The Tory experiment with an election primary at Totnes earlier this month was hailed as a breakthrough in democracy. It was nothing of the kind. It was never the case that any Tories in this traditional Tory seat could put themselves forward to enter the lists and thence to be voted on by their peers in an open contest. In fact 100 people applied; then the Tory party machine whittled this down to 3 ‘safe’ candidates between whom the good burghers of Totnes could then choose whom they wish. Thus 97% of the aspirants were eliminated before they were allowed anywhere near the electors. It is an innovation worth looking at, rather than dismissing out of hand, but the present Totnes version is deeply flawed.

The claimed benefits of primaries are that it takes the power of selection out of the hands of a small zealous clique of anoraks and opens it up to the wider public which will begin to galvanise public interest in politics once again. It’s true that political parties – particularly but not only the Labour Party – have been atomised down to a few remaining core elements and that meetings are often inquorate. But that is because of the centralising of power within the party leadership and because of the machinations of the central party machine, the very people led by the Blairite David Miliband who are now so loudly eulogising the merits of primaries. What they don’t say is that this acclaimed opening up to democracy (a hugely abused word) is relatively tiny, at least in the Totnes form, while the democratic deficit throughout the rest of the political process remains huge, largely as a result of their own control-freak tendencies.
The disadvantages of the Totnes-type laboratory exercise are legion. Quite apart from the fact that the pool of aspirants had first to be slimmed down until it met the requirements of the party bigwigs, the result demonstrated all too well the likely result of any such exercise of this kind. It was won by a local GP, widely reported to be a well-respected and popular local figure, but who candidly admitted that her knowledge of and familiarity with politics was almost non-existent. But that’s the point. Primaries of this kind will simply produce a Parliament of the bland.
Another quirk reported at Totnes was that non-Tories took advantage by perversely voting for the person regarded as the weakest Tory candidate for their own party to beat. This could of course be remedied by confining the vote solely to registered supporters of the relevant party, as in US primaries. But even that can be circumvented by people signing up to another party in order to confound the vote.
But the real drawbacks to Totnes-type democracy are three. First, it would take Britain even further, and possibly decisively, down the road to ideological blandness, to name and face recognition rather than any deep passionate commitment to political conviction. Yes, political parties which have been dessicated almost out of existence need to be revitalised and greatly enlarged by giving them much more power to influence both local and national decision-making at reinvigorated regional and annual party conferences, but that is where the flame of political commitment still burns, and it should be nurtured, not smothered.
Second, if open-ended primaries were the route to political power, it is a certainty that they would rapidly become dominated by big money. From starting off as a delicate democratic shoot, it will be quickly overrun by the whole jamboree of advertising, mass mail-outs and multiple cold-calling. UK politics would be pushed irrevocably down the road towards the US experience where plutocracy and politics mutually feed off and fatten each other.
Thirdly, the instinct to greater democratic involvement, if it could be taken seriously (which from its Totnes authors it can’t), would require dealing in a much more profound way with the current enormous democratic deficit. At present the political accountability of both the Executive to Parliament and MPs to their local parties and their constituents is almost non-existent. Fundamental parliamentary reform is the real requirement, not electing MPs through sham primaries and then cattle-prodding them through the voting lobbies to satisfy the Whips.

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