Look at Iowa and turn green with envy. In the course of each Parliament without fail, our own political parties should put out a shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates (at constituency level) and two potential Leaders (at national level) to a binding ballot of the whole electorate. And our ghastly Political Class could then just be made to clear off.
Wouldn't work, though, would it? The political class would stand, and win (only two candidates subjected to a ballot of the electorate in any given constituency? easy for the party to parachute its shortlist in, then!), just as they do, in the end, in the USA.
ReplyDeleteIt would work if they had to be the two candidates to have received the most nominations at branch level.
ReplyDeleteThe second name "pipped at the post" in dodgy circumstances by an imported apparatchik is almost always a strong local candidate with close ties to wider civil society. Such a person would easily beat some Cameron/Miliband type in a public ballot.