There is a truth universally acknowledged that if you want to go through the motions of consulting people, but you don’t really want to encourage them to respond to you, you slip out a consultation, say, in the second week in December when nobody is really thinking about the issue in hand and close it on 3rd January.
I’m minded of the consultation process for the destruction of earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass as outlined by the brilliant Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
So this is a roundabout way of saying that the Federal Board has slipped out a consultation on the party’s Internal Election Regulations in the second week of December that closes on 3rd January.
By doing so, they give off vibes that they are going through the motions of consultation. They want to know whether we think a larger threshold of nominations is needed. They haven’t set a figure, but will look at the result of the consultation and bring a proposal to Spring Conference. That would mean the changes would be in place for the next elections in Autumn next year.
Some might think that this is tinkering at the edges. The biggest problem with the internal elections is that turnout is so low. Last time, in 2022, Mark Pack was re-elected to the presidency with a number of votes that was less than the vote of the losing candidate in 2019. We need to drive up participation, interest and engagement in these elections.
Anyway, all the details are here. So do make sure you annoy the Federal Board by having your say. Do it now, before the world becomes a haze of tinsel, wrapping paper and mince pies.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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16 Comments
Outstanding analogy, though no responsible local authority can now afford a leopard. Even Windsor.
Excellent article…and I loved the Hitchhiker’s Guide so appreciate the power of the analogy.
Who decided that this topic and a few others, treated as insignificant, would be the ONLY ones to ne the subject of consultation?
The options on offer are one dimensional. Change the number of nominations required – that’s it. If the main problem has been identified as the large number of candidates , then tinkering at the margins of the number of nominations isn’t going to solve the problem.
I am instinctively opposed to high nomination thresholds because they are always used to exclude candidates.
I have voted for the status quo on the consultation and would urge others to do the same.
It is indeed a badly-worded and ill thought-out consultation. For example, while 10 members is straight-forward and we can argue whether it should remain at 10 or be higher, local parties have different memberships, regional parties are much larger than local parties, and state parties larger still, so it makes no sense for the local, regional and state parties required for nomination to be fixed at the same number; one might reasonably choose to increase the number of local parties above 1, while leaving the number of regional and state parties unchanged, but the consultation does not allow this option to be chosen. Nomination by affiliated organisations is also dubious. In the past, I think this was a distinction between SAOs and AOs, with only the former being able to nominate, but I don’t know if, under the present rules, there is even a minimum membership requirement for affiliated organisation status.
@Gordon: there was a previous, and wide-ranging, consultation as part of the internal election review mentioned in the post. This new consultation is about the best way to address some of the recommendations the review made, while for other recommendations they’ve been or are being implemented without there being open questions over how to do so that made sense to consult on further.
@Caron: this very much isn’t just going through the motions, and indeed consulting on the drafting of changes before putting them to conference in this way is an innovation that could also be welcomed as an extra step of transparency, a bit more democracy and a helpful way to avoid making drafting mistakes 🙂 And if we were trying to hide it, sending, for example, an email to all local party officers about it would be a odd way of going about it…
The main timing factor is that the deadline for submitting the proposal to conference comes in January and so that’s always a bit awkward for any motions/other party business items being consulted on ahead of submission given Christmas. But in this case, there’s a couple of full clear weeks before Christmas and I quite understand why FCC needs that January timescale given all the many things that then need doing to prepare the agenda for conference.
🍿
@Jennie: Salted or sweet?
I have responded, and was surprised at how limited the survey was. The survey ends with an open-ended opportunity to add comments, so I took the opportunity to point out the obvious limitation of trying pick between people you have never met on the basis of wading through short online CVs, and the benefits of name recognition that incumbency brings. To avoid Federal Committees seemingly always populated by a small cadre of ‘the usual suspects’, I suggested we have term limits for committee members, which I expect will be enthusiastically embraced…
I do not want to comment on the general point of the article, but I do want to comment on the concern that there is a low turnout for the internal elections.
Personally I make sure I vote on them as soon as I can. But as someone who is reasonably involved in the party even I would have to admit that there are a lot of names on the ballot paper that I do not know.
I think it is perfectly reasonable for party members not to vote in elections where they do not know the candidates. At the same time it is also reasonable for all party members to have the opportunity to vote just in case they do happen to know.
The only way you could know who is on the ballot paper is if you go to Lib Dem conference and if you go to the regional conferences, and do so over a number of years. The percentage of people who vote in these elections is probably reflective of the number of people in the party who have that level of committment.
I have responded to support raising the thresholds.
Who becomes our next President is an important issue that will determine the direction of our Party over the coming years. Once nominations close we should have a long and arduous process, including hustings so we can determine who is the best choice for our present circumstances. This will have cost implications but I think most members and registered supporters would be willing I think to fork out a few pounds to get the right candidate.
I have personally supported raising the threshold. I think it is high time we continue the work of the last few years (props to Mark Pack and Mike Dixon for professionalising our organisation). After all we are a political party, not a student union and this is a sensible reform.
Love the analogy but doesn’t really seem appropriate here.
May just be me, but I’m many times more likely to respond to a consultation over the Xmas holiday period, when I’m off work & kids are engrossed in Xmas presents, than at other times of year that are much busier!