Mark Valladares takes the "Open Up" campaign to task

There is an excellent post by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy today where he rips into the "Open Up" campaign which is trying to force all parties at have open primaries. Mark nails the campaign for the distraction from real reform it is:

I'm afraid that this looks like a plot to remove smaller political parties, neuter the Liberal Democrats, and return British politics to the two-party red/blue politics of the 1950's. No, if they are serious about opening up the political process, why not campaign for multi-member open list constituencies elected using STV? That way, anyone can run, political parties are forced to offer up a range of candidates in order to appeal to a diverse community, and you abolish the safe seat.

Instead, this is not so much a missed opportunity as an attempt to hitch a ride on the bandwagon of public revulsion at politics, politicians and all of their works.

Spot on Mark.

How open was the Conservative Bracknell primary?

I have come across an interesting video on Youtube this morning. It is from local Bracknell constituent Dan Haycocks who is campaigning to try and get current MP Andrew MacKay to pay back the money he seems to have overclaimed or instead step down if he is not willing to do so. He has created a campaigning website called Goodbye MacKay.

The video shows Dan and other members of his campaign trying to gain access to the Bracknell open primary/caucus that was held here on Saturday. Despite currently living in the constituency and having a valid ticket for the event, Dan was physically prevented from entering the event by a bouncer. No real reason was given for this.

Two of Dans fellow campaigners entered the event and tried to distribute "Goodbye MacKay" literature and were ejected.

What Dan wanted to do was to ask each of the primary candidates whether they thought Andrew MacKay should pay back what he owes or instead resign. It seems to me that given the reason for the primary taking place at all in the first place is because of the actions of Mr MacKay that this is a valid question to have been asked. The fact that the Conservative association actively prevented Dan and his fellow campaigners from being present at the meeting and asking this question really makes me wonder just how open the process is and how seriously the Conservatives locally here are taking the expenses issue.

Dan also speaks to a number of Conservatives and local association members on the video outside the event to get their views. I was surprised to hear one of them towards the end of the video who seems to be saying that because Mr MacKay was such a good MP he should not have to pay anything back. I wonder what David Cameron thinks about this attitude!

I have embedded Dan's video below:

Full review of Bracknell Conservative Open Primary

Dazmando has done a sterling job on Bracknell Blog of recording what happened during yesterday's Bracknell Conservative Open Primary/Caucus event that was eventually won by Dr Phillip Lee.

He has detailed how each of the seven candidates performed as well as provided details of their leaflets and his thoughts about how the event went as a whole with the things that worked well and some problems with the process too.

It is well worth a read.

Has Bracknell sent a message about local candidates in primaries?

The result has just been announced of the Conservative Bracknell open primary/caucus and the winner is Dr Phillip Lee. I want to extend my congratulations to Dr Lee for his victory in this hard fought contest.

The contest has been very closely tracked in the blogosphere not least because of the presence in the shortlist of the leading Conservative blogger Iain Dale who came third. My commiserations to him.

What I wanted to focus on in this post though is what message Bracknell may be trying to send to the Conservatives and politicians in general about these primaries and the candidates they were offered. I should state that despite being a constituent I was not at the meeting (I am abroad at the moment) so I do not know how each of the candidates performed. However I was concerned right from the outset that there were no local candidates on the shortlist.

My friend Darren did some interviews with some of the candidates on Bracknell Blog and from Phillip's interview, as well as other information I have seen it struck me that although he did not live in the constituency, he was the "most local" of the candidates having been a GP just 10 miles outside the seat boundary and actually having some on-call patients within the constituency. Given all of this, my hypothesis was that if the "localness" of a candidate was a crucial element in the minds of the voters then Phillip would win. That has now come to pass.

Of course I do not know if this was the crucial element in his election, there may well be other reasons. I would however be surprised if it was not at least a factor and given how close the contest seems to have been (it went to 5 rounds) it could easily have been what made the difference. So, perhaps there is a lesson here for all parties but especially the Conservatives who have been most keen on this form of caucus/primary type election.

I think it will be worth looking at how other contests of this nature go in the future to see if a pattern of local (or "more local") candidates being selected is borne out. If it is then it will be food for thought for the party bosses making the decisions about how to select candidates. After all, if it becomes increasingly difficult to parachute favoured candidates into safe seats in the future I suspect they will not like that. At all...


PS: I should just make clear my view that I think contests of this nature would be unnecessary if our electoral system was changed to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies. That would give the entire electorate the chance to rank multiple candidates from different parties as part of the election itself.

Conservatives deny Bracknell local choice in "Open" primary

In the last few months, many Conservative supporters and bloggers have been singing the praises of open primaries. They see this as a way of trying to ensure that seats, even potentially safe seats are at the very least openly contested at the candidates stage which should improve democracy.

I am quite dubious about the benefits of open primaries, not least because they sound like reform without in my view delivering real reform. A change to multi-member seats using a transferable vote system would be a better reform in my view and allow the electorate to make their choice from a wider field as part of the actual election.

Despite my misgivings, I was however intrigued to learn that in my own constituency of Bracknell, the Conservatives have decided to hold an open primary* to select their candidate to replace the current MP Andrew MacKay. For those who aren't aware, Mr MacKay was forced to announce he was standing down at the next election back in May as a result of the MP expenses scandal.

I have already done a post on Bracknell Blog about my surprise that local Tory council leader Paul Bettison has not been shortlisted for the primary. I am even more surprised to learn now that the shortlist has been released that there are actually no local candidates at all on the shortlist of 7.

This seems bizarre to me. Are the Tories saying that there are no local candidates of a high enough calibre to be on the list? Mr Bettison clearly wanted to be on the shortlist (see this article from the "Get Bracknell" website just a few weeks back) and I suspect others from the local party would have liked to have been too. I understand that in any process like this the candidates have to be whittled down but I am curious to know what sort of process they use for this that has led to no local representation on the shortlist.

The recent Totnes open primary which was held up by the Conservatives as a great example actually had three local candidates in the final vote.

Why is Bracknell being denied a similar choice?

* To be strictly correct, what the Conservatives are holding in Bracknell is actually an open caucus as Douglas Carswell MP has already pointed out, although everyone else seems to be referring to it as a primary.