Yesterday, for the second time in the space of six months, one of my local Liberal Democrat councillors resigned the party whip. Two different geographical areas. Two entirely different sets of circumstances. But two similarly devastating impacts on the blood, sweat and tears of hard working local activists.
The first occasion was in Rochdale this summer. After our previous council leader Andy Kelly lost his Milnrow & Newhey seat by a meagre 15 votes a year earlier local activists worked around the clock to help deliver a stunning victory this May with a 700 plus majority in a general election year and in so doing return the party to ‘group status’ on the council. Or so we thought. Less than a month later our other long standing councillor, Peter Rush, crossed the floor to join Labour and we were back to square one.
Fast forward six months and you find me living in Edinburgh. Last night I learnt that our Almond Ward councillor, Alastair Shields, has resigned the party whip after losing out in his recent re-selection contest to local activist Kevin Lang. Cllr. Shields will now sit as an independent until May 2017. As a result the Lib Dem presence on Edinburgh City Council is reduced from three to two.
We see this happening time and time again and not just in our own party. Too many individuals are putting their own personal agendas above and beyond the needs of the party and the constituents that they were elected to represent.
This is not to say that I am arguing in favour of tribal politics and tribal politicians. Far from it. I myself have changed political party on several occasions over the years as both my own views have evolved over time and/or the party I have been a member of has drastically changed direction. The point I am making is that, having been elected to public office on a particular manifesto, you are duty bound to stay and try and enact that manifesto as best as you can. If you change your political views then fine, but let the electorate give you a mandate to show that they agree with you. This should apply whether you are joining another party or simply resigning the whip to stand as an independent.
I think that now is the time to introduce ‘mandatory’ by-elections for occasions where the party whip is resigned or changed. There should be exceptions, for example where someone is forced to resign the whip following allegations of wrongdoing. In such an instance the individual should be allowed to stay until the process of investigation is complete and they then either take up the whip again or are forced to resign. In all other instances a by-election should immediately be triggered. If you genuinely think your decision is in the best interests of your constituents then convince them of your arguments. Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless did just that a year ago in a rare moment of integrity for UKIP.
I will using my new position on the Scottish Executive to argue for a mandatory declaration to be signed by all our Scottish candidates in any election. The declaration would commit the individual to resigning their seat and forcing a by-election if they resigned the party whip in any circumstances except those that were not of their own choosing.
We are Liberals. We believe in freedom of expression and we know that there are many occasions when our elected representatives won’t see eye to eye with the party’s local or national hierarchy. However we also have a duty to our membership and to the electorate. Deciding to stand in an election on a party label carries a weight of responsibility. It is time our MPs, MEPs, MSPs and Cllrs chose to exercise it.
* Dawud Islam is a member of the Scottish Executive and the editor of LibDemHAME. He writes in a personal capacity.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Back on the campaign trail
1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus
Have resignations led to a rethink?
nigel hunter
Chloe
Abrial Jerram
25 Comments
How does a signed commitment with a Party you’ve just resigned work exactly? Are you planning to try to enforce it through law (and if so, good luck with that) or their sense of duty to the party they just left… Oh.
We elect representatives as individuals. If we decide they are just party placemen then why have by-elections at all? Surely the defector should just be automatically replaced by someone nominated by their original party.
The key word is “representatives”. Legislatures are not electoral colleges, and their members are not delegates, pledged to vote for a particular party line. They are individuals, elected to perform a role according to their own judgement. If this means choosing to support a party other than the one they originally supported, then so be it. Dawud’s suggestion would give too much power to party whips, who could threaten any wayward representative with withdrawal of the whip, triggering a by-election.
I agree with Dawud’s sentiment, but the practicality just isn’t workable.
I agree with Dawud. I think it’s appalling that people leave a party to further their own careers, while leaving activists in the lurch. Re Alex’s assertion that “we elect representatives as individuals” I don’t think that’s necessarily true for everybody. For example an ardent Tory would likely vote for a Tory councillor, regardless of the individual. I know in my own constituency a lot of Labour voters supported a candidate who lied in his campaign leaflets, because they wanted a Labour majority, for example. The same idea goes for councillors.
What Alex Macfie said: we elect individuals, and this is just another way to get more identikit politicians who just toe the party line. If someone is expelled from their party for following their conscience, should they have to face re-election too?
The point I am making is that, having been elected to public office on a particular manifesto, you are duty bound to stay and try and enact that manifesto as best as you can. If you change your political views then fine, but let the electorate give you a mandate to show that they agree with you. …..
2010-2015, perhaps?.
By “we elect representatives as individuals” I am referring to the constitutional position. Voters may decide to vote for someone purely because of the party label, and that is entirely up to them. Maybe this is what happens the great majority of the time. I do not, however, think it would be practical or desirable to entrench in our laws or constitution the idea that representatives are there at the party’s behest and can be removed at the request of their party machines. As Tim pointed out, it is not practically possible for us as a party to introduce a requirement for our party candidates to resign their seats if they defect, as it would probably be unenforceable, and the change in law required to make it enforceable (essentially giving legal backing to party discipline) would not be desirable at all.
I disagree. Your duty on being elected to public office is to serve your constituents according to your own judgement. Circumstances change; manifesto commitments are overtaken by events, or prove to be unpopular or unworkable. Do you consider that the Tories were “duty bound” to continue with the Poll Tax (a 1987 manifesto commitment)?
You could always try this, Dawud :
He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy! – YouTube
Video for you’re not the messiah you’re a very naughty boy▶ 0:10
I suspect that this will become a much reduced problem in Scotland after the Holyrood elections and the Council elections the following year.
This is very silly. If a Local Party selects someone who leaves them once elected, it appears to me to be very much their own responsibility. As it is also in the rather more frequent situations when they select someone who they wish would leave them but does not do so.
The idea that you’d defect to further your career prospects just isn’t realistic in most cases. In my (relatively short) time as a councillor, we’ve had defections from LD-> independent, Lab->Green, and Con-> UKIP. All tried to defend their seats and were thrashed (but the former LDs took enough votes to give Labour the seats).
The only exceptions would be those joining an administration party because of wanting to be part of it, or those believing their chances of holding their seat so remote in their current party.
For me, it’s quite the reverse – every time I’ve wondered whether I’m really in the right party, I look at what happened to the prior defectors, cut off from any serious party machine, support, and network. I think we have to recognise that people become councillors for very different reasons – some are out and out Lib Dems looking to further the Liberal cause, some just interested in serving community and seeing the LD party as a good vehicle to do so, and many in-between.
That’s why I think it would be so difficult to enforce anything like the thread suggests – we need to understand the motivation of why people have stood seriously for election, find ways to grow them into the role, so that defections are minimised. after every defection – was there anything we should have done to prevent that? Sometimes no – but we should always reflect.
Oh dear..
In May 2008 ….Julia Wassell, who stood for the Labour Party in the 2005 general election, has defected to the Liberal Democrats. She has quit the group on Wycombe District Council and Buckinghamshire County Council. She represented Labour at the district council and Bowerdean, Micklefield and Totteridge at the county council….
Cllr Wassell said: “The Liberal Democrats have welcomed me warmly and will be able to support my commitment to campaigning and casework in Wycombe.
Lib Dem spokesman Steve Guy said: “The Labour Party is in a whole heap of trouble”.”Mr Guy, set to represent the party at the next general election, said: “Labour has quite clearly lost its direction and lost touch with its grass roots people who have been lifeblood of the part…..
Strange how times, and morals, change….
Defections happen, and unfortunately in local politics I doubt it’s often about someone realising they belong in a different political family from an ideology perspective. The way to counter it is to bring more of a principled liberal politics to local party politics and to find a way of devolving more power to give more space for actual differentiation between the parties.
” has resigned the party whip after losing out in his recent re-selection contest to local activist ” and there is surprise??????
I don’t understand why Edinburgh Liberal Democrats felt the need to de-select a sitting Liberal Democrat councillor. As there is going be an STV election in a multi-member ward could they not just have two candidates and allow the electorate to choose which one they preferred?
The Liberal Democrats were created, in part, through defection. Twenty eight Labour MPs and one Conservative MP defected to the SDP and formed the Alliance with the Liberal Party. Only one defector decided to resign his seat and stand in a by-election. Additional MPs defected to the Liberal Democrats in 1995, 1996, 2001, and 2005.
So the evidence suggests that “We Liberals” think that defections are sometimes appropriate.
Several dozen Liberal MP’s defected from the Liberal Party post World War One and into the 1920’s- including many who had been opposed to the war. Hilary Benn’s grandfather.
was one of them. A lesson there for the present party leadership if anyone’s listening..
Detail in the download from Huddersfield University.
Download (462kB) – University of Huddersfield Repository
eprints.hud.ac.uk/11205/1/67_Shepherd_Flight_from_Liberal_Party.pdf
by J Shepherd – 2010
As to this article : Sound and fury signifying nothing.
I agree with those above who have pointed out that a mandatory rule for defectors OUT of the party to resign and force a byelection is obviously unenforceable.
The only way to make this change, if you really wanted to and you think byelections a la Carswell are an issue of principle, is to make a rule requiring defectors IN to the party to resign and force a byelection, and then call on other parties to follow suit.
Of course, you might get less defectors.
Any takers?
Given that we had one councillor who defected to the SNP and came back within a year in Scotland, I think this approach is premature.
Of course council candidates would sign such a commitment – they would probably at that time not foresee a situation where they would resign the party whip. However, how on earth would we enforce it? It would be beyond our control and as such a waste of time.
In my area a councillor left the party soon after being elected, and sat as an independent. Some of us were relieved. Nothing can be done to discipline the individual within the party after the individual has gone. I think the answer is prevention by rigorously checking people’s fundamental aims and values during the approval process. Wanting to be a councillor is not enough. Once someone holds a public office, s/he is very hard to remove, and in many ways that is good and empowers the people s/he represents. But though s/he is accountable to the electors, they are stuck with their choice until expiry of the term of office. Morally the person should resign but legally a change in the law is needed so electors could petition for a by-election.
“having been elected to public office on a particular manifesto, you are duty bound to stay and try and enact that manifesto as best as you can. ”
I think you will find that virtually no candidate of any party was ever elected to office because of any party manifesto. You could spend many hundreds of hours knocking on doors in most wards before you ever found one single person who had a clue about the content of any manifesto of any party or candidate.
We have a representative democracy. That means that the person we elect is entrusted to work for the entire population of the ward or constituency. If he or she feels that the best way to achieve that is to ally him/herself to a different Party then that is that.
It seems to me that the obvious way of tackling the issue of “we think defectors should always resign and stand for re-election” is not to demand that all current Lib Dem representatives sign a commitment to resign and stand again after leaving the party for another, but instead to make it a rule that no elected representative may join our party from another as a sitting councillor without first resigning and standing again for election. Turn the matter on its head!
The result of demanding that defectors get re-elected before defecting *to* us rather than *from* us would be setting a principled stand and one that would be very hard to criticise as any sort of self-interested move. Quite the opposite, it’s demonstrably disadvantageous to shun the straightforward acceptance of defectors without a test of electability.
However, if one believes that the principle is correct then perhaps we should consider it.
I think that Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless took a very principled and risky stand for which they should be congratulated.
Whatever people such as Tony Dawson say – regardless of whether the electorate actually know what’s in the manifesto and regardless of the fact that we have what is nomimally an elected person not a party, a significant majority, I would say, of all votes cast at a General Election are on party grounds. The situation may be more more blurred at local elections but I reckon it’s still the case. Defectors should stand for re-election.
(One could perhaps make an exception to the rule for councillors who were previously elected as independents because they demonstrably were not advantaged by nor sponsored any other party machinery in their election.
@David Raw
‘Hilary Benn’s grandfather. was one of them. ‘
He did it the honourable way. Resigned the seat he held as a Liberal and sought election (successfully) at a different seat as Labour.
Carswell and Reckless knew they were likely to win their by-elections. Principle had little if any role in the matter.
Regardless of how people vote in practice, I do not think we should, as a party, do anything that might institutionalise the idea that elected representatives are party delegates. This includes requiring defectors IN to stand for re-election (which is likely to result in potential defectors to us just sitting as independents).
Allowing petitions for recall of representatives on anything other than actual misconduct in office (Jo Hayes’ idea) is open to abuse, with anyone with an agenda able to petition and petition and petition for the removal of a representative they happen not to like.