I want us – as Liberal Democrats – to select great candidates, improve diversity in the party and empower our local parties to elect the best candidates to represent them. That’s why I’m backing motion F10 at conference – the one that seeks to implement the recommendations of the General Election Review around Westminster candidates.
I am doing so for two reasons:
- By reducing three committees to one it makes it easier to address the problems in our current candidates system;
- By creating a place on the committee for the Vice President responsible for increasing engagement with ethnic minority communities, candidate diversity finally becomes a keystone in our Westminster candidate system.
Now, I am sure many in the party can give you verbatim – in probably the most intricate of detail – the constitutional intricacies and implications of the motion. However, I wanted to share with you my personal story of my journey to becoming a candidate and how this has led me to strongly support real reform of our candidates system.
From the top, I wish to say that none of this is criticism of individuals involved in the process. This is criticism of the process itself that volunteers spend hours dedicating their time to administer and deliver. I am truly grateful to them for this, but I want the system -those volunteers have to work with -to be better for them and for candidates.
I am in the incredible position of writing this post as the first Liberal Democrat MP of East and South East Asian origin, and the first MP for the newly formed seat of Harpenden and Berkhamsted. When my mother arrived from Malaysia 50 years ago, I don’t think she could have imagined that such a thing was possible. And yet here I am.
Becoming a candidate is not easy. I should quickly add that nor should it be. It is right that we are put through our paces. But becoming a candidate shouldn’t be made harder by the inadequacies of our own systems and processes, inadequacies which frankly stand in the way of us improving our candidate diversity.
Life goes on hold during a selection. I get that, I get that we are competing to be one of the very lucky few who get the chance to sit on the green benches. It’s absolutely a competition worth being in the running for. But that doesn’t negate the very real struggle that would-be candidates have when juggling selection campaigning with their day job. The answer to which is often taking substantial amounts of time off work and bearing the financial implications as best you can. For me, this was magnified three-fold.
In the last Parliament, due to a combination of boundary changes and other factors I had to stand in three selections for essentially the same seat. That’s right, three! On its own this was frustrating, but largely not a fault of our system. However, what was incredibly challenging was that my experience of each of those three selections – selections that should have been run in exactly the same way – was entirely different.
We had different expense limits for each one, in one case no prior notification when the selection actually started, inconsistent determination of rules, being told votes would land on a specific date only to discover as I knocked on doors they had already landed. The list of discrepancies went on and on.
In the end, I got there, and I am forever grateful to all of those who made it possible. But it was by battling against our processes and systems, rather than working with and being supported by them, that I did.
There needs to be an overhaul of our candidates system so that it supports and reflects the needs of the broad range of candidates we wish to attract to the party. Not all would-be candidates will be retired, independently wealthy and caring responsibility-free. I myself only made it through with the help of a lot of people and the financial support of diversity programmes. Until we have a candidate system that recognises this, the diversity of our candidate pool will remain constrained.
If we’re to tackle diversity and ensure local members have a choice of the best candidates, we must remove some of the unnecessary barriers to selection. By having just one committee, not three, drawing up the rules and consulting widely on them and, by having someone on that committee specifically responsible for ensuring diversity implications are considered at all times, I believe motion F10 can be the start of the change we need.
* Victoria Collins has been the Liberal Democrat MP for Harpenden and Berkhamsted since July 2024.
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19 Comments
In this age of diversity & DEI, it goes to show what a remarkable achievement a woman brought up above a greengrocers shop and getting to Oxford in the 1940s and doing a science degree. One wonders how she managed.
@ Craig Levene I’m afraid the said person left a wasteland behind without any serious effort to revitalise the former colliery areas. Calling the salt of the earth ‘the enemy within’ is hard to forgive.
I don’t really get the connection to diversity here. If I’ve understood this article correctly, Victoria is arguing for simplifying the process for selecting candidates. I have no views on whether that’s desirable or not, but I would expect that if it was done, it would simplify the process for all candidates, of whatever gender/ethnicity/etc., and therefore benefit all candidates equally? So why the claim that it will help diversity?
Point is David , she got where she was on merit. Intellectually she towers above those that followed , and will go down in history – wether we like it or not one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers. All achieved without having been part of a quota or dei programme.
I don’t doubt Thatcher was a force, but I’m sorry, Craig, there have been been British Prime Ministers who came from a much less privileged background than Mrs Thatcher (Ramsay Mac, Lloyd George, Major to name but three) – and a fair number who were not married to a multi-millionaire who supported their political activities.
As someone who was politically active as a Liberal throughout the Thatcher years – and remember the casualties and pain she caused – I wasn’t surprised when her own party eventually defenestrated her.
@ Craig Levene, “Intellectually she towers above those that followed”.
Actually, no, Craig. Whatever else you may think of him, Gordon Brown got a First at Edinburgh and then went on to complete a very well thought of PhD after he had lost the sight in one eye following an accident.
Very surprised to see Margaret Thatcher described as towering intellectually.
She herself certainly did not see herself in those terms at all: indeed went out of her way to surround herself and take advice from clever(er) intellectuals.
Surely, Thatcher stood out by her strength of character – a dominant personality, who was nevertheless well aware of her intellectual limitations.
She went to Oxford; she was not a fool; but so many of our PMs have been to Oxbridge.
You need to rethink what made Thatcher a towering figure. And David Raw has only touched on the damage she wrought by her blindness to the consequences of some of her policies.
For anyone thinking that exceptional intelligence is a good trait in a Prime Minister, I offer Enoch Powell as a warning. After graduating from Cambridge he became a Professor at age 25 (in Greek, at Sydney), had a glittering military career which included becoming the youngest Brigadier in the British Army and became MP for Wolverhampton South West in 1950. Yet all he is remembered for now is his “rivers of blood” speech. Equally, one cannot understand Margaret Thatcher’s anti-union policies if you do not know that she grew up as a daughter of a small shopkeeper in Grantham where the threat to their livelihoods came from the Co-op, as Eliza Filby’s biography of her makes clear. That plus her father being a Methodist lay preacher who instilled in her the Protestant work ethic goes a long way to understanding her, whether you agree with her views or not.
Chris. Whatever we may think – a grocers daughter who grew up above the shop in a Lincolnshire market town , went onto achieve the highest office in the land on three consecutive occasions. She will go down in history as one of UK’s greatest post war PM’s. She never required Dei or a quota from CCHQ.
Yes, Craig, I don’t disagree that she was one of Britain’s greatest PMs. But this was NOT because of her “towering intellect”.
Her greatness has to be parsed in other more cogent ways.
Some folk on here seem to think that Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of some sort of impoverished working class hero from a deprived background.
Not so, I’m afraid. Former Alderman Alfred Roberts was a Councillor, an Alderman and J.P. . He was a Methodist lay preacher, President of the Grantham Rotary Club and a Governor of the Kings School, Grantham. He was also a director of the Grantham Building Society and the local Trustee Savings Bank. I don’t know whether he was a Freemason, but it fits the pattern. He was not short of a bob or two and bought his first business in Grantham with family money (from a leather business). He supported the Conservative candidate in successive parliamentary elections. (Source : the Grantham Newslette website).
I don’t think that (“towering above her successors”) Maggie got a First at Oxford because I’m pretty sure she would have told us all about it if she had.
David & Chris ; Nobody said she had an impoverished upbringing. The comment clearly states , that to get into Oxford in the 40s and doing a science degree was in itself a significant achievement, especially given her background. The intellect reference is to those that came after her. Being , as Chris acknowledged, one of Britain greatest pm’s , of course she looms large over those that came later. But the main thrust of the argument is that she came from a humble background and went onto achieve what she did on merit.
Forget to mention Alf Roberts was also a Mayor of Grantham.
If Craig Levene wants ‘a towering intellectual from Oxford’ he could, of course, opt for a West Yorkshire Liberal : Herbert Henry Asquith. Double First, Winner of all the prizes when at Balliol. Prime Minister from 1908-1916.
Unlike Maggie, from a single parent family – his Dad was killed when struck on the chest by a cricket ball playing in Huddersfield. But sadly, slowly lost his grip during WW1 according to some historians.
Judging by reports of several Lib Dem Councillors defecting in Buckingham (five of them) , Redcar, Hull, and Cheshire (Reform in Cheshire would you believe ?) – it’s high time the party got a grip on the selection procedures for Councillors as well as PPC’s.
Sticking a name on the ballot paper and hoping for the best ought to be long gone.
@ Thelma Davies With great respect (and I mean it, Thelma), there was nothing humble about Alf Roberts. I’m afraid I stick to what I, and all the other Lib parliamentary candidates, said in 1983……. Mrs Thatcher was a destructive… indeed imperious.. force.
I welcome Victoria’s lived experience. The party has to listen and learn from what she has said. Victoria is quite right simplification and centralisation brings the candidate function in to a more professional less bureaucratic setting. I am concerned that a party that has a preamble such as ours needs so many safeguards to make sure minority communities get treated fairly within our party.
There is no alternative to differing rules for differing types of seats. With target seats, that this motions seems to be principally interested in, they should be designed to ensure we can put the best possible candidate in front of the electorate at the earliest opportunity. This might mean campaigns taking over the selection process.
For most other seats it is important that local democracy works i.e. local parties control the selection process and timetable within limits.
In all selections, putting the potential candidates in front of the members of the constituency is essential to ensure as many members as possible support the candidate in any way they can and to promote local party autonomy.
Well done on all fronts to Victoria-long may you be Victorious! But reading the comments says it all for me: Going down rabbit holes on Thatcher’s legacy is a distraction, not just from the key message here, but what is at stake. Do we wake up and look at who our electorate is? Then shake ourselves up on Class (yes socioeconomic inequality is an EDI issue too!), Race, Disability & Sex? Right now it is vital that we start thinking Equality & Equity-the fight to reflect the diversity of the people we serve now & in future has nothing to do with removing merit based assessments. It has everything to do with not missing out on talent & great people, who but for historic barriers of bias, or racism & even stigma around Disability-end up left behind. I very much welcome the presence & visibility of diversity of our party. Not just because I’m Black, or for the sake of my four adult Black daughters. It is because if we want to lead the nation, we don’t just need great policy, and of course great people-we need to be electable. In a shifting demographic who are we mobilising to come out to vote? If our electorate don’t see themselves reflected in our party-why will they lend us their vote?