People who know me well know I always say it as it is. So I won’t mess about.
For me, there is some unfinished business at conference this weekend – and that’s why I’m asking you to support Motion F10 on Saturday.
How many more reports do we need before we modernise the party’s approach to candidates?
The 2015 General Election Review called for serious changes to candidate selection and support. And so did the 2019 General Election Review that I chaired.
And three years ago yet another report by my colleague Alison Suttie spelt out the real changes that needed to happen.
Yet here we are. A decade later, three major reports on – and there are still people arguing we don’t have a problem, and there’s no need for change.
I know that a lack of change is wrong – and so do many members up and down the country.
The need for speed
There has been a lot of information flying around about F10 over recent days, some of it not always completely accurate. We need to face facts. What we’re currently doing on candidates isn’t working. For a start, it’s just not fast enough. In the last parliament we had virtually no candidates selected for two years. In the end, time ran out to run member ballots – with only just over 200 candidates in place.
That meant members in over 400 constituencies didn’t get to choose their candidate. They were all appointed, many right at the very last minute. It also meant that there was no time to train and support those candidates properly after selection, and no time for them to grow their constituencies.
Any campaigner worth their salt knows that having a candidate in place, building a team and showing leadership, drives up campaigning activity. That’s just common sense, and we have clear stats to prove it.
Yet we insist on sticking with a system that delivers too few candidates, and too late on in the election cycle.
Clarity and diversity
Not only that – it’s an impenetrable system for many candidates. No clear timetable for selections. No clear deadlines to get approved by. How is anyone wanting to stand for us expected to navigate that unless they have years of personal connections in the party?
This lack of clarity will also almost certainly put off most those people with the most diverse backgrounds. If we’re serious about diversity, we’ve got to change. We talk a lot about our diversity matters to us as party – here is a chance to actively demonstrate that.
Support for candidates
We also need to consider how we support those who do get selected. We cannot reasonably ask campaigns staff to design and deliver a training and mentoring programme for selected candidates, when all we can tell them is that they’ll get a couple of candidates a week for the next three years, who are scattered at random across the country.
To be very clear, I hugely admire the hard working volunteers in our current candidates system. They work long hours doing thankless tasks and rarely get the recognition their dedication deserves. For their benefit too, we need to change.
Resources
We need more resource to help train the next generation of Returning Officers, and provide the senior, professional support our State and Regional Candidates Chairs need to run a modern candidates’ function. We’ve been told for twenty years that a lack of Returning Officers is a big problem – so let’s dedicate some real resource to fixing it!
Modernising now
A wise soul once said that the very definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
But that’s what we’ve been doing. And if F10 doesn’t pass then we’ll just be doing it again.
My 2019 General Election Review pulled no punches. It revealed some hard truths. But we have learnt from those, and the whole party is much stronger for it. Modernising our approach to candidate selection is unfinished business, and we can’t wait any longer. The clock is ticking.
That’s why, this time, we’ve got to vote for change.
Please support F10 on Saturday.
* Baroness Dorothy Thornhill was the first directly elected Mayor of Watford.
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7 Comments
“Any campaigner worth their salt knows that having a candidate in place, building a team and showing leadership, drives up campaigning activity. That’s just common sense, and we have clear stats to prove it.”
Absolutely!
And please let us have constituency parties rather than District parties, Constituencies have a direct interest in encouraging District activity. The converse often doesn’t happen so that no organisation is created and maintained whatsoever. Totally demotivating.
@Graham Jeffs – on constituency parties. I think it does depend on local circumstances.
In Kingston we have a Borough wide local party. This includes the whole of Ed Davey’s constituency of Kingston & Surbiton, plus parts of two other constituencies, Richmond Park and Wimbledon, which means we are (we think) the only local party with three Lib Dem MPs – as well as having 42 out of 48 seats on the Council. So it can work!
Yes, it does require careful management and collaboration as we switch between fighting constituency and council campaigns. But given that in almost all cases running a Council is the precursor to gaining a constituency, it does make sense to focus on that initially.
With the greatest respect to Baroness Thornhill, you argue for change yet nowhere do you explain why changing responsibility for candidates to a federal committee will resolve the problems of candidate selection. How will a new federal committee recruit the much needed and severely lacking returning officers if the current system cannot? How will a federal committee enable ‘professionalism’ and why cannot we be professional with the present system?
I have carefully read F10 and all I can see that it does is take away power from regions and states and give it to a Federal Committee instead. How this is going to change the problems of process no one seems to know or be willing to say.
The whole thing smacks of doing something because some has to be done.
I am not unwilling to be convinced, but so far the solution offered does not appear to be valid
I have no views yet on F10, not having had time to read the motion or info from CEO and President. But at the end of the day the candidates we end up with in no hope seats are not being candidates to take on the role of a candidate in working with the local party, but a last minute arm twist that we have to have someone.
We never saw at least 3 candidates in our 2 constituencies, at all.
Even if one had a candidate that worked, they are told not to do anything when the election is called which must be dispiriting. I know as much as anyone we need to target, and very glad we did, getting the result we did.
it is different for me, i can phone anywhere, and do.
I am not picking up anything about getting more people wanting to be candidates, or about there role in an election.
We have tried hard, talking to people at conference, trying to lure young LDs with accommodation, use of equipment and not have to fork out money, but it never worked.
Whilst at it, what about recruiting agents. The last time I stood in 2001 it was so very difficult needing to be my own agent in all but name for official reasons in both constituencies and picking up work in the next one too.
Is any of this arguing about F10 going to throw light on this?
“there are still people arguing we don’t have a problem, and there’s no need for change”
Are there? I think it’s widely acknowledged that there is a problem, some are just questioning whether F10 as written is the answer.
I have to agree with Mike that this is for appearances and with Suzanne that it will not address the real issues at hand.
And all with a proposal that will decrease democracy in the party, no matter which way you slice it.
We have serious issues recruiting new volunteers and maintaining those that we do have. It doesn’t help that we often don’t properly support candidates and volunteers, or show proper appreciation for them.
It doesn’t matter much if you choose a candidate sooner if you don’t support them.
From the communications so far, it seems that a lot of this has come about because of the data the party has collected. Data is all well and good, but it does not take into account the human factor: despondent members are not going to help or help as much if they don’t feel valued. And no, the odd platitude is not enough.
Usually, I don’t care much for this grandstanding and keep out of it, but as in this case it is centralising power and going against the core principles of the party, I can’t support it and I feel like I must speak out.
The seat I stood in in 2005 had two ex PPCs from that seat (one with strong local connections) considering going again in 2024 – one with minority heritage, one with a disability.
Neither were able to get through the system in time. There is absolutely no allowance made for those fully approved as candidates, who have seen the heat of General Election battle, but have then sat out an election or two (goodness knows they have been coming along like buses in recent years) for caring, health or career reasons. There is no institutional memory of previous commitment – you have to start all over again!
I have nothing against all those in the F10 marching band (except that they are mainly people who don’t normally bother with LDV!) but how would F10 change the scenario I have outlined?