Michael Crick has claimed that the Conservative Party’s headquarters are attempting to “stitch up” safe seats in favour of so-called “blue prince” candidates aligned with Rishi Sunak. Crick believes, while Labour has focused more on making sure candidates have local links, the Tories have preferred to build up a “gang of people who've had high powered jobs, in government or as special advisers and so on, a lot of ex-MPs”, who apply for multiple seats, often against each other, until they find somewhere that wants to select them.
When it comes to Labour selections, Crick has raised concerns that the leadership has had its hands all over them. Depending how you see it, either it has been blocking those it doesn’t like or simply ensuring a high quality of candidate. He has highlighted several big names on local councils failing to make shortlists. The tight controlling of candidate lists by the central party has raised some concerns over due diligence not being “equally applied”. The conspiracy theorist would claim that you might get a heads up to remove something less than ideal or be told something mildly contentious in your past will be overlooked. But If you’re not the favoured candidate then any scrap of controversy can be used to block you from even making it onto the shortlist. I’m not really into conspiracy theories and although I have no doubt the leadership has probably gone far too far in poking its nose into some selections, it’s probably been done with the best of intentions. We've very clearly turned the page on the Corbyn years, and no one who took part in wrecking the party between 2015 and 2019 is getting anywhere near a parliamentary seat. A Labour Government is going to have a really tough job whatever the majority and we are going to need a united, disciplined PLP.
Another barbed comment coming from Michael Crick relates to the outcome of the twinned selections in Scotland where two constituencies selected their candidates jointly, everyone voting for a man and a woman. The candidate coming top in each category was selected for a seat and the one with the most votes got to choose which. He points out that this has nearly always been the man, even suggesting male candidates were encouraging members not use their second vote for a woman to make sure they came out on top. Again there may be some truth in this, but these constituencies are all within Labour’s grasp now. Whatever its weaknesses, twinning had ensured more women candidates and the winning man hasn’t always picked the ‘best’ seat. Former Better Together supremo, Blair McDougall, came top but opted for East Renfrewshire where he has stood before, rather than the better option on paper of Paisley and Renfrewshire South.
Of course, leadership interference in selections is nothing new. Claims of centrally organised “stitch-ups” when Jeremy Corbyn was Leader dominated selection battles leading up to 2017 and 2019.
Before the voter volatility of recent years, getting your name on the ballot paper in the first place, as opposed to what happened on polling day, was arguably the most important step in the process to become an MP. These were the days of safe seats for life.
Some went beyond obsessing about selection stitch-ups to looking at ways to increase participation, seeing the two things as linked. Can anyone remember when arguments about the merits of holding ‘primaries’ were all the rage. As politicians looked across the pond, they were seduced by the American tradition of open and closed primaries - open where anyone could turn up and influence the selection and closed where there was a register of party sympathisers or supporters. A move to primaries was championed by David Miliband on Labour’s side and by David Cameron on the Tory’s. It was all a bit naive really. Open primaries allowed opponents and enemies to gate crash the selections and shape the outcomes. While closed primaries signed up a rag tag of hostile people on the fringes and factions beyond to scew the results in favour of people who would never have got the support of long standing members. Ed Miliband brought in registered members and supporters to widen the franchise for Leadership elections and we ended up with Jeremy Corbyn.
Scottish Labour has its own story to tell about candidate selection. After the 2015 rout of Labour by the SNP we went through a period when selections weren’t so much a battlefield as a desert, with us searching for anyone willing to stand. That is over. We are back in contention with hard fought selection contests.
My memories of selections go way back to the 70s 80s and 90s - fiercely contested and often factional battles. I remember my own selection for Ayr in 1990. Branch and Union support was seen as crucial and the candidates went to umpteen meetings seeking endorsements. At the final selection meeting, we were ushered in, one by one, to the crowded Labour Rooms to make our pitch and answer questions. One of my fellow contenders came back saying it had gone OK except for a question from the CLP chair. ‘What was his question?’ I asked. ‘Well it was hard to understand unless you were fluent in Serbo-Croat’. A local councillor rose to ask his question- ‘Do we need to sit through everyone? We all know who we are voting for.’
By 1997 we had all women shortlists. Some men protested that this would stop members picking the best candidate (‘man’ in other words) for the job. As if the ‘best candidate’ had always emerged from smoked filled union rooms and branch cliques in the past. What actually happened was some very capable women were able to come forward and be taken seriously. In Ayr we volunteered for an AW shortlist and ended up with five to pick from. The ‘best candidate’ won (I’m biased - it was my wife) but among the others, we had two women who went on to be MSPs and government ministers, a BAME Regional Councillor and an excellent local trade unionist. The idea that all women shortlists would deny members choice was blown out the water.
Back to the present. As I said at the start of this article, my own constituency party selected its Labour candidate this week. There was no gathering in damp Labour Party rooms; no one standing at the back heckling; no dodgy PA system; no slips of voting papers getting folded and put into the baskets as they came round. It was all done on line by Zoom with an e-vote at the end. It just wasn’t the same somehow. It was hard to feel you were at the centre of the cut and thrust of electoral politics when you were sitting in front of an iPad in your living room with your carpet slippers on.