I listened to bits of Woman's Hour on Thursday morning as I flitted around the house dusting and hoovering. I didn't get to listen properly but one item was a discussion between two female Labour MPs, Lucy Powell and Dawn Butler and Jenni Murray. The two MPs are both relatively new to their jobs although Ms Butler was forced to regroup after boundary changes meant she lost her seat. Powell was originally in the shadow cabinet and resigned with all the others, Butler is seen to be an ally of Corbyn and has recently been kicked out of her post as chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party after being defeated by Jess Phillips. I confess I didn't know very much about either woman before I heard the programme, but that is not surprising as I don't know very much about most MPs and there are 650 of the buggers.
The discussion centred, this being Woman's Hour, about how to achieve a gender balance in the shadow cabinet. This concentrated on whether the shadow cabinet should be elected or appointed. To me the irony of this is that, as Dawn Butler pointed out in Jeremy Corbyn's original shadow, there were more women than men. Until the resignations. 'Ah, but', said Ms Murray, 'not in the big jobs'.
Of the two MPs. Ms Butler favoured appointments and Ms Powell favoured elections. Ms Powell said, when asked if she would serve in a new shadow cabinet, 'If I want to rejoin the shadow cabinet via shadow cabinet elections, I would be bound by collective responsibility and I would be required to, I would have a duty on me and a responsibility to support Jeremy 100% on the airwaves and in public and in private and that would obviously be a compromise for me too.' Why would this be any different in an appointed shadow cabinet? She then went on to say, 'The way that people were treated in the past needs to be rectified.'
What am I missing here? In what way were people (and I assume she means women, though I may be wrong) treated in the past? I really want to know. Ms Murray slipped in the statement that, 'There seem to be so many women who are reluctant to serve under Jeremy Corbyn.' A statement moreover which went unchallenged by both MPs. This it seems to me is a big question. And by the way all the quotes I have given were taken verbatim, by me from the BBC iPlayer version of the programme. I seriously want to know what it is about the man whom I have decided to support as leader of the Labour Party and who's policies I fully endorse, I seriously want to know what he has done to deserve this.
Is there a conspiracy of silence? Are his sins so great that even the likes of John McTernan daren't even speak them out loud? My guess is probably not. Innuendo is often enough. The old 'there's no smoke without fire' approach to character assassination.
This led me on to thinking about the thorny problem of how we, and by that I mean the Labour Party, chose our candidates. As a party of the left (allegedly) and one that espouses such principles as equality and fights against discrimination what is the best way for us to chose both fairly and sensibly? We need, I feel, a proper representation of the population as a whole if we are to be true to our guiding principles. Polling organisations are supposed to be good at this, and even to have some skill, although in my experience YouGov, whose surveys I sometimes complete, didn't choose me I volunteered to them, so how that fits in with their idea of a carefully chosen sample I am not sure.
Gender imbalance, it seem to me, is only one aspect of this. We have had all women shortlists, the elections for the shadow cabinet used to have quotas. Have they worked? I don't know.
For me the overriding aim must be to get the best candidate possible. We have a candidate in every constituency except in Northern Ireland. Not all these candidates will win. Many have been MPs for years and unless there is sufficient pressure from their CLP then in my opinion they should be allowed to remain as a candidate. I know many favour mandatory re-selection, but there are many angry voters out there at the moment and any decision needs to be taken when tempers have cooled and by means of sensible discussion. If we rush into changes the likelihood is that we will make the wrong ones. Never forget the Law of Unintended Consequences. It will bite you on the bum, as sure as egg is eggs.
However if the present government have their gerrymandering way and the changes or something like them, proposed by the Boundary Commission are introduced then we will probably have quite a lot of selection to do in constituencies which have changed size and shape. This might satisfy the de-selectors, at least for a while, but it makes it even more imperative that we find a way to ensure we have the best set of candidates possible.
Clearly the most glaring question is one of gender. Women are still woefully under represented in Parliament. They make up slightly more than half of the population but only 29% of MPs are not men. But there are also other questions to consider such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability. Strenuous efforts must be made to address these considerations, but I think the Labour Party needs to sit down and completely rethink the way in which it selects its parliamentary candidates. It maybe that any new system of selection will closely resemble the one at present in place. On the other hand it may differ substantially. I do not have a crystal ball, and if I did it wouldn't show me anything because crystal balls just show you a distorted image of whatever is behind them.
Jeremy Corbyn wants to increase the level of democracy in the party and selection of candidates is essentially the job of the CLPs. With the increase in membership these CLPs are now much bigger and more engaged than they have been for a very long time. Members are going to have much more say in who represents them at General Elections and, if they win, in Parliament. This is why we need to discuss the rules surrounding selection. All women shortlist have been used and have resulted in the election of more women to Westminster, but have not been universally popular, not least because they prevented otherwise worthy male candidates from standing. There is also the thorny problem of which constituencies are chosen for AWSs.
One of the criticisms which has been levelled at the Labour Party is the fact that it has lost touch with its core vote, and this is a situation which cannot be helped by candidates being parachuted in because the powers that be want a certain person to be in Parliament and there is no safe seat available where they currently live.
As a suggestion, shortlists could be made up of candidates with a demonstrable connection with the constituency, contain equal numbers of male and female candidates and at least one candidate from an ethnic minority. These suggestions are completely off the top of my head, and would merely for the basis for discussion. They could be coupled with a mandatory review of sitting MPs by the CLP every five years, say one year before the next General Election. Most jobs have a system of appraisal and I see no reason why MPs should be different. These reviews could be used to investigate outside interests as well as parliamentary performance and attendance. MPs rely heavily on their CLP to do the leg work which gets them elected. Painful though it may be I can see no reason not to hold them closely to account once elected. This would be giving power back to the people, and while as Robert Peston suggested, it might be altering their status slightly from representative to delegate, if MPs are not answerable to those who put them in Parliament, then who are they responsible to?
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