Why don't ALL UK parties make MPs face compulsory re-selection before each general election?

[Ken Burch]

The SNP does, and whatever else you can say about them, it makes their MPs and MSPs much more accountable to the people who will be working to keep them in office.

The idea that sitting MPs are simply entitled to automatic reselection as their party's candidates until they either resign, lose, or die seems deeply antidemocratic to me.

[T_i_B]

1. Nice idea in theory....

Last edited Sun Oct 30, 2016, 05:33 AM - Edit history (1)

....but in practice it would be a recipe for infighting.

Also, I think voters prefer a familiar face, which would explain why high profile politicians seem to do better than low profile ones. And ultimately, it is all about keeping your side in parliament without losing the seat to the other lot.

Also, with the new proposed parliamentary boundaries due to come in there will be quite MP's who are having their seats erased. My own Labour MP among them.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Three reasons, I think

One is that it would be time-consuming and a distraction from the General Election. That is probably why the parties don't usually do it. A second is that it would encourage even more infighting than there is already. A third is that it would make MPs more accountable to their parties, rather than to the electorate in general; and might for example increase hardline, ultra-partisan attitudes. To be frank, the American primary system seems to have turned Republicans into extremist Tea Party clones.

In practice, selection is not automatic for MPs now. A reselection process is not required, but can be instituted if the local party wishes.

[Ken Burch]

3. And yet a lot of MPs act as if having to face re-selection

Last edited Sat Oct 29, 2016, 11:12 PM - Edit history (1)

is comparable to facing a firing squad in Lubyanka Prison, and see automatic reselection-for-life as an entitlement.

Does that strike you as a healthy attitude for politicians to have?

[LeftishBrit]

4. No politician likes to be defeated. Most like it even less when it comes from their own party

But with the Brexit nightmare going on, this issue is rather low on my list of political priorities at the moment.

[Ken Burch]

5. I entirely understand. It was just something I've been wondering about. n/t.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. In the past, without fixed election dates, compulsory reselection might be awkward

If you didn't know when the election would be, you would have had to wait until it was announced - which could be only 4 weeks' notice. In that time, you'd have to have the party election, and then do your regular campaigning. Either that, or do the reselection a long way in advance, which would undercut a sitting MP if they were de-selected, but still the MP for perhaps a couple of years (they might feel the party had abandoned them, and so leave it officially).

[Ken Burch]

7. What seems to be happening, from what I can see,

is that a lot of MPs seem to feel they won in spite of their constituency party, that the constituency party members shouldn't have any real say in running the party(this, I think, particularly true of post-1997 Labour MPs, who may well feel that they ONLY got elected by telling the constituency activists to get stuffed in some way or other).

These MPs have the mindset that THEY are the party and no one else is.

If someone is going to sit as an independent, then fine, they have the right to see themselvers as solely responsible for their personal victory in the constituency. But for a party to BE a party, doesn't the MP need to feel that she, they, or he owes the people who work to keep them, him and her in office? That the MP owes some respect to the principles those people fight for and the work that they do in preserving the MPs career?

Perhaps a kind of party "primary" could be devised, if the issue is that MPs feel constituency activists shouldn't be the only people who determine whether the MP gets to stand again at the general election.