Indications that proportional representation and centralised ranking
of candidates for the European Parliament elections are going to be
used to purge Euro-MPs and abolish the right of party members to choose
candidates give a flavour of what is posed by the Electoral Reform
Commission’s remit to look at the introduction of PR for Westminster.
Labour has acknowledged that under PR it anticipates losing up to 30
of its 62 MEPs. In London, for example, where Labour currently has nine
seats, it is braced to lose up to six. In Scotland, with currently six
Labour held seats the party could lose three MEPs.
Centralised control of candidate selection will be used to determine
where candidates are positioned on party lists. In the European elections
only the top 30 or so will have any hope of being elected. The party
leadership will thereby gain full power to purge candidates, overturning
mandatory reselection.
The procedures proposed for the European selections — to have
been completed, with candidates in place, before this year’s Labour
Party conference — would give the party membership merely a right
to nominate, not to select or vote for, candidates. Selection, to determine
the names on the list for each region and ranking of the list, would
be decided by a leadership appointed panel.
Of the five members of the Electoral Reform Commission four are publicly
known to support some form of PR. Chaired by SDP founder Roy Jenkins
and encompassing the political editor of the Economist and pro-PR Tory
peer Lord Alexander of Weedon, the Commission is clearly not going to
have the election of future Labour government’s as its central
concern.
Under PR the last general election would not have resulted in a Labour
government. In Scotland the Additional Member System agreed for the Scottish
Parliament will hand Labour seats to parties to its right — the
Liberal Democrats, SNP and even the Tories will benefit — and almost
certainly lose Labour the majority it would have under the present system.
PR at Westminster would consolidate a new centre party bloc committed to a pro-EMU, low wage and anti-welfare state agenda. Its corollary would be state funding to allow Blair to eliminate the trade union vote within the Labour Party.