The Conservatives' "experiment" with a primary election in Totnes attracted a lot of media coverage. But the media don't seem to realise it was a very clever smokescreen.

Here's what I wrote in response to one major article. My piece was published on the Opinion page in The Scotsman on 26 August 2009.

Pointless Primaries – a cunning diversion

James Gilmour

It was just a diversionary gimmick, but it was a very effective one. For days the media were full of the wonders of primary elections.

The Conservative’s experiment in Totnes certainly caught the headlines. The commentators extolled this new solution to the ills of our political system. Surprisingly, even David Maddox jumped on the bandwagon (Opinion, 11 August).

The primary experiment may well have selected a better candidate for the Conservatives than their normal selection process. But the real success of the Tories' Totnes tinkering was to divert attention from the real electoral problem.

So long as we elect Westminster MPs by the discredited First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system, little will change. And of course, David Cameron and his Conservatives, along with the leaders of the Labour Party, want to keep it that way.

Primary elections to select “better” candidates will be irrelevant unless we address the real electoral problems.

FPTP discards the votes of half of those who bother to vote. That was 14 million of those who voted in the 2005 general election. They have no say and no representation.

FPTP distorts the expressed wishes of the voters. In 2005 only 35% voted for the Labour Party, but that was distorted into a 66 seat majority over all other parties. The distortion was no better in previous elections and it doesn’t always favour the Labour Party. David Cameron is hopeful the distortion will go his way next time.

FPTP allows a handful of voters in a few swing marginal constituencies to determine the government. In 2005 the outcome of the election was decided by only one percent of the 27 million who voted. So it’s no surprise that the main parties focus their policies on that little bit of "middle England".

FPTP makes most seats, safe seats. Even if the Conservatives oust the Labour government at the next election only one-quarter of the seats will likely change party. So 480 MPs of all parties would be in safe seats even if the Conservatives were to win with the 72 seat majority currently projected.

And of course, with FPTP, no party gives its supporters any choice of candidate. So if your local MP is one of the “bad apples”, represents your preferred party and is not de-selected, the only way you can get rid of him or her is to vote against your party.

FPTP also creates electoral deserts across vast swathes of the UK for all the main parties. Where they have no MPs they are out of touch and have no understanding of what local voters want.

In the face of these problems – the real problems - a primary election is a pointless diversion.

In his opinion piece, David Maddox also suggested that primary elections should be used to open up the selection of candidates for the party lists in Scottish Parliament elections.

But that would only be tinkering with the real problems of the voting system we use to elect our MSPs. The real need is to elect all the MSPs on the same basis and to make them all directly accountable to their local constituents.

That's not going to be achieved by introducing primary elections to select party list candidates. The whole list system should be swept away and the voters given real choice through electing all the MSPs in local constituencies by STV-PR.
That would also get rid of the problems with the FPTP elections in the present constituencies.

David Maddox rightly drew attention to the costs that would be incurred if primary elections were introduced. The Tories’ experiment in Totnes cost them £40,000.

In the USA, the home of the primary election, one of the key reasons for changing from FTPT to STV for local government elections is to avoid the cost of primaries!

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Dr James Gilmour is a member of the Electoral Reform Society and the Fairshare Voting Reform Campaign Committee, but he has written this article in a personal capacity.

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For those who have subscription access (not me), the original articles are in The Scotsman at:

David Maddox: Primary lesson could be just what politics ordered
http://news.scotsman.com/david-maddox/David-Maddox-Primary-lesson-could....

James Gilmour: Tories' primary ploy can't disguise need for election overhaul
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/-James-Gilmour-Tories39-primary.5587008.jp

JG