POLITICS: Multiple choice for candidates
Time for a modernisation agenda
I have heard calls for the Conservative Party to be modernised, I support the idea of a modernised Conservative Party. Let me propose some very practical and radical ideas for others to consider, criticise and improve on — or ignore.
It had never previously occurred to me that Party organisation might ever be a particularly interesting political topic for a right-wing, free market, Eurosceptic Tory like me. However, as a personal victim of the bad feeling and internal battles that the Scottish Tory Party used to riven with, it’s got me thinking (it’s cool and modern to be a victim, you see).
‘Is there a argument’, I thought, ‘that the very fashion in which the Scottish Tory Party organises itself actually exacerbates the personal feuding?’ My answer was ‘Yes’ with several good reasons to back this up.
Anyway, enough of Scotland for now — let’s fast forward to the modernisation of just the English part of the Tory Party. Do please accept that my Scottish heritage has had me thinking on this whole business longer than some, and I’ll come back to the Scottish lessons in due course. What are some of the noises I have heard recently that relate to modernisation and Conservative thinking? Well, one thing that I have heard is that we want a Party that looks more like the country that we would quite like to govern. Good, I have got that. Another thing is that we want more women and members of ethnic minorities involved at all levels. OK, got that too. Actually, I think that these things are supposed to amount to the same thing.
What about our principles? How do they come into it? Well, one thing I have been hearing about is that we want to devolve decision making as it affects people’s lives. We believe in personal freedom and devolution of power to local people. Trust the people, trust local communities to make decisions, don’t hold all the power over people’s lives in Whitehall. I think that this is a theme that is coming through when we talk about local government. Actually it’s the same in health and education isn’t it? Trust the local people at the sharp end with the decisions that matter for them. We believe that with freedom comes responsibility. Give people control over their lives in health, education, local government, and public services, and they will use their powers sensibly. The bureaucrat in London does not necessarily know best. It’s a familiar, dare I say it, old-fashioned message.
What about our new inclusiveness and tolerance? At a fringe meeting at Conference I attended there was someone from C-Change or something like that who said that as a Party we need to learn to trust people with the freedoms that they have and the decisions that they take. Which is good, unexceptional thinking: nothing to frighten the horses there. So how do we bring all of these strands together into some practical ideas for our Party?
Well, just before we do that let’s briefly consider if there are some problems that we want to address first. There’s is one obvious problem that I can think of. And that’s that there seems to be a few divisions, splits, personal feuds and a bit of bad feeling here and there. Of course, this is just human nature, isn’t it? Sure, these sorts of things will always exist as long as human beings organise themselves into political parties. However, there might be things that can be done to avoid exacerbating these problems in the way that we organise ourselves. It’s a bit children and scissors — if you have to let them near them, adequate supervision is invariably sensible.
Actually, there is another factor that I almost forgot to take into account before announcing my modernisation agenda. We should consider some political tactics and the way that we will look in comparison with the real enemy — the Labour Party. They’re, as we all agree and disapprove of, control freaks whose leaders quite successfully and cynically massage internal elections. Is this politically and electorally relevant? If we choose to believe what the public tell us about themselves, then we should believe that they are cynical about politicians and their lies and methods. I think Ken Livingstone was helped in his election by the fact that the public did not approve of the control machine that prevented him from becoming the Labour candidate. Something similar happened in Wales. Whatever the significance of it all I have the impression that we would do well to compare favourably with Labour’s notorious control and spin machine.
Now I propose that we reform ourselves into the most open, democratic, locally based, meritocratic and simple in structure political party in Britain. We should turn ourselves into a popular people’s party with a modernisation slogan that is ‘trust the people’ — and we should mean it.
One reason why I support democracy within a Party is that I have seen the consequences in terms of bitterness and long running personal feuds that are the inevitable result of undemocratic and unfair decisions. Some of these decisions destroy personal political ambitions, some are less important. These decisions have to be taken and will always be hard on the loser but the advantage of simple and straightforward democracy is that no matter how much people might not like the decisions they do, ultimately, accept them because it’s hard to argue with democratically achieved decisions. They are also seen as fair and are therefore less likely to result in decades long personal hatreds.
Democracy is also good for our hopes of attracting a wider and broader range of member, activist and candidate. Why should people join something like a political party if they are not given the opportunity to have full and equal rights in decision making?
I support a more open Party because we want more people and a broader range of people in the Party, right? Some people say that our ‘experienced’ membership are too old fashioned. I don’t really agree with this exactly but if we want more, and more diverse, people in the party then we have got to be open. In this context ‘open’ and ‘appealing’ are perfectly synonymous.
We should have a more locally based Party because it is entirely consistent with our philosophy and our teachings and sermons on public policy. We believe in local autonomy and decision making for others, so it’s more than a little peculiar if we don’t take advantage of it ourselves.. People are more likely to get involved as members, activists and candidates if they will have the power and responsibility to take the decisions that affect them locally.
The idea of a more meritocratic Party is another one I support simply because I do, so there. We should have a simple in structure Party because that’s consistent with my ideas on Party democracy — I can’t be bothered to explain why. Just put it this way, if you can’t see why a simple structure is good for democracy then in my humble, sincere and entirely open, honest, democratic and locally based meritocratic opinion — you’re a bit dim.
So, what are my practical proposals for turning us into the most open, democratic, locally based (grassroots empowered — nice little Americanism), meritocratic and simple in structure political party in the known universe? The complicated structure of the Party must be completely torn down and all internal elections must be based on one member one vote. Some work on the membership database needs to be done to the extent that I don’t get sent two ballot papers every time that there is an internal election (I only use one each time). Any member should be allowed to stand for any internal Party post (alright, after three months of continuous membership service perhaps). How can we attract ‘new, younger professional members of the public from all walks of life to reflect the way that the country looks’ unless we thrust freedom, power and responsibility onto those members? We get the membership we deserve, and if all we want are AGM stooges, that’s all we’re going to get.
Naturally the Party Board should all be subject to regular elections — what on earth argument is there for their not being? Any member should be allowed to stand given a sensible number of nominations and possibly a modest deposit.
Local constituency autonomy must be maintained. Above that level any federations and similar arrangements between associations including regional structures for the sake of sensible co-operation should be subject to the consent of those autonomous associations. Clearly a structure above association level is required for European, London Assembly and London Mayoral elections.
The Party’s Parliamentary Candidates List should be opened up (other people might choose to employ phrases like, be made ‘modern’ or ‘accessible’, but I’m trying to stave off vomiting myself) so that the role of the Party centrally is turned upside down. Instead of having a role of determining inclusion on the list their role should be concerned with exclusion from the list. The starting point should be that members of the Party are assumed to be competent to stand rather than vice-versa — that might sound mad at first but wait for my proposals concerning my ideas to do with advancement based on merit and democracy. Exclusion from the list must be based on clearly stated criteria that limit the power of the central organisation in making subjective personal judgements. The power of the central organisation over the lives, hopes and ambitions of ordinary party members has a limited role in my vision of a modernised Party (to say the least). The sort of criteria that the Party can use to exclude people from the candidates list could be things like membership of a rival political party, holding an insanity certificate, being in prison, being younger than twenty one or being Britain’s monarch or a close relative. You get the idea: it’s not a long list. If someone is excluded from the candidates’ list then the Party must explicitly state why that is and all candidates must have an automatic and immediate right of appeal to the democratically elected Party Board. It really would save us an awful lot of bother in the long run.
The Candidates Association must be open to all candidates and the elections of office bearers should be based on, one member of the candidates list, one vote. This is neither a complicated nor an unreasonable position. Indeed, the entire point of the Candidates Association should be that it represent the interests and views of candidates in their collective dealings with the Party. Anything else and it risks being seen as the catspaw of CCO.
Central Party organisation’s role, as it relates to the Candidates List, should be one of training and development which should include assessments, tests, exams and competitions. Candidates could quite fairly be ranked and marked according to campaigning activity, real elections results achieved, political knowledge, general knowledge, debating skills, media skills, personal presentation and even fellow candidates’ subjective views on their social skills. This, after all, is precisely the sort of thing that happens, in comparable circumstances, in the ‘real world’ (a place much urged on us, but often by people whom one wonders quite how much they’ve seen of it). I can see no particular reason why the results of how the potential candidates get on in their varied assessments cannot be made available to constituencies when they select a candidate. However, the results of the assessments made on the political skills of potential candidates should have no part to play in determining whether the young and old hopefuls are allowed to apply to entirely autonomous constituency associations. It’s them that should do the picking, not Smith Sq.
One signal advantage of having a large and open candidates list is that the Party would be able to quite easily organise large scale campaigning days all over the country and quite regularly. The more that I think on my training, development and debating competitions ideas for candidates the more fun and fulfilling the idea of being a potential Tory candidate becomes. Fees for candidate training, development and assessment should be quite reasonable if subject to negotiation between the Party and the independent, elected Candidates Association.
How, you might reasonably ask, does all this relate to the Scottish Tories? Well, in Scotland there is now proportional representation for elections to the Holyrood Parliament [sic]. This may well be coming for England as well if John Prescott is successful in setting up a whole lot of regional assemblies. Thus how we organise ourselves internally is extremely important when PR is part of our lives (regardless of our views on PR). At the first Scottish elections all of the Tories elected to the Scottish Parliament were elected by PR and none on first past the post (until we got a by-election later).
The way that the Scottish Tory hopefuls were ranked was determined by a kind of roving committee based on local association Chairmen and central party power brokers (most of whom were about as elected as Saddam Hussein (or, thinking about it again — less elected than Saddam Hussein). The result was bad feeling and a sense of unfairness. Radical revolutionaries in the Scottish Tory Party (whom I approve of) have subsequently revolted and imposed democracy on the Party. Regardless of the disappointments that the votes for the rankings on the list will cause this time around it is less easy to see how feelings of unfairness will prevail and blossom into decade-deep poison.
So let’s modernise in England too! Let us become an open, democratic, free, meritocratic, locally based and locally autonomous people’s party with Trust the People! as our reforming, modernising slogan. If it’s good enough for the voters, it’s good enough for us, and if we won’t do it to ourselves, why on earth will the public believe that we should be allowed to do it instead to them?
Douglas Taylor was the Tory candidate for the Western Isles at the 2001 general election
Douglas Taylor, November 4, 2002 12:04 PM