I have a reputation for being a bureaucrat. Gradualism is my watchword, and has been for most of the twenty-five years that I’ve been a Liberal and then Liberal Democrat. However, suddenly, I have become an old man in a hurry. Alright, old relative to most of you at least, but still in a hurry. So, imagine I’ve sprouted an Old Testament beard, donned a white flowing robe and found a nice stout staff and harken to my words. I have a few jobs for you to do…
First, do you want to be a candidate at the next General Election? Yes? Maybe? Are you on the Approved List of potential Parliamentary candidates? No (if yes, skip the rest of this paragraph)? Why not? If you’re not ready, get ready. Contact the Party’s Candidates Office (here’s the link) and they’ll send you everything you need to know. If you think that you are ready, apply for approval NOW. Don’t wait, don’t dither, just do it. The earlier you’re approved, the better the range of available seats – the good ones go early.
Alright, you’re approved. Which seat(s) are you interested in? Get involved, help them with their campaigning, attend a social event or two, let the members get to know you, because it will stand you in good stead when the selection process starts. Members vote for candidates they connect with, and if they know you a little, that process of connection is rather easier.
Oh yes, diversity. I knew that I’d forgotten something. Know any women or BME members or supporters who could be good candidates? Anyone who didn’t go to public school, someone who hasn’t spent their entire life ‘doing politics’ (diversity is about more than just ethnicity or gender)? Remember, don’t look in the obvious places. Point them in the direction of this article. Encourage them to apply, help them to find ways of developing core skills, introduce them to people who might have useful information or contacts (my rates are very reasonable!), support them when things don’t go exactly to plan. Just do it now.
Because in two or three years, it’ll be too late, and you’ll be moaning about the lack of diversity on the Liberal Democrat benches in the next Parliament too…
22 Comments
Thanks for this Mark. Lots of people have been saying it. I’ve been thinking it, even before the GE, and have now determined to do something about it!
Last year I was appointed the diversity officer (forget the precise title) for women in London for us. So I’m trying to get together as many ideas, thoughts, projects as possible – to get more women interested in and involved with the Liberal Democrats, and to find out why we are not so good at it as some of the other parties have been.
I’m interested in contributions from anyone. Anyone know any good practice from other countries, for example?
In the meantime, I’m organising a series of networking events for women in London – hopefully starting at the end of June. Feel free to publicise to any interested women. They don’t have to be members of the party, they may just be interested in finding out more about us, about getting involved or, maybe, standing for election (within the party or as a councillor, GLA, MEP, MP) themselves. Let as many people know as possible!
Yes. Yes. This. Very, very much so – it was a topic I stood up to speak about at conference… (OK, my point was about wider diversity but we’re not helping ourselves right now – lead from the front)
That last bit’s easy. The other parties are willing and able to parachute women into safe seats in order to generate synthetic “diversity” and make their numbers look better. If you want things to be real then it’s much harder.
You may be looking in the wrong places for problems. Consider: getting involved in any meaningful way is actually quite hard (as has been noted in many places). This means only certain types of people will bother to go to that much trouble, and there seem to be certain demographic biases there. Perhaps it would be more productive to attack the general difficulty of doing useful things, rather than focussing on a single target demographic.
If somebody came to you and said “I have a few hours spare, what can I do?”, would you have anything better to suggest than throwing a stack of leaflets at them?
I confess that my attempt to kick start this last year slightly ran into the sand. However I am pleased to say that the time I instead spent trying to get my partner Tam Langley elected was well used – generating a good swing from Labour.
I’m happy to do what I can to support this – not least trying to recruit & elect a more diverse set of council candidates – since realistically that’s where a lot of our PPCs in the medium term will come from.
What Andrew said. Only more so. We are an incredibly unwelcoming organisation and if we are to tackle this problem at its root we need to do radical things to open up the party to new people. We could start by scrapping the PPC selection rules and running primaries instead.
I strongly agree with all of the above. But would add that we also need to consider structural barriers to participation in politics. And with Nick Clegg in charge of political reform there is a great opportunity to start breaking down these barriers in a way that doesn’t discriminate against men. Here are a few ideas of what can be done at macro (https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-make-politics-fit-womens-lives-not-viceversa-18285.html) and micro (https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-mind-the-gender-gap-1399.html) level.
PS Jo do get in touch re London Women’s network. I’d love to help.
Although I’ve no plans to become an MP, you’ve inspired me to apply to get onto the approved list. At the very least, it’ll be an interesting and educational experience to go through the process. Sadly, I’ll be needing fairly major surgery to avoid being another white male – that’s something I’ll have to look at in the future.
Ok, where do i sign up? i’d love to stand…
Ed: Dead right…the approval process is Chinese water-torture. It needs streamlining, before the party goes through the whole process again there needs to be less gates and hoops to jump over and through. Particularly for the dead-in-the-water no-hope seats that are derelict or virtually moribund.
Philip, the approval process was radically overhauled nearly two years ago. Details here.
I was approved under the new process myself, and now mentor others through it. It’s thorough, but needn’t be daunting.
Getting selected for a Parliamentary seat is a more complex matter. Unlike approval, selection involves local parties, competition and an investment of time and resources – which Mark touches on in his third paragraph.
I totally agree that many more people should stand as candidates rather than complaining about what the current MPs are doing wrong, if only everything was so simple though.
I would love to get more involved in politics, help shape the future in a positive way, but I know I will never be candidate material. Would be very interesting to know what else I could do though, what other options the Lib Dems offer for those who want to strongly support the party without taking the huge step as standing as a candidate.
Jo – please get in touch about the london womens network. Thanks,Nishma, Harrow Lib Dems
I agree with most of the above but I think we ought to at least pause to remember the advances we did almost make in this field.
We selected many more women and BME candidates in good seats than ever before. The way the results fell may not look impressive but the party was seriously contesting at least 4 seats with ethnic minority candidates and we ran female – no, strike that, EXCELLENT female candidates – in held and target seats all over the place. Unfortunately we were just very very unlucky to lose all three seats in Cornwall with women candidates, Hereford and Harrogate as well as failing to gain seats such as Islington South, Watford and Durham among others. The party planned to increase the diversity of the parliamentary party and selected candidates with the high calibre needed to succeed. Unfortunately the results conspired against us.
Benjamin
Point taken but I think it is a bit weak to say that “results conspired against us”. Over the last couple of elections, Lib Dems became renowned for their ability at targeting to deliver better seat results than the national swings would suggest. For some reason (and I would be interested to see theories on this), it went into reverse this year so that we actually underperformed the national swing.
However, the point I was going to make is that we should not just use targeting for winnable seats but support increased targeting for BME and women candidates in seriously contested seats. In other words, let’s get candidates selected early and then pour resources into seats where we might be able to get BME and women candidates elected. I am personally of the view that the BME issue is worse – it is becoming increasing untenable that we don’t have a single BME MP and is bound to damage the party in the long run.
“Philip, the approval process was radically overhauled nearly two years ago. Details here.
I was approved under the new process myself, and now mentor others through it. It’s thorough, but needn’t be daunting.”
Is there a procedure for removing from the approved candidates list ‘dead wood’ approved under the old system?
Taking inspiration from Mark to be positive – it would be good for those who want to learn lessons about diversity to have a look at our council group in Southwark. Congratulations to new Group Leader Anood Al-Samerai. Southwark has even had a Lib Dem Cabinet member who took maternity leave – and guess what the world didn’t cave in as a result!
Re-reading Helen’s article from 2008, I gather that the one-year rule is now applied more flexibly? It should be; while in general people should be members for at least a year before applying to be parliamentary candidates, there will be exceptions.
Most people don’t aspire to be MPs, and to be a serious parliamentary candidate is a big commitment. But don’t forget that there are many ways to serve; it is just as important to have local Councillors from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. (Many of our MPs have experience as Councillors, which gives them a good grounding in their local communities.)
Here in Harlow, we’ve found that women are slightly more likely than men to get elected as Councillors, (though we don’t discriminate against men because of it 🙂 ). And last year we elected our first BME Councillor. This year, a female BME candidate gained the highest Lib Dem vote here – but unfortunately was not elected due to the General Election, which doubled turnout of Lab and Con voters.
Repost from an older comment, as this thread seems to suit better:
Sorry, a new try:
I think that the reasons whether a constituency is won or not by a Lib Dem is up to the individual character of each seat and how well the profile of the Lib Dem candidate fits in it. Therefore, if Lib Dems want BME candidates to get elected, there should perhaps be some more research done in order to profile each seat and identify those where the BME candidates would have the best chance to get elected. These are not necessarily the same seats where the incumbent Lib Dem MPs currently hold the largest shares of vote. Unfortunately in some seats being a BME candidate might be an obstacle, in others it might even be a benefit. I’d imagine some good guesses where a BME candidate could succeed are seats in places such as parts of Inner London, Birmingham and Leicester.
I am a British Muslim woman and I have been thinking about becoming a Liberal Parliamentary candidate. I live in the North of England and can anyone recommend any contacts for me to get some information please?
Allie, here’s some for the start:
http://libdems4parliament.org.uk/
http://www.genderbalance.org.uk/
(There were more, but LDV considered my post spam, so I had to lop off some)
Thanks Ben I will check out those links.