good candidate, the prospective parliamentary candidate would have to try to appeal to all voters in the area to be nominated. If Blears wants to see fewer political geeks in Parliament, I can assure her she will get her wishes under this system. They don’t appeal to ordinary people, and given a choice, ordinary people will turf them out.
Earlier this month Douglas Carswell and Dan Hannan published a book with the same policy recommendation. They make the further point that MPs in safe seats would instantly lose their security. Any New Labour politician representing an old Labour constituency would face losing his seat if he followed a government policy that was objectionable to the voters in his area. Power would be devolved from the political insiders, and the party whips to the people of the country, of whom politicians are the servants.
Under such a system, Sir Nicholas Winterton MP and his wife Ann Winterton MP, who were judged in February to have broken Commons’ rules on expenses, would have to face all their constituents at the next election, and not merely a few Tory party members in their constituencies. In July they both voted to keep the John Lewis list of allowances for MPs, despite public disquiet over the privileges. They were among the twenty-one Tory MPs who voted against their party leader to preserve their Parliamentary swag. In anticipation of an open primary race to come, is there any chance they would have been so dismissive of public opinion? Instead of a few angry calls from party members on blogs for the local party to deselect them, the Wintertons would be compelled to face the judgement of all their constituents, regardless of the wishes of the Tory party hierarchy, or the local party members.
The first objection to these plans is that people would try to wreck the opposing party’s candidacy by voting for a loon. But if you were in a Lab-Con marginal would you risk voting for a nutter as Tory candidate if you knew there was a real chance he’d get elected? Most objections to these proposals are merely fear of what ordinary people would do if they had power.
Blears’ suggestion that political parties should select people with experience of ‘real’ life as they do women and ethnic minority candidates entirely misses the point. It is the loss of power to change things that is at the root of our cynicism. A bus driver, selected and trained by a party hierarchy, dressed in a well-cut suit and a nice shiny rosette and presented to the people with the claim ‘Look, one of you people!’ isn’t going to overcome our disengagement with politics. Politics isn’t the X-factor, and the government isn’t Simon Cowell. X-factor winners only sing the songs Cowell wants to hear. It’s time to do away with the safe seats, which are barely more democratic than the old rotten boroughs.
If we did, there’d be a lot of MPs who voted through Lisbon feeling mighty nervous right now.
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