Introducing American-style primaries into British politics would be a great way of revitalising the Labour party, says David Lammy
Anyone who says the Labour Party has run out of energy should have been at the recent Progress meeting on primaries. This was a debate from the old school: serious, hard-hitting but respectful. It is a debate that is critical to the future of democracy – about a forward-looking vision of participation against the politics of yesterday.
At its core, any discussion about constitutional or electoral reform must be about involving more people in the democratic process – about lowering the bar to political participation.
Great things come from mass participation. The labour movement is just that: born of a diversity of traditions and people – trade unionists, socialists, Fabians, liberals, members of co-operatives – brought together to achieve collective ideals.
Anyone who calls themselves a democrat must always be striving for a better version of democracy. Our movement has always fought for this: to enfranchise workers and women, to make voting secret, to lower the voting age and to change how and where people could vote. Now, in this moment of renewal, it is incumbent on us to renew our democratic machinery once again.
The great challenges facing us in the 21st century – climate change, the economic crisis, rebuilding the public realm – are collective ones. In each case, solutions will be found by bringing people together in common endeavour. And, in each case, action will need to be backed with real political legitimacy. I believe that primaries are one way to achieve this.
As the Unite union’s recent campaigns on agency workers showed, the great majority of my constituents – people who work in fast food or agency workers cleaning London’s offices – are not members of trade unions. They do not feel they have any involvement in party politics. Yet they share the values of the labour movement.
It is right that those of us who support primaries should answer the challenges posed by colleagues. They are right to say that primaries must not be a distraction from deeper reform – which is why I am a supporter of much wider constitutional renewal than just primaries. I also back the alternative vote-plus voting system to elect MPs, an elected House of Lords, a strengthened House of Commons, a written constitution, parliamentary debates triggered by petition (especially those that harness online tools) and lowering the voting age to 16. Primaries should be an important part of reforming our politics – but they are not a panacea.
Perhaps the critics’ most powerful charge is about money. Anyone who really wants to restore integrity to British politics knows that we cannot let it fall into the hands of tax exiles and plutocrats. But a distinctly British system of primaries would actually give us the chance to clean up the way we fund candidate selections.
Will Straw’s useful research on the current crop of Labour parliamentary candidates showed that, while many only spent £40 on their selection, some spent up to £4,000. Currently, there are no limits on selection spending. But primaries could bring in strict rules for expenditure, set by the Electoral Commission. This would answer the charge that: “Only millionaires could become MPs”. In fact, the playing field would become more level than it is at present.
We should also look at online voting, in order to keep costs down. Or how about a system used by Pasok, the socialist party in Greece, where people voting in their primary pay a small fee to do so?
We must ask: what price democracy? We know the answer does not lie in American-style billion-dollar elections. But the current working budget of the Electoral Commission – £22.5 million – must surely be increased if it means improving the quality of our democracy.
Colleagues are right to raise concerns about the value of Labour membership. I firmly believe that members must have a greater say in our policy formation and be the guardians of our conscience. They should also be able to shortlist candidates.
But a candidate chosen by a whole section of the community, registered as Labour supporters, would have a serious head start in building a campaigning movement compared to one chosen by only 40 members.
This debate cannot be portrayed as a fight between the right and left of our party. Primaries are gathering support across the spectrum of Labour politics, including former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has backed my call for primaries to select the party’s next mayoral candidate in the capital, to David and Ed Miliband.
In a world of more fluid political identification, where mass membership structures are being replaced by looser, more spontaneous forms of association, we must seize the moment to make radical changes to the internal workings of the Labour Party. We owe it to our party – and we owe it to democracy, too.
David Lammy is minister for higher education and intellectual property and Labour MP for Tottenham
