So, having asked a bunch of questions designed to smooth the selection process, a Returning Officer’s mind turns to what the various parts of the Party want to see.
And that’s a particularly relevant consideration given the debates we’ve had about candidate selection this year. The debate in Harrogate revolved around two core themes:
- Diversity – by including the Vice President responsible for working with ethnic minority communities, this would be built into the process and made a key priority. In addition, action would be taken to encourage greater representation of women amongst the candidate pool.
- Scheduling – a co-ordinated, planned timetable for selections would enable better use of volunteer time to help run them, enable more action to be taken to improve the diversity of our candidates and better planning for and provision of training for newly selected candidates.
I admit that the detail was a bit vague – I may be being a bit diplomatic here – but the basic premises were pretty unarguable. The catch is that the new structures designed to deliver these things have no authority yet, given that only the Welsh Party have ratified the required constitutional changes.
Is there currently anything in place that would help me to do more than pay lip service to the wishes of Federal Conference? The answer is that I don’t know. I’d very much like to though. We’re so early in the cycle that the guidance notes to support the new Selection Rules haven’t emerged yet. And so, I’ve asked my Regional Candidates Chair if I can do a few things that might help. There’s a somewhat aged list of “diversity contacts” to use, representing the key Associated Organisations and campaign groups, so I’ve contacted them all, advising them that the process is underway and at a very early stage.
But there is a bit of a conflict here. On the one hand, there is a sense of urgency that we should be getting on with selections in target seats. Our professional Campaigns staff tell us that early selection helps us to win, and I take their word on that – they know far more than I do. On the other, we apparently have a number of potential candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups who are keen to get approved and, presumably, apply for winnable seats. For, if we’re going to have a more properly representative Parliamentary Party in the Commons in 2029, some of them, or those from similar backgrounds who are already approved, need to be selected in the designated target seats. The chronology matters.
As a Returning Officer, I can only control a limited range of specifics – I manage the process. The bigger picture? Well, that’s still emerging. The new Joint Candidates Sub-Committee is already working, drawing up a schedule of seats to be selected and, this month, the promised diversity action plan will begin to take shape. In the meantime, the State Candidates Committees are still constitutionally responsible, and are responding to requests for selections to start. There is a risk that, unless everyone is genuinely working in harmony, a number of target seats will have been selected before the diversity action plan can be put into place.
You could argue that I shouldn’t worry about this. After all, my job is to be a neutral arbiter of what is, effectively, an internal recruitment process, operating systems where the key decisions are taken by the Shortlisting Committee, albeit with the benefit of my advice and recommendations.
But it isn’t quite as simple as that. I’m aware that the Party expressed a desire for certain outcomes in Harrogate, that there are external pressures upon political parties to achieve these and, as someone who is political (why else would I join a political party?), whilst in terms of an individual selection, my goal is to achieve the best outcome for the Local Party or Parties involved, the cumulative effect of those selections is what people see. For the thinking Returning Officer, it offers a philosophical dilemma.
In short, my fear is that we may end up having made a series of promises that we might not deliver upon… this time.
* Mark Valladares is a veteran Returning Officer and a member of the East of England Regional Candidates Committee.
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10 Comments
Mark makes some very valid points here, but the real problem we all need to address is how do we make our membership more diverse. Then once we have done that how do we make sure that appropriate numbers of diverse candidates get selected.
Also what forms of diversity do we need to focus on is a vital consideration. It is clear we can rely on Amna to ensure we have a good focus on race and sex, but it will be much more difficult for her to ensure we get a good focus on others such as the working class and trade unionists. These are also groups who are underrepresented in all political parties and it is as close to a disgrace as it is possible to be for us all. Indeed I remember Gordon Birtwistle, the Lib Dem MP who won Burnley from Labour for us in 2010 telling us that he was the only MP in the House of Commons who had done an apprenticeship.
If we want to win and represent people in urban areas like Gordon, we need more people like him in our party as well.
Oh yes and we need more hers like him as well.
This is a hugely valuable set of posts about the reality of candidates work within the party (although only a part of that work). Shows more thought and understanding than any of the speeches supporting F10 at conference.
There’s no perfect system, even if everyone does things correctly. I hope readers will gain an appreciation for the work of volunteers.
I am not being deliberately contrarian here and I certainly believe that in a democracy no citizen should be held back because they happen to belong to a particular demographic group. The diversity debate, however, seems to be limited to matters of gender and ethnicity, and as David Evans points out, in the current zeitgeist there are few brownie points to be won by speaking up for the working class.
Again, I am not being argumentative, simply pointing to a fact when I say that 37% of Lib Dem members are female (House of Commons Library, 2022) and 44% of our MPs are female. I deduce from that that a woman member of the party has a slightly higher chance of finding herself in Parliament. That being the case, what is it, exactly, that we are trying to fix ?.
But all this misses the point in many ways. If the average citizen was given the opportunity to participate in the decision making process, especially in local politics. if we had a genuinely participatory politics, then the need to have token people who had a superficial similarity to ourselves, would seem less important. If EVERYBODY had a little power over their lives and communities, then we ARE all represented. The more power is spread, the less important the question of diversity becomes.
Perhaps we should think a bit more about our traditional commitment to community politics, which is not about your Lib Dem councillor getting a pot hole mended for you, but people fixing their own pot holes.
@ David,
My apologies for not responding sooner – work tends to get in the way, I’m afraid.
I agree with the points that you make regarding diversity in the wider sense. At the moment, the Party focuses on those with protected characteristics – gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation – rather than class or occupation. But a successful political party offers space and opportunity to the widest cross-section of society, in our case so long as they identify as liberals.
And that starts with getting people from underrepresented groups through the door into the Party in the first place. That’s a bit beyond my pay grade as a Returning Officer, but a worthy cause nonetheless.
@ Tad,
Thank you for your kind words. And yes, it’s a reminder that the Party relies on volunteers and their goodwill to deliver much of what is achieved in terms of campaigning success.
@ Chris,
As noted above, the Party focuses its efforts on those with protected characteristics. And, in this cycle, positive action is proposed for those from ethnic minorities or with disabilities, as representation of women and the LGBT+ community are felt to be broadly as they should be within the current Parliamentary Party. Not perfect, perhaps, but close enough to suggest that positive action isn’t necessary for the time being.
Diversity depends only to a limited amount on what the region or the centre wants.
The actual selection is by constituency/ward/area members. This is where the discrimination arises as I’ve seen first hand. I have seen members vote for Ron rather than a perfectly competent ethnic minority candidate and for a well spoken, well turned out man as opposed to a competent local woman councillor.
For years there has been talk about training for members, but nothing has come of it. There was strong opposition to insisting that members taking part in candidate selection should have to undergo training first. Maybe before any selection meeting the RO should do a training session about bias and unconscious bias?
In 2024 we probably had more women and ethnic minority candidates because many were appointed by candidates chairs not a selection meeting.
F10 says nothing about the biases that exist amongst some of the membership. Perhaps people think it’s too sensitive to raise? In my youth Liberals widely accepted that women got less votes than men, so few women were selected. Most of us now know this to be false. In the 2015 town council elections I was involved with, ethnic minority candidates polled significantly less votes than their white counterparts. Yet, we don’t discuss this or take measures to counter it.
It is important to get the shortlist right. But if we just sweep other problems under the carpet we won’t achieve our goals.
The only thing that “various parts of the Party” can expect to see is that rules are followed. Like any other member, an RO can speculate on governance matters if they wish, but such speculation must play no part in the particular selection procedure he or she is appointed to manage. Not following rules is what has got the party in to difficulties so many times in the past.
Whilst the Party’s concentration naturally is on our target seats, because it is from those that we will expect to get our MPs and we want diverse MPs, we run the danger of forgetting about the weaker seats where we lost our deposits in 2024. I would not be surprised if almost all those lost deposits came in seats where we had to rely on Regional Candidates Chairs to allocate candidates, because this happened for those constituencies that had not selected before the end of 2023. But if early selection benefits target seats it should also benefit these weaker seats (and minimise the losses caused by activists being sent to target seats during the short campaign). So I would ask if the Party chooses to push its selections for target seats into the remainder of this year and the first half of 2026, will those of us in the weaker seats be allowed to begin selecting from the second half of 2026 onwards, even if all we can do is to put up one local candidate against RON? Two or two and a half years with a candidate in place rather than six months could make a difference to our vote share in these constituencies and an increased vote share, even though it gains us no more MPs, is important for improving the credibility of us as a Party.
@ Mick,
Whilst you’re right to point out the potential issues relating to bias (conscious or subconscious) amongst members, I would hesitate to support mandatory training for members generally. It would deter members, and we want members, and it might be an expensive burden upon the Party locally and beyond.
I have to admit that, in my years as a Returning Officer, I’ve seen very few examples of members picking, or not picking, a particular applicant due to bias, but acknowledge that my sample size probably isn’t large enough to offer credibility to such an assertion. But before we risk moving in that direction, I’d want to see more evidence.
@ Mark,
The Selection Rules are, and should be, sacrosanct. However, what happens outside of the process should be understood. The Party wants a certain set of outcomes and, as a Returning Officer, I don’t want to be seen to be wilfully thwarting that. As I note, chronology matters. If target seat selections are hurried through whilst, at the same time, members from underrepresented groups are being encouraged to believe that they will have a fair chance to compete, that’s a problem. Technically, not strictly a Returning Officer problem, but if we all operate in our silos without thought for the bigger picture, we never progress.
@ Laurence,
You have been heard, and the new Selection Rules inject a far greater sense of urgency across the board. Bear with me – I’ll get to that…
I’m late to the party here, but just to note that at its meeting on 24th May the English Candidates Committee agreed to co-opt the English Diversity Champion to the committee with immediate effect.