Tuesday 14 September 2010

Primary Considerations

Seven states and the District of Columbia are holding primaries today, while we watch the ongoing choice of a putative Prime Minister by a very small proportion of the electorate from among five candidates up to four of whom, certainly including the media-designated front runner, would not be MPs at all if, instead of those for safe seats being centrally appointed by their own school and university mates with the Pavlovian applause of no more than two dozen starstruck septuagenarians in the constituency, each party submitted to a binding ballot of the whole constituency electorate its locally determined internal shortlist of two for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. That should happen in the course of each Parliament, as a matter of routine.

As should each party's submission to a binding ballot of the whole national electorate of its nationally determined internal shortlist of two for Leader. And as should each party's submission to such a ballot of the 10 policies proposed by the most of its branches, with each voter entitled to vote for up to two, and with the top seven guaranteed inclusion in the subsequent General Election manifesto. We also need 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, with the number of votes by ballot line recorded and published separately.

Among other things, of course.

4 comments:

  1. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

    Your first sentence is a tangled hotchpotch of ideas. Better would be:

    Seven states and the District of Columbia are holding primaries today; our ongoing choice of a putative prime minister is left to a very small portion of the electorate, who themselves can only pick from five candidates. Four of those five (especially the media-designated front runner) are only MPS because they were centrally appointed to safe seats by their own school and university mates (with the Pavlovian applause of no more than two dozen starstruck septuagenarians in the constituency). It would be better if each party submitted to a binding ballot of the whole constituency electorate its locally determined internal shortlist of two for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.

    By separating out the various ideas contained in your original sentence, you make it easier for the reader to follow your logic.

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  2. This is not popbitch, nor is it aimed at the same audience, i.e., you.

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  3. Waking shows how Blair won. The votes of people like that. Unfortunately, we cannot have a minimum educational requirement for suffrage, or at least for office, because the likes of waking have stolen the university places that would have gone to the children of the poor before all the grammar schools were closed by the woman who went on to become the most anti-intellectual PM until Blair.

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  4. David Miliband is a case in point. Only got into Oxford by means of an ILEA special access scheme intended for the poor but effectively controlled by his father. I can testify from personal encounters that he is as thick as two short planks.

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