A daring thought #labourleader

Patrick over at his excellent blog, The Progress Report, did a post during Summer School on the session on Labour leadership. Have a look at his outline of the discussion.

I am not yet sure of it, but I think it is possible by the end of this year, the New Zealand Labour Party will have an institutional role for members in choosing the leadership of the Party.  We will, if that is so, be joining our fraternal parties around the world, and will be giving people a big new reason to join the party and be involved.

It seems obvious to me that in an age when deference has declined, when voters are better connected to politics (when they choose to be) than ever, and when parties are struggling for relevance, then a system of choosing the key leadership personnel that involves that wider membership in a meaningful way is important.

One of the reasons I helped set up the run of leadership meetings we held last year, was with the hope that modelling a more open process for leadership change would create an appetite for further steps in that direction.  If Summer School is anything to go by, that's precisely what has happened.

The process we choose will be important.  My view is that in a country as small as this, we should do our best to keep it deliberative.  We could, as Patrick suggests, have an electoral college model between the Caucus, Members and Affiliates, and that would work for me to a degree with postal ballots for the latter two, and in person ballots for the Caucus.

But we are a small country and actually, almost every member should be able if they wish to get along to a meeting to hear the candidates debate, to talk with fellow members about what is most important to them, and so on.  That would lead to a better set of choices being made, and reduces the chances of a "populist" leader being able to just woo a disconnected membership in a plebiscitory fashion that doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of judgement, deliberation, discussion and so on.

A way to do that could be to make sure the period of time the leadership question was open was long enough for a good solid series of meetings, and then to have some way that members and affiliated union members who showed up to the meetings had a double weight given to their votes compared with those who just relied on the media or other ways to come to their decision.

I'm not sure that's a good plan, but I think it's worth thinking about. I can see upsides and downsides to this approach, and to the whole notion of taking the decision into a bigger forum. 

There are benefits to the speedy decisions the Caucus can make today, and to containing the debate, the choosing of sides, and so on, to a very small group of people who will in the end be forced to work together afterwards.

I think those benefits are outweighed by the simple issue of principle: that decisions about the leadership of the party should be in the hands of its members, not just the select few. The downsides would have to be managed, but the fact most left wing parties do have a bigger constituency than just Caucus shows that this can be done.

What do you reckon? 

Do you think we'll be changing the system? 

Do you think an electoral college model works? 

Do you think it would be better to give more weight to people's choices if they participated in meetings and argued who they wanted to see win with their fellow members and supporters?

Comments

[Jason]

Politicians of all shades need to restore faith in the political process. And dare I say it in the politicians themselves.

We are starting to see the mask come off the present government on what they are really going to do about particular policies.

Looking at the mainstream debates in newspapers / comments section doesn't seem to show any more enlightenment. More the same old bandwagons

Electoral college clearly does not work at all in the US.

The trick is to get a process that facilitates debate but avoids the echo chamber & the outliers.

[BrendonRS]

Hi Jordan,
I see where you're coming from with the effort to give more weight to the votes of people who actively engage in the process, but I think the way that you define that engagement has got to be crucial. Surely in this modern age the days of the town hall debate are numbered, especially in this sort of context. Someone who goes along to one local meeting and listens to some speeches is not necessarily any more informed than someone who can't or won't go along to a meeting.
It would be nice to think that anyone who's gone to the trouble to join the party (and made the required financial contribution that goes along with that) will also go to the trouble to ensure they're reasonably well informed about the options before voting for a candidate.

[James Shaw]

Why not go the whole hog and give all members a vote and leave it at that? Labour has a pretty broadbased membership - a one member, one vote system mitigates against capture by particular interest groups.

University student associations have been managing to get something like a 40% turnout for the presidential and executive elections amongst their 10-30,000 members for several years now using online methods.

I don't think you should give more weight to those who show up at meetings. Turnout at meetings tends to be a tiny fraction of the party membership and discriminates against those with heavy duty jobs and children.

Go online - even people with kids who work long hours can check out some YouTube videos and online chats. Using electronic voting with a higher turnout would be demonstrably more democratic and thus give the leader a stronger mandate than simply those voting in a meeting.

The Greens have a series of meetings around the country and a televised debate if we can arrange it. Branches discuss who they want to cast their vote for, which is then done by delegates at a national conference.

If you were to go direct to your members using online media and voting, you'd go one up on us.