Blythly Does It

Why has Michael Martin, of all people, convened the specific Speaker’s Conference that he has done? The terms of its remit are such that it can only ever produce a majority report setting out devices for favouring the privately schooled daughter of an Asian doctor over the state schooled son of a white bus driver and a white shop assistant.

But minority reports are another matter. Even one member can write a minority report. And one member is Ronnie Campbell, who up to the moment of becoming MP for Blyth Valley was signing on because his pit had been closed. He should draft a report saying in no uncertain terms that neither sex, nor ethnicity, nor disability (on which the record of British professional politics is relatively good) is the real issue, and instead setting out proposals to address that which is.

The trade unions should identify ten “dream” policies and ten “nightmare” policies, with ten per cent funding to any candidate (regardless of party, if any) for subscription to each of the former, minus ten per cent for failure to rule out each of the latter. The unions and others should fund the development and delivery of a qualification for “non-graduates” with life and work experience who aspire to become MPs.

In the course of each Parliament, each party should submit to a binding ballot of the whole constituency electorate its shortlist of two for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and should submit to a binding ballot of the whole national electorate its shortlist of two for Leader. The parachuting in of upper-middle-class apparatchiki, even if they happen to be either or both of female and non-white, would then be impossible.

There should be submitted to such a national ballot the ten policies proposed by the most of each party’s branches (including those of affiliated organisations, where applicable), with each voter entitled to vote for up to two, and with the top seven guaranteed inclusion in the subsequent General Election manifesto.

There should be a ballot line system, such that voters would be able to indicate that they were voting for a given candidate specifically as endorsed by a smaller party or other campaigning organisation (for example, Left parties, trade unions, co-operatives, peace and disarmament movements, civil liberties groups, and of course very many others), with the number of votes by ballot line recorded and published separately.

And all political funding should be by resolution of membership organisations, with parliamentarians’ staff appointed from lists maintained by such organisations in return for payment of at least half of those staff’s salaries, thereby requiring politicians to have links to wider civil society, not least including trade unions and co-operatives.

That would be a start, anyway.