Why Ed Miliband needs to widen Labour’s MP selection pool

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/18/ed-miliband-labour-mp-selection-diversity

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The news that Labour’s national executive, under the tutelage of Ed Miliband, has taken control of the parliamentary selection process for local constituencies should come as no surprise. The only noteworthy thing is that, with a tight election looming, he has put the arrangement in place earlier than usual. Successive party leaders have proved unable to resist this particularly juicy piece of patronage.

But the question is – what is he actually going to do with the power to decisively affect candidate selection? Ideally he would use his powers to ensure more working-class candidates and diverse representation generally.

The Labour leadership should surely have been given pause by research earlier this year that revealed Labour had more candidates who were special advisers, or denizens of London-based thinktanks, than any other major party. It comes to something when the party that was historically supposed to be the parliamentary arm of the Labour movement has an over-representation of white-collar Westminster insiders. There is nothing wrong with being a special adviser. But we are in the first half of the 21st century. So it would be nice to think that the parliamentary Labour party was moving towards looking more like modern Britain, rather than in the opposite direction.

Of course this situation is not of Ed Miliband’s making. I served on the national executive of the Labour party in the 90s. There were constant murmurings by the powers that be about the “quality” of MPs and potential candidates. In fact, there was nothing wrong with these people. “Quality” was a euphemism for the fact that they were not considered “New Labour” enough. So convenor stewards, who had lived in a town all their life, were elbowed out in favour of television producers. One-time Tory MPs, who had never seen the inside of a factory, were shoehorned into industrial seats. And former special advisers came down like golden rain on manufacturing and mining constituencies up and down the land. At the time it all seemed very clever. The only people who complained were disgruntled “favourite son” candidates who had been carved up in favour of London-based outsiders. Some sitting Labour MPs, outside the inner circle, used to call it the “assisted places” scheme.

But the Labour party has paid a price for parachuting one too many special advisers into industrial seats. There is a great deal of hand-wringing about Ukip and its inroads into previously rock solid Labour seats. But one cause of disaffection among core Labour voters is the sense that there is a remote Westminster class which doesn’t relate to them. This unhappiness can only be heightened by a parliamentary Labour party that has too few working people.

The Labour party has some great new candidates. I have campaigned with many of them. But the number of working class Labour MPs is the lowest it has ever been. And progress on ethnic representation has been painfully slow since Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng, Keith Vaz and myself were first elected 28 years ago. The Conservatives now have more male BME MPs than the Labour party and there is only one new black female parliamentary candidate. And it can be argued that the shortage of both working-class and black MPs are two sides of the same coin.

It should not matter what colour or class an MP is. But, at the same time, it should not be assumed that former special advisers have a monopoly on the qualities that the public would like to see in their MPs. Furthermore, you are likely to make more informed and humane decisions on issues such as welfare benefits if, instead of just reading the polling, you actually have family members who have had to live on them. Perhaps, above all, if the political class is to reconnect with British people, the people need to see politicians who look like them.

So here is hoping that Miliband uses his new powers to ensure that the broadest range of talent enters the parliamentary Labour party next year. We can only wait and see.