Calibre Test

Nursing my Lemsip, I have had the time to think about a number of yesterday's comments.

Yes, of course, seats are only "safe" if the other parties and their media spear-carriers decide to treat them as such, for the parties' and the media's own convenience. For as long as I can remember, I have been hearing people in this area complain that the Tories and the Lib Dems do not put up remotely credible candidates or do any campaigning work worth speaking of, and that they might pick up support if they made more of an effort. "What has the Labour Party ever done for us?" may be a particularly loud refrain after the last 13 years, but there is nothing new about it. However, even now, when Labour's appeal here is based on ancient history, and when the later half of the intervening generation has been lived under a less than spectacularly successful Labour Government, voting for anyone else still depends on having anyone else worth voting for.

But the truth is that, while there must be any number of people in the country at large capable of being MPs, the three parties cannot find from among their members anything like the collective two thousand or so that they would need in order to field a serious candidate in every constituency, giving every voter a meaningful choice. It is this, rather than the electoral system, that needs to be addressed. It demands, not a new way of voting, but new people for whom to vote, selected by new means that involve the whole electorate.

Even in their own safe seats, a number of the candidates being put up by the existing parties this year constitute an insult to the electorate: Stephen Twigg, Liz Truss, Luciana Berger, Joanne Cash, Matt Hancock, and many more besides. Mercifully, at least three of those stand no chance of election if the sitting MP is returned in Twigg's case, if a good enough local Independent can be found in Truss's case, if Ricky Tomlinson either wins outright or takes enough votes to cost New Labour the seat in Berger's case. But note that there is no threat whatever to Twigg or Berger from the Tories or the Lib Dems, nor to Truss (or Cash, or Hancock) from Labour or the Lib Dems. Just how bad must their candidates be in those constituencies? Alas, we all know only too well just how bad they must be.

Here in North West Durham, the Tory activists on the ground cannot name their quite longstanding candidate. The Lib Dem is a well-known local councillor, but he is probably 70 and is doing it out of duty rather than because he really wants the job. A similarly aged local Independent may yet give it another go, but he makes no pretence at expecting to win; he wishes to raise certain local issues. He may or may not link up with UKIP. The BNP has promised to stand against me, but not otherwise. And five eye-poppingly bad shortlisted applicants were defeated for the Labour nomination, all but two of whom, and possibly all but one, will be imposed on safe seats between now and the Election. Change the party labels, if that, and much the same tale can be told the length and breadth of the land.

For that matter, what about the successful Labour applicant? She was the best of the field, but the fact remains that, however long she may have held a Labour Party membership card, she only became politically active in her fifties, when she stood for Lanchester Parish Council to make up the numbers on the same day as her husband, also a political newcomer, was standing both for that and, unsuccessfully, for Derwentside District Council, since abolished. All of three years later, with a patchy attendance record at the Parish Council and without ever having held any party office, she is the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.

It had, you see, to be a local candidate, or this "safe" seat would be lost. The Chairman of the Constituency Labour Party said so on The World At One. The former Deputy Leader of the District Council said so on The Politics Show. The County Council Chief Whip said so on Look North. If that is "safe", then what the hell is "unsafe"? Only two local applicants could be found to shortlist, and one of those was 23. So Pat Glass it was, and Pat Glass it is. But she was not even the first Lanchester Parish Councillor to whom it had been offered. And, as always with potential MPs in this age of interchangeable and interdependent parties, no one seems to have bothered to ask about her political opinions. Since she refuses to attend any hustings, we shall never know.

Am I better than that? Yes, I am.