Though Cowards Flinch

There seems to be a lot of chat about the idea of open primaries, in the aftermath of the Conservative experiment in Totnes. Sixteen thousand voters, not Tory Party members, wrote in to the local Conservative Association to pick the candidate which the Tories will be standing in Totnes at the next election. Naturally there is the usual gushing crap in the media about it being the opening of a new era for British politics, an important precedent, blah blah blah, but I personally don’t see what everyone is getting excited about. Needless to say, I’m dead set against Open Primaries.

First of all, as Luke Akehurst says, no representation without taxation. Why should I pay Labour Party dues and be an activist with the Labour Party if every joe blogs on the street can potentially choose who I have to support, as an activist? The basic answer is, I shouldn’t have to. I’m involved in politics because I believe in what I do, and if other people who are as committed as I am choose someone to stand for election that I disagree with, I’ll support it. Simply voting in a primary election is not a fair indicator of commitment – but then, where I am concerned, neither is merely paying Party dues.

Secondly, too many people are getting carried away with this notion of Open Primaries as a way to engage people. I suspect if we cut away the bullshit that political activists are really slavering at the thought that a primary system might give them a moral advantage over their opponents. As is admitted at ConservativeHome, that will disappear when other parties get in on the act. There are other reasons which may cause people to support Open Primaries that do not measure up to the flowery pronouncements on a revitalized democracy that everyone’s making.

From the perspective of the Labour Party heirarchy, there are an enormous number of constituencies dwindling sharply in number. It would be an attractive prospect, no doubt, to counterbalance those failing numbers with a state-funded process whereby every constituent gets a mailshot per Labour hopeful (because Labour and the Lib-Dems certainly couldn’t afford the £40,000 expense themselves). This would reduce the role of the local constituency party to ensuring that there were no catfights. Hopefuls could be expected to recruit their own supporters, making irrelevant the decline in the numbers of those people active beyond elections.

What this could make very relevant are special interest groups. With hopefuls casting around for an activist base, the same way they tend to do in the United States, the churches and other established groups with local arms or large memberships might become very important. To secure endorsements and activists, hopefuls seeking a primary nomination may make deals and promises to groups that have nothing to do with Labour and which operate far outside the simple equality of individuals joining a political party to have their individual say in something they believe in.

In a system based on the accumulation of capital, well-established groups such as the organised religions, the trades unions, chambers of commerce and so on will have an advantage over the man on the street-cum-party activist. It is hardly a triumph of democracy to escape the supremacy of the NEC only to find ourselves (as individual activists) virtually powerless against the accumulated resources of groups which aren’t accountable even in the vague sense that the NEC and Party leadership is. Well, nominally anyway.

This isn’t even my major objection. By appearing to escape the decline of mass politics, the focus being transferred from the number of Party members to the number of people registered as affiliates of a certain Party, we excuse ourselves the responsibility of building a mass democratic organisation. Whether you’re a Communist or a Social Democrat, that organisation – formulated as a response to the critiques of capitalism which opposed privilege in all guises – was the vehicle which would carry through change in the interests of its members: the working class.

Thirdly, it should be telling that quite a number of key figures and groups  have backed the call for Open Primaries. Tessa Jowell and Progress to name two. The Open Primary system clearly represents no challenge to the current Party establishment. Indeed, with the farce of Partnership in Power and the National Policy Forum, it seems just one more way to dilute whatever influence the average member of the Labour Party has over the Party that he or she joined and campaigns for.

Complaints aside, I don’t think the open primary system will ever be implemented. Whenever the current crisis of confidence has died down, things will slowly return to their previous condition – unless we can inspire a massive popular intervention that would render the debate on open primaries irrelevant in any case. What irks me the most about the issue is simply that so many politicians are talking like root and branch reform is coming soon to a theatre near us. It isn’t; even with open primaries, democracy is still just a means to pick the lesser of two bastards.

That is what needs to change, and it is precisely what will not change whilst we let the commentariat prat around the edges of what needs to be done: sorting out unemployment, poverty and the devolution of real power to the representative structures of local government. Not DC’s reduction of people to passive consumers or preposterous policies on housing, still tied up in red tape despite an increasing number of repossessions and homelessness, and not the Hazel Blears version either. Byensuring that people have a roof over their heads and are gainfully employed, and giving them a chance to actually have an effect on their local environs, national democracy will take care of itself.