I'll Try Again

Any chance of some responses to the text of what follows?

Polly Toynbee is exercised by Gordon Brown's latest offerings. I see that her Proportional Representation monomania has been dragged into this. At least its equally evil twin, State funding of political parties, has yet to be. State funding must entail some degree of State control, which can often be necessary and beneficial. But, for political parties, it would be lethal. Only parties that met the organisational and political requirements of some committee of Notting Hill and Primrose Hill diners would be able to afford to contest elections. No wonder Polly Toynbee and the BBC are so keen on the idea.

And the same is true of PR. For one thing, I simply cannot see how it would work in rural areas, either for Parliament or, even more so, for local government. Councillors, in particular, would do absolutely nothing except drive around their vast, unwieldy wards, arriving late for everything yet always leaving early in order to arrive late for the next engagement.

Instead, in the course of every Parliament without fail, the two candidates with the most nominations from a party's branches for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (at constituency level) or for Leader (at national level), including branches of affiliated organisations where Labour or any of its successors is concerned, should be subjected to a binding ballot of every registered voter in the constituency or the country, as the case may be.

The sort of people favoured by central machines would struggle to get on the ballot at all, and certainly wouldn't be selected. And the same is true of each party's several lunatic fringes (including the single and indivisible one currently running both Labour and the Tories, and about to take over the Lib Dems as well). But they could always then put up under their own steam and see how far they got.

And either this, or PR, or indeed any change whatever to where MPs come from, would kill off the Lib Dems practically overnight. The above system would have historically industrial areas choose totally unreconstructed Social Democrats who were who were indistinguishable from the local right-wing Labour Establishment (and might well have been in it at one time), while agricultural areas would choose totally unreconstructed Liberals who were not only indistinguishable from, but multiply related to, the local "Faith, Flag, Family and Farming" Tory Establishment.

Finally, there should also be public participation in policy formulation. In the course of each Parliament, the 10 policies most popular with each party's branches should be put out to a ballot of the whole electorate, with each of us entitled to vote for up to two, and with the top seven guaranteed inclusion in the next General Election manifesto.

Put all of this together, and it would answer any perceived need for PR, thus safeguarding the vital constituency link into the bargain.