We Could Call It Democracy

In the course of each Parliament, the two highest-scoring Leadership candidates produced by a party's internal procedures should be put to an independent, binding ballot of every registered elector in the United Kingdom.

Likewise, each party at constituency level should submit its shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates to such a ballot of every registered elector in that constituency. The deposit system should be replaced with a requirement to be nominated by, say, fifteen per cent of the electorate, which would still allow for up to six candidates.

And each branch of each party (including branches of affiliated organisations in Labour's case) should suggest up to three policies. Members at branch level would vote for one, with the three receiving the highest numbers of votes from each branch going forward. The ten highest scorers nationwide would then go out to a ballot of the whole electorate, with each voter entitled to vote for up to two. The top five would then be included in the subsequent General Election Manifesto, with all the pressure that particularly popular policies would thus put on the other parties.

Furthermore, each MP who takes his or her seat should be given a tax-free allowance of a fixed sum of money, publicly transferable to a registered political party, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation would then appear on the ballot paper after the party designation next to that MP's name. Party spending would be limited to twice the number of MPs multiplied by the amount of that allowance.

We could call it democracy.