The American example is not the answer to disengagement with politics, say Max Freedman and Dan Whittle
At this time of low participation and trust in politics, the focus on coming up with new ideas aimed at involving wider sections of the community in local Labour Party activity is an important one.
But the experience in the United States shows there are problems with primaries which could change things for the worse for Labour, transferring power from the party to individual candidates and from party members to the media.
Primaries favour rich candidates, open the door to entryism, and encourage party splits and negative campaigning between prospective candidates to be made public.
The current method of selecting parliamentary candidates is a financial burden to the party. Primaries would take this to a different level.
In terms of selection processes, there is no doubt that the US primaries were a principal attraction last year. However, they also served to make internal party splits and abuse public: negative campaigning between candidates which was then used against them in the presidential election. Remember when Hillary Clinton called one of Barack Obama’s speeches “demeaning”, “elitist” and “out of touch”?
No constituency primary in Britain would shine the same sort of spotlight on prospective as a presidential primary, so US congressional primaries, like the one in New York’s 26th district last year, might offer a better comparison.
Two strong Democrat candidates, Iraq war veteran Jon Powers and millionaire Jack Davis, laid into one another with negative adverts, with the self-financed Davis hitting hardest. The result was that they cancelled each other out. They effectively destroyed each other, leaving a weaker candidate, environmental attorney Alice Kryzan to come through middle. She eventually lost a race that was once deemed to be the Democrats’ for the taking.
As this primary drama was played out in public, it had a negative impact on the Democrats and their selected candidate’s eventual chances of success.
Such an impact can be very important. The Democrats For Romney campaign encouraged supporters to cross over to support Republican Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary last year with the aim of helping Romney win it and thus keep him attacking John McCain in the race for the White House.
The Republican primary in Maryland’s First district last year included a powerful independent campaign by the hard-right Club For Growth group, which resulted in the electorate dumping long-time moderate Wayne Gilchrest for hardliner Andy Harris. Gilchrest subsequently endorsed the Democrat, Frank Kratovil, who sneaked in to win a hitherto staunch Republican district.
Are these really the sort of contests we want to see replicated in Britain? Bringing primaries to this country would open the door to outside organisations wanting to organise to deselect MPs and replace them with their own candidates. Labour’s modernisation project of the 1980s, which focused on establishing the integrity of the selectorate to counteract Militant entryism, would be reversed.
Further, history has many examples of candidates being selected who the Democrats couldn’t tolerate. A convincing proportion voted for Richard Nixon in 1972 because they had no confidence in the “radical” George McGovern.
Following Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, Gerald Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter for the Democrats. Carter had comparatively little experience and few ties to the national Democratic Party. He won at a time when his position as an outsider, remote from Washington, was regarded as an asset. Perhaps there are comparisons to be made with Sarah Wollaston’s triumph in the first Tory primary in Totnes. However, Carter’s presidency is widely considered to be a failure which did his party long-term damage.
What happens with Wollaston remains to be seen, but there can be a real shift in the character of a party caused by its choice of candidate. That is why parties should be concerned about who their nominees are, even if it is just a single constituency and they are reasonably sure of the result of the next general election, as in Totnes.
As Totnes showed, primaries can select candidates who have little experience in politics or connection with a party. In this way, primaries transfer power from political parties to individual candidates. Wollaston’s selection is not down the local or national Conservative Party, but her appeal to the
23.9 per cent of the electorate who took part in the primary.
Political parties will never be the darlings of public opinion, but they are essential in all democracies for developing policies and programmes and implementing these ideas in government. If their ability to do this is reduced, they are damaged and democracy is damaged with them.
Perhaps most importantly, primaries undermine the future of membership-based and driven political parties. Why should anyone be motivated to give up their time to join a political organisation if they have no greater influence than a passer by?
In the US, power is taken out of the
hands of party members and given to the
media. The incentive to participate as
active Democrats or Republicans is seen as negligible.
In the British Labour Party, a candidate is selected after having met as many local members as possible face-to-face before being grilled at a hustings. Under a primary system a tiny percentage of selectors meet the candidates or attend the hustings, so they are viewed mainly through the prism of the media.
Pundits can predict the results even before a single vote is cast. It is still possible to regain momentum if you’re a prospective candidate predicted to lose, but it tends to cost a lot of money in advertising. So, rich and celebrity candidates are more likely to win. Even if a cap is put on campaign expenditure during a selection contest, no cap can be put on building general awareness through public relations before a contest begins. And the cost isn’t just to candidates. The apparatus needed to conduct primaries and monitor candidates’ spending does not come cheap.
In the US, there is a debate about whether party structures will be dispensed with altogether. We have not yet reached this point in Britain and why speed up the process?
If vestigial power is removed from constituency Labour parties, membership levels are likely to wither still further. In turn, this would exacerbate the problems of low participation and lead to calls for the further downgrading of CLPs.
Instead, why not open up Labour selection meetings to the public and media without giving them the final say? They could observe the process and even ask the candidates questions. Why not shorten the time between a member joining and having the right to vote in a selection? And let’s look for more ways to engage people locally.
The underlying fear in all the discussions on party renewal is that the process is somehow going to stop Labour from beating the Conservatives. It’s a red herring: The only selection process that matters, where every voter gets to have a choice, is the general election where we need candidates who enjoy the full backing of their local party.
Max Freedman is Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Kingston & Surbiton and Dan Whittle is a member of the Young Fabian executive
