Democracy in Action: Mandelson’s Candidates in the North West

Article published: Tuesday, April 27th 2010

In two constituencies in the North West Lord Mandelson (who, lest we forget, does not himself have to run for election this year) has interfered with the selection process, essentially ensuring the election of a new generation of allies needed for the post-election bloodshed of a leadership election in a party that may well come third.

While the Lib Dem surge has got people talking about hung parliaments and the possibility of Labour winning even if they come third, little attention has been paid to another serious problem with the First Past the Post system – the enormous majorities parties attain in certain areas which makes it extremely difficult to dislodge MPs and extremely easy for London-based parties to force unwanted candidates on their supposed “heartlands”.

Safe seats are very important for governments, not least Labour where dominance of the North is evident from current and recent cabinet members, including Jack Straw, David Milliband and Alan Johnson, who hold seats in the area. They produce characters like Tony Blair and Hazel Blears, which is bad enough in itself, but when combined with single party dominance of councils, as in Manchester, entire cities can be treated as safe zones where experiments like ID cards and airport scanners are undertaken and friendly property developers are given free reign. This also means that candidates are often parachuted into safe seats in order to get important allies into government no matter how unsuitable they actually are, making a mockery of one of First Past the Post’s few defences: that there is a link between parliamentarians and their communities.

In Stalybridge and Hyde James Purnell, who tried to launch a coup against Gordon Brown last year by resigning from the Cabinet, is standing down from parliament in order to finish his GCSEs. He may not be able to choose the Prime Minister, but he seems to have decided to choose the candidate who replaces him.

The Tories alleged last month that Labour’s National Executive Committee chose Peter Wheeler, a Unite union officer, on the shortlist for the constituency while not selecting local councillor and friend of Purnell, Jonathon Reynolds, in order to aid Wheeler’s chances. All hell broke loose as the Tories accused Wheeler of being put on the shortlist as part of a nationwide union plot, while several members of the Cabinet were annoyed that their favourite, Reynolds, had been snubbed. Though some consider this a Tory smear, it gave the Labour Party the excuse they needed to act. After Purnell “begged” Peter Mandelson to intervene – an unusual level of interference from a retiring MP and a member of the Cabinet that made two of the other candidates pull their name from the shortlist – lo and behold, Reynolds was selected. Purnell had a majority of 8,859, and so it seems that he has managed to secure a seat in Parliament for his ally, perhaps with an eye on his own future.

Meanwhile in Stoke-on-Trent Central Mandelson’s friend Tristram Hunt, southerner, son of Lord Hunt of Chesterton, proud owner of a BA, MPhil and PhD from Cambridge and euphemistically referred to among academics as a “television historian”, is currently standing as the MP in a town it is entirely possible he may have once seen from a train. As in Stalybridge and Hyde the shortlist ended up being whittled down to just three candidates, giving Hunt an easy journey to being selected – what Downing Street described as a “Mandelson ask”. But at least in Stalybridge and Hyde some candidates were locals, unlike Stoke where two candidates were London based and one was from Oxfordshire. People actually from Stoke are understandably angry, with Gary Elsby, the former secretary of the constituency Labour Party, running as an independent. Elsby was so angry, in fact, he changed his name to “Gary Labour Candidate Born in Stoke-on-Trent Elsby”, broadsiding the Labour Party in an interview on the BBC in which he accused David Milliband of granting Hunt a safe seat so as to gain an ally in the inevitable leadership contest after they lose the election.

Can Elsby win? Given that the Labour MP Hunt proposes to replace (who, incidentally, has told everyone to vote Elsby) had a majority of 10,000, he probably can’t – although Private Eye did report Hunt was poorly received when he walked into a pub full of Labour Party members watching a Newsnight report on how the Hand of Mandelson had essentially delivered him the seat. Unsurprisingly, he left in a bit of a huff.

These safe seats and their enormous majorities have important implications for the rest of us, since it’s these MPs who can vote for wars, support ID cards and privatise everything in sight with practical impunity; the most powerful and controversial members of parliament are rarely from marginal seats where they can easily be ejected. And in the case of Stoke, Mandelson may have given a helping hand to more than just a mate/media tart, but also the BNP who are hoping that their “forgotten white working class” rhetoric will make inroads. Hopefully, any protest votes will go to Gary Labour Candidate Born in Stoke-on-Trent Elsby, and not them.

Tom Fox

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More: Election, Manchester, News

Comments

1. The safest seat in Manchester is Graham Stringer’s. Hardly a New Labour plant. But don’t let that get in the way of your weak argument. Keep up the good work!

   Oh, P.S. Why, as a Labour supporter, is my vote somehow worth less than you SWP-types?

   Comment by Labour voter on April 28, 2010 at 2:41 pm

2. Care to provide evidence that Mule contains “SWP types”?

   I don’t see how it’s a “weak argument”. The point of the article is drawing attention to two safe seats where the incumbent retired and Mandelson/No 10 was involved in the selection process to the irritation of local party members. Stringer was not retiring and so this was not possible in his case. The article does not assert that this is happening across the entire region. I fail to follow how this invalidates the argument – although I welcome you to back up your point.

   A LAbour vote isn’t worth less than SWP types – to be honest I don’t understand what you’re suggesting here. But a vote in a safe seat is worth less than one in a marginal seat which may have an impact on how many seats a party has in total. The possibility that Labour can come third in the popular vote and first in number of seats is an example of how bad heavy concentrations of tribal voters can be for democracy – as well as the fact it provides a safe place to put the friends of powerful people in the Party, two instances of which the article was drawing attention to.

   Comment by Tom on April 28, 2010 at 3:32 pm

3. […] going to stand against Darby as an independent just hours before the manifesto launch. As MULE has already reported, local Labour activists in Stoke were angry that Peter Mandelson had dumped a non-local candidate […]

   Pingback by Griffinwatch II  —   MULE on May 5, 2010 at 2:43 pm

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