One of the (many) curent complaints against Parliament is that it doesn’t reflect the diversity and pluralism of the British people.   This is true.   There are far too may lawyers, P.R. specialists, and former devotees of student politics, and not enough women, black or Asian members, or working class representatives.   The bad news is that these trends are set to get worse in the next Parliament as the leadership of both the main parties ruthlessly fixes their own parliamentary party selections to ensure their own factional and personally favoured candidates get chosen and that any serious rivals are squeexed out even before any vote takes place.

This last weekend saw a classic example of this, just the latest of a long long line of skulduggery.   There were 7 potential candidates applying for the relatively safe Labour seat of Stoke Central, when very sadly the sitting MP, Mark Fisher, was forced to stand down because of ill health.   There were two women and two Asian candidates in addition to the potential front-runners, Tristram Hunt from the Blairite Right, Byron Taylor as the trade unionist secretary of TULO, and Mark Seddon from the Centre-Left.

Prior to this selection Tristram Hunt had contested the Leyton and Wanstead seat as the candidate of the Right, supported strongly by Mandelson, but in the event came fourth and lost out to John Cryer from  the Centre-Left.  Mandelson was reputed to be furious, and determined that at the next selection his favoured candidate would as far as possible be guaranteed to win.

Tristram Hunt had already been given some weeks ahead the membership lists of constituency members entitled to vote – a big advantage in enabling him to canvass members before any other candidate had a chance.   But not content with this, steps were also taken to ensure that Mark Seddon didn’t even make it on to the long list despite a track record of service to the Party second to none, including the editorship of Tribune, and Byron Taylor wsas excluded from the short list despite holding a senior strategic position within the Labour Movement.

The manipulation of these selections by the machinations of the party machines and the predilections of party leaders, without any regard for local democratic choice, represent one of the seamiest aspects of current politics which bring the parties – both parties – into utter disrepute, cynicism and disdain among the general electorate.   If the leaders really cared about democracy and constitutional transparency, as they all profess to do, this kind of ugly malpractice would be stopped immediately.

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