The problems with primaries

By Sarah Hayward

I’ve followed the (rather one-sided) debate about the use of primaries with increasing interest over the last few weeks. I couldn’t see it gathering currency to start with as it seemed such a flawed idea that I thought people would see through it. But credit to Progress for their campaigning prowess.

I’m not going to rehearse the issues about cost or logistics, partly because they’ve been done, and partly because if an idea has geniune merit and benefits we should find a way to make it happen.

Firstly, I want to attempt some clarity at what we’re talking about – the term ‘primary’ is currently being used as a catch all from a caucus of the sharpest elbows to a fully open, democratic process. In the US primaries are the process by which each state selects their prefered candidate for the US presidential nomination. They allow non-members to vote for a party nomination. But the process is not uniform – different people are eligible to participate in each state. What is uniform is that any individual voter can only vote in one primary; I can’t choose a Democrat nominee and then the least worst Republican. Interestingly ,primaries are not the process for selecting constituency (or state) representatives – although some state parties have dabbled.

Neither the Tories nor Progress have said what system they favour and how similar it would be to any of the US approaches. The Tories are currently trying different types from fully open primaries where any registered elector is eligible to vote, to ‘Town Hall’ caucuses, which – in the case of the Bedford Mayoral selection – led to accusations of one candidate packing the room. In Bracknell they seemed not to be able to confirm how many eligible electors were present at the meeting, which raises serious questions about the validity of the vote itself. Additionally, I’ve not seen much, if anything, about what problem they think primaries will solve or what benefit the process offers to our democratic system.

If the aim is to engage greater numbers of people in our democratic process, I don’t see any evidence that it will happen. Totnes had a turn out of 25% – lower than a lot of local council elections, and the Tories claim that around 300 people attended the Bracknell caucus (not a primary), a tiny fraction of the total eligble electorate.

In the US voter turnout in general elections is much lower on average than it is in the UK. This is not a process that, even while it has the novelty factor, has swathes of people beating a path to the ballet box. Alternatives for greater engagement would be a recall for MPs or greater use of local or national referenda for key decisions, greater devolution to communities of some spending or other powers.

The point for the electorate of primaries is also questionable – particularly under the current electoral system. Even in 1997 only 180 seats (allowing for boundary changes) changed their party of representation. In 2005 the comparable number was 56. In fact, since 1945 29% of seats and since 1970 50% of seats have been continuously represented by the same party. If you can stick a red or blue (or yellow) rosette on a donkey and it still romps home what is the point in engaging with the process to select the donkey – let alone those of the other parties?

The simplest argument against primaries, though, is their closeness to the current system – it offers no discernable change or benefit. A primary requires that voters turn up once every four to five years, tick a box and if said voter is in the right minority, in the right part of the country, the person that they voted for might end up in the commons. If getting voters to turn up to tick a box every four to five years solves all the ills of our democracy then, well, hallelujah, let’s all go to the pub!

But we know that’s not the case – and it’s not worth undermining party membership for. We need root and branch reform of our electoral process; primaries wouldn’t even scratch the surface.

Hard problems don’t have easy solutions like inserting an additional ballet (howsoever it’s constituted) into the process. They require an analysis of the problems we’re trying to solve and the benefits we’re trying to give and a debate about the issues and solutions. They require the Labour Government to finish the House of Lords reform it promised. They should also have required the MPs that didn’t fiddle their expenses to tell their peers they were wrong. They require a system that trusts the electorate, but in turn allows the electorate to delegate decision making via the ballot box if they want to. There’s a lot we could achieve, on a cross party basis even, before the general election.