Having had what I might describe as "not the happiest experience" with my Regional Party four years ago, I decided that, perhaps, I ought to dip a toe back into the water. And so, I ran for, and was elected to, the Regional Candidates Committee.
As a former member of the English Candidates Committee, Senior Returning Officer and candidate assessor, I do know my way around the world of candidate selection and approval and, I like to think, I have some wider credibility amongst the "candidates fraternity" within the Party. In short, I though that I could be useful.
But change and uncertainty are seldom far away and, in this instance, this comes in the form of a rather lengthy motion/constitutional amendment which will come to Federal Conference later this month.
My attention was drawn to the proposed redrafting of Article 19.1 of the Federal Constitution which currently reads as follows:
Each State Party shall establish a Candidates Committee or provide for some or all of its functions to be discharged by another unit or units (and every such unit shall be deemed to be a State Candidates Committee for the purposes of this Article 19).
The revised version as proposed reads:
Each State Party shall establish a Candidates Committee in order to carry out its responsibilities for elections to the Westminster and European Parliaments as well as any elections to the House of Lords or its successor, including implementing the requirements set under Article 13.5.
This appears, on the face of it, to deny the right of State Candidates Committees to devolve some or all of their functions to Regional Candidates Committees which leads to the question:
What are Regional Candidates Committees for in this brave new world?
And, I have to admit, the answer appears to be "nothing".
I think that I'm going to have to ask some questions...
1 comment:
Adding here what I've said on social media in case readers haven't seen that:
No, no and no.
The most important 'no' - the motion isn't intending to abolish regional candidate committees, and I don't read it as having that effect. (Happy to have a longer discussion on that, though also this may be something to make clearer with a drafting amendment if I'm not persuasive! The key point is that the power under 19.1 to devolve powers from a state candidate committee to a regional one isn't the power under which the regional ones currently exist. So changing that power doesn't affect them in the way you worry it may.)
The other two 'no's are that (1) the motion going to conference is the proposal from the election review team, based on the work they've done, and (3) it's for conference to make the decision, not me.
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