Douglas Carswell's Blog

Should we use primaries to choose party leaders?

The Guardian has a fascinating breakdown of the Labour leadership results by each constituency.

Looking at it, what is so immediately striking is how few actual voters were involved in the process - not least in those marginal seats the party needs to win power.  Would it not be wiser for  Labour – and indeed every mainstream party – to use direct open primary elections to choose their leaders? 

There will be some who'd dismiss the idea without thinking about it – “Too American!”. “It’d be presidential”. “We don’t have a separation of powers, Carswell”. And all the other predictable, lazy blah blah.

But the more thoughtful might like to consider what actually happened in, say, my own Clacton constituency, to take just one example. Out of some 75,000 potential voters at the next General Election, a mere 102 were able to decide who should be the alternative Prime Minister.  

It is the same story in almost all of the marginal Labour-Tory seats that Labour needs to win in order to form a government.     

Imagine if instead every single voter in the constituency had somehow been able to vote from a shortlist drawn up by the party? Perhaps such party primaries could be “piggy-backed” on to the local elections we regularly hold, so as to make such an exercise in democracy logistically possible?

Political parties should be free to draw up their own rules on these things, but would it not be a rocket boost for any alternative Prime Minister’s campaign if he or she began with a popular mandate from those who actually decide the General Election?   

If all main stream parties democratised the way they select candidates and leaders, perhaps politicians would do a better job of representing the people.

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