"Open Up" campaign is a distraction from real reform
There is a new campaign called "Open Up" which was launched a couple of days ago and seeks to get all parties to run open primaries in order to select their parliamentary candidates.
James Graham has already done an excellent job of pointing out how expensive all of this would be on his blog so I won't go through that here except to say that I completely agree with him.
James also makes another point which I want to elaborate on:
I worry because the anti-politics rhetoric that is informing this campaign (and others) is leading people up the garden path. Instead of embracing the opportunity to shout loudly for pluralist politics and for moving beyond politics meaning little more than voting every few years, people are grasping at ideas that don’t even amount to half measures.
This sums up my main concern about this campaign. There are huge problems with our politics in this country. The expenses scandal is but one small facet of a multifarious group of issues that we will ultimately need to tackle. People feel disconnected from politics and politicians. This happens for various reasons one of the most important being that politicians all try and crowd onto the narrow centre-ground in order to attract the very small number of floating voters in marginal constituencies. Anything that could be perceived as jeapordising the votes of these few hundred thousand people is beyond the pale. We see this happen time and again at every election and it constricts the flow of ideas and debate to the point where people struggle to tell the difference between the parties much of the time.
Aside from all the logistical problems with open primaries, they will not solve this basic problem. The candidates for the seats will all still come from the same parties and the safe seats and marginals will all still be there. James is right to describe this as not even a half measure. I'm not even sure it is a quarter-measure.
What is does do however is allow people like David Cameron to look as if they are grasping the reform nettle and doing something about it. The truth is that Cameron wants to do as little as he thinks he can get away with whilst putting maximum spin on the paltry measures he has taken. It is clear that he will never implement any sort of radical political reform. In a way I can't really blame him. If he just sits tight and waits for a few more months, he will likely be Prime Minister with a decent (perhaps very large) majority and the chance to be Prime Minister for 5 years, possibly even a decade or more. He will not want to do anything that might introduce a more pluralist element into our politics and heaven forfend actually have to win the argument on something before being able to legislate on it.
Just because Mr Cameron will not want to put his considerable prize at risk however does not mean that the rest of us should fall into line. Anyone backing the "Open Up" campaign should be aware that if it succeeds it will make arguing for meaningful political and electoral reform that much more difficult. There is a big risk that many will feel that reform has been "done" and we could find our arguments are heard even less.
I feel very strongly that the current political climate is the best opportunity we will have in this political generation for electoral reformers to get our voices heard. We should not allow this to be derailed by measures that are at best tinkering at the margins.
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5 comments:
Although I generally agree with the line of James Graham and yourself, I do take issue with this particular point:
"The candidates for the seats will all still come from the same parties and the safe seats and marginals will all still be there. James is right to describe this as not even a half measure. I'm not even sure it is a quarter-measure."
...I think that if open primaries were introduced properly (and what the Conservatives have been trying, even in Totnes, has been a far cry from that) it would have a very real transformative effect. That's not to say the effect would be a good one.
In the US, the reasons Primaries make politics so different to our own is just as much to do with the lack of party organisation as it is to do with the "open" aspect of voting. The "open" stands for primaries being open for selection as much as it does for their being open to vote in. As there is no centralized, registered concept of party membership, open primaries do arguably make the parties far more broadchurch and accomodating in the US.
However, I feel the implications in terms of social opportunity, campaign process and entrenchment of two-party politics far outweigh any potential improvements primaries might make to the electoral process. The fact that campaigns have to be incredibly well funded in the US to even stand a chance makes me very reluctant to even consider going down such a route in this country.
David
An "open primary" in effect means smashing up free campaigning. It means that no group can get together with a common aim to push that aim through elections because is is in effect banned from doing so. It is banned from doing so because it is forced to accept anyone who wants to be as a member in its most fundamental job which is selecting candidates, including anyone who opposes that aim. One simply cannot be a group with a particular aim if one has no way of stopping people opposed from that aim from taking the group over. Freedom of assembly must also include freedom to exclude from assembly, otherwise it is no freedom.
The call for "open primaries" is profoundly anti-democratic. Those running this campaign, assuming they can't really see why it's profoundly anti-democratic, are fools for proposing it when what they want could equally and better be obtained by STV.
But anyway, maybe we who oppose them could simply turn up at some meeting of theirs, say "we want an open primary on who leads your campaign", throw them out and put someone who opposes open primaries in their place.
Matthew, is there evidence to show that STV will give benefits?
Matthew, is there evidence to show that STV will give benefits?
It removes the problem that one is forced to vote for a candidate who is not the one who one most favours for fear of "splitting the vote". It means that minorities spread out across an area can get someone who represents them.
I think these are quite big benefits.
In the US, the reasons Primaries make politics so different to our own is just as much to do with the lack of party organisation as it is to do with the "open" aspect of voting
But perhaps we need to consider how the latter feeds into the former.
Why should anyone bother to contribute their time and money to developing a political party if anyone of any views can come along and say "I want to be your party's candidate, and I'm going to get a whole load of people who don't support what you want but do support what I want to vote for me in the primary and make me your party's candidate"?
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