Interference in parliamentary selection procedure by a small minority of people at the ‘top’ of the party through influencing the actions of the imperfectly formed NEC By-election/Late Selection panel has, I believe, been as perverse and dishonest as anything Militant did in the 1980s and needs similarly drastic action to deal with it.

I’ve been involved as a candidate and a ‘selector’ in quite a number of parliamentary selections and I’ve been both shortlisted and longlisted a number of times by the NEC by-election panel. I’ve been a parliamentary agent and local election agent loads of times, held every position possible in branch and CLP level, and been a re-elected councillor. So I’ve had a lot of first hand experience of how this procedure, or abuse of procedure, has worked. I might even have been an unwitting beneficiary of it at some point.

But I believe that all of the talk by the Deputy Candidates and even Brown himself about reconnecting with the party is nonsense unless they address this totemic issue of, at least, the appearance of  the corruptibility of the NEC By-Election panel procedures. It is ripe for immediate reform and a hangover from a previous time. It belongs to a previous mentality of control freikery which, I hope, has now been buried. I also believe that the importance of the influence of by-elections is massively overstated. Apart from the constituency, parties and candidates immediately affected, by-elections are important to few but political anoraks (like ourselves), sephologists and journos.

Dealing with it is fairly simple: we must change our party rules to make impossible the process of ‘parachuting’. If our party rules allow for even a hint of it, they must be amended.

For a start, we have to allow an appropriate number of local party members/officers to sit on and have a majority vote on NEC by-election and late selection panels (not simply observe, as they do now - if they’re lucky!). That would start to balance out ‘Westminster’ influence. 

I would go further and state that to avoid the appearance of  undue influence and political chicanery, never mind corruption, there must be a complete separation of powers between the parliamentary party (whether backbenchers or prime ministers) and the party itself in the selection of future M.P.s, even at by-election level. What’s the selection procedure in any CLP got to do with any other sitting member, however lofty?

And a late selection should be deemed a late selection only if the general election has been called. Some ‘late’ selections have been deemed so many months before an expected general election. In other words – once a certain date in a notionally presumed 5 year parliament has been passed the panel can, off its own bat, step in. That’s just ridiculous.

Members of the executive of the government, in particular, should have absolutely no say or influence, formal or informal, in the selection of PPCs. I don’t blame those who have found themselves ‘selected’ as MPs and even found themselves in the executive of government through the parachute.  I blame ourselves as a party for simply looking the other way and accepting that this is just ‘politics’ and its everyday rough and tumble.

Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson are both beneficiaries of this system and now they are up for the Deputy Leader’s job. Might they remove the ladder that assisted them, I wonder?

The party itself has to grow up and stop supinely accepting the droit de seigneur of anyone in our party to influence candidate selection, especially a prime minister or Cabinet Member. And influence candidate selection those at the very top do: and I challenge anyone to seriously deny that it doesn’t happen.

Let’s face it, the late selections and by-elections procedure has been used to allow existing MPs and especially the Cabinet to get their mates and special advisors into the house. When applied to late selections it is now worse, because more often than not it is used to get men into the house who, because of the effects of All Women Shortlists, have so few open selections to go for. So it is also a sexist abuse of the system.  

It appears to me that that the NEC has considerable scope (too much) as to who actually is on the panel.  An NEC by-election panel often has 2 cabinet members and the general secretary of the party (and sometimes no-one else). Obviously the cabinet members’ jobs are in the gift of the P.M. and the G.S. will have been appointed in consultation with the P.M. and answer either directly or indirectly (through his appointee as ‘chair’ of the party) to the P.M. It allows for undue influence. It’s a recipe for democratic disaster as far as this party being in the hands of its members.

But I would question the very need for these emergency by-election panels in the first place.

These days the ability through a whole range of communications technology to get a party together to select a candidate in a constituency quickly is easy. Any party unit in this country can easily organise themselves in 7 days or less to arrange a shortlist from, say, the NEC parliamentary panel, and to a final hustings which is genuinely in the hands of members. It usually takes that long for the NEC panel to do it anyway. The only reason some selections have been incredibly rushed is because the by-election was called deliberately quickly by us (when in power) for some perceived nebulous political advantage.

The ‘late selections’ procedure effectively allows individual M.P.s to flout party rules in failing to declare in time whether they will be stepping down – that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. It opens the doors to allegations of promises of peerages almost every time, often quite justifiably.

It should be in our party rules that no sitting MP is permitted to step down once a general election is called, or they have been confirmed in the affirmative ballot procedure. If they do later step down without good reason, he/she should be expelled from the party.  In the event of this happening after the calling of a General Election, the national party should on behalf of the CLP call an immediate emergency meeting of its EC/GC to shortlist from the National Parliamentary Panel, and an all members meeting to take place within 7 days.  Only if this is simply not possible should an emergency NEC panel be used to select, onto which panel a majority of CLP party officers are co-opted and vote.

The late selections concept is simply a ruse to allow the By-election panel to operate to place favoured candidates by parachute – everybody knows this. We have at least to stop late selections being in the hands of an NEC by-election panel which has on it either sitting members of parliament or even already selected PPCs (which happens).

It should be said, however, that the ‘parachuting’ system was used quite selectively and often in turns to place Brownite and Blairite supporters into the commons (often to keep up the balance!) That makes it even worse.

Let’s get the P.M., the Cabinet, other Ministers and the M.P.s completely out of the selection process for our future M.P.s and by-election Candidates. Bearing in mind for the last 10 years the Prime Minister has been able simply to appoint legislators (sometimes not even party members!) to the legislature directly (through the House of Lords) and then into ministerial positions, it makes even less sense to have to construct a system, or manipulate a deficient system, to allow ‘the desirables’ through the door of the Commons.

The Deputy Leadership and Leadership candidate(s) should be challenged to address this one area of party democracy which causes unnecessary ill-feeling across the party and a sense of real democratic deficit.

And before you say it, if you detect the odour of some sour grapes, then I'll admit, you may be right!