Politicians still don't get it?
People despise Westminster because many MPs don't answer to them, but only to other people in SW1. Indeed, in four of the past five general elections less than a tenth of seats changed hands. Even in the great 1997 landslide, seven out of ten seats proved safe.
It's precisely because so many MPs answer inward to Westminster, rather than outward to the voter, that they've become less and less effective at holding government to account. For small-state conservatives - and for Britain - this has been a disaster; more regulation, stronger quangos, higher taxes, bigger and more intrusive government.
Change must means making politicians answer more directly to voters. Direct democracy, you might call it.
But again and again those in SW1 propose changes that would mean the precise opposite. Take the latest proposal - by the Speakers' review - to force democratic political parties to publish lists of who they reject as candidates.
This suggestion would mean that political parties would answer inward to SW1 for how they run their own processes. Literally. Democratic political parties would be legally required to report who they didn't select to run for office. Worse, it could begin to extend formal state regulation over internal candidate selection within parties.
This half-witted idea does nothing to ensure our politics has the choice and competition we need to drive up standards at Westminster, nor ensure a wider representation of opinion in Parliament.
If Speaker Bercow and co really wish to broaden representation in the Commons, they should try to encourage the democratisation of the selection process. That means people power, not statutory duties. They should be looking for ways to make parties answer outward to voters, not to yet more people like them. Let local people decide what constitutes representative - not some quota quango in London.
In the one seat where the Tories have tried it, proper open primaries have a 100% success rate in selecting women candidates. My hunch is that after the Gosport open primary results are in, that record could well remain intact.
Even where the Tories are only running imperfect open caucus meetings to choose candidates, residents are turning up in their droves to back candidates with a broad range of views and backgrounds.
As I proposed in this Ten Minute Rule Bill, it's perfectly possible to enable political parties that wish to, to hold full open primaries in any seat they wish. And all at zero extra cost to the taxpayer by "piggy backing" local primaries on to pre-existing ballots.
And why just hold them in marginal seats? If open primaries were held in so-called safe seats, we'd soon move to a situation where all MPs in the Commons had to face properly competitive election contests in order to remain in the House. You know, like in a proper democracy ....
That's an idea that’d make our politicians truly accountable. It wasn't recommended by the great and the good on the Speakers' panel, unsurprisingly. Is it because they don't get it, or because they choose not to?
Posted on 26 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell