By Gavin St Pier
HOW should you choose a party political leader?
As the summer rolls on, most of us are mere bystanders in the unedifying mud-wrestling spectacle that purports to be the contest between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to be the next British Prime Minister. Their ‘friends’, allies and supporters throw punches on their behalf, which the media attributes to ‘sources close to’ their candidate. This seems to be an attempt to keep their preferred PM’s hands clean and above the fray, in the naïve hope that they might be able to distance themselves from comments made on their behalf, if they happen to land badly.
The current number of Conservative Party members is not publicly known, but is assumed to be around 150,000, or about 0.5% of the country’s electorate. The accuracy of these estimates really isn’t important. The point is, it’s a very small number, which, being party members only, is not representative of the population as a whole.
In the case of the Conservative Party, one recent report suggested that 70% of members are men, 60% of them are over the age of 55, 75% of them voted to leave the EU and 97% of them are white. While this constituency might have – shall we say – the self-confidence to believe they know who is right for the country, there is a good chance that the rest of the country might not agree with them. That seems like quite a risk for the Conservative Party.
As we are currently witnessing, if a candidate is to win, they obviously need to address their appeal to the very narrow electorate choosing them. A YouGov survey last week found that 67% of grassroots Conservatives believe that the NHS has enough funding; 60% want the next Prime Minister to relax or delay the 2050 net-zero-carbon emissions target, championed by the current incumbent of No 10 and 75% support the Rwanda deportation policy. All these are, of course, valid opinions to hold, but no one can possibly believe that these policy positions would command that level of public support more generally. The consequence is the campaign has become a series of dog whistles to the party’s base. This is off putting to non-party members, who are unlikely to rush to join a group whose values do not align with their own, creating a vicious circle of an increasingly narrow base with extreme views reinforcing each other in their own echo chambers. If you look across the pond, the system of primaries – the electorate for whom in most US States are registered Democrats or Republicans – produces candidates who have little or no appeal to others outside their own gang. This in turn leads to further voter disengagement, leaving the political field to be filled and political discourse to be dominated by the extremes. All this is a very real threat to democracy that should not be underestimated if it continues to run this course.
Is there a better way of finding the right person for the job? In 1963, Alec Douglas-Home was the last Prime Minister to ‘emerge’ and be appointed by the Queen following an opaque process of taking informal advice from senior members of the Conservative Party. The risks of embroiling the Crown in politics were obvious and so the Conservatives then moved to a system by which the leader was elected by the party’s MPs. This system survived nearly 40 years, until the current system was adopted by which the MPs whittle the candidates down to two, from whom party members elect the Chosen One. Iain Duncan-Smith was the first to be elected under this method in 2001. Broadly, the Labour and Liberal Democrats have similar systems that involve their members in the selection process. All this sounds more democratic than leaving it to small group of MPs, but is it wise?
In 2010, it’s quite possible that Labour MPs would have chosen David Miliband over his brother Ed. In 2015, there isn’t a cat-in-hell’s chance that Labour MPs would have chosen Jeremy Corbyn as their leader; and in 2019, there is a good chance that Conservative MPs, knowing who they were dealing with, would not have chosen Boris Johnson either. All of these member-driven appointments have changed the UK’s political history in ways about which we can only speculate. Any person (including any leader) elected under a particular set of rules is unlikely to be the right person to lead the case for changing those rules. To do so might tacitly suggest the electorate who chose them may have made the wrong decision. It is hard to see how the parties are going to get themselves out of this particular bind. Perhaps some internal review after a catastrophic general election defeat, linking it back to the party having chosen the ‘wrong leader’ to put in front of the country as a whole, might light a path to reform. But if that is to be to the route, it’s a painful one for any party to endure.
Does any of this have any relevance to political life in the Channel Islands? At face value, with few political parties playing significant roles in electoral terms, it would appear not. However, both Jersey and Guernsey, following a general election, effectively have their Assemblies act as electoral colleges to choose their political leaders from among their own. This is analogous to MPs choosing their leader – albeit, given the large number of independents in our systems, this is effectively a ‘cross-party process’ rather than being decided by a single group.
This does carry the risk that the Assemblies, by whatever route, choose leaders who do not connect with the wider public’s wishes and expectations. Given this is done post-election rather than pre-election, the downside risks of doing so are at best low and at worst deferred until the electorate’s next outing to the polling booths. Nonetheless, the same consequential risk of voter disengagement exists as in larger jurisdictions.
The inherent risks of increasing voter apathy and disengagement, allowing the moderate centre ground and voice to be crowded out by the extremes, is one we should all be alive to. Democracy is too precious to be taken for granted. It only works if everyone participates. It’s a privilege, but with it comes a personal responsibility for each of us to participate.
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Gavin St Pier is a Guernsey politician. He previously served as the President of the island’s Policy and Resources Committee.
