Yesterday, I wondered about the impact of proposed changes to how the Party manages candidate approval and selection in relation to my current role as a member of my Regional Candidates Committee. I wasn't convinced that it left me with much of a role.
But it did lead me to take a closer look at the proposals, and the more I look, the less I like it.
At the moment, each State Candidates Committee has responsibility for establishing a list of approved Parliamentary candidates, determining how they will be approved and what the processes are for selecting candidates in each parliamentary constituency. It isn't perfect - there were always issues about whether an approval under the Welsh system was valid in England, and vice versa, although as the systems converged, and the Scots and Welsh Parties effectively adopted the systems developed in England, these problems tended to fade to insignificance.
What does tend to "gum up" the system is:
- a lack of people willing to be approved as Parliamentary candidates
- a lack of people willing to be trained as candidate assessors - it's a pretty full-on responsibility
- a lack of Returning Officers - likewise it's a pretty labour intensive role requiring a varied set of skills
- an unwillingness from some Local Parties to select earlier rather than later
In other words, it's mostly human resources which get in the way of the best intentions of a group of volunteers.
And so, the proposal intends to solve these problems by centralising the process - "professionalising" as the text of the motion reads. From my perspective, it isn't clear to me how changing who manages the process will actually address the shortages of volunteers to actually run it. Indeed, the motion is silent on it, and there has been seemingly no effort to explain.
Now far be it for me to suggest that this proposal has not been drafted with any consideration for the "poor bloody infantry" who deliver most of the candidate selection and approval activity, all of whom are volunteers, but I am aware that there has been no meaningful consultation with those in key positions on State Candidates Committees, and that this proposal has been rushed through in the light of a report which was only published seven weeks ago.
In other words, the General Election Review report has been published, its findings endorsed by Federal Board, and a major change to the party's constitutional arrangements drafted in just five weeks. You'll pardon me if that doesn't suggest that any consultation that might have taken place was perfunctory at best.
Personally, I am unconvinced, noting that those people who spent the past five years at the coal face of candidate approval and selection don't appear wildly impressed either by the General Election Review or by this proposal.
But this may not be the worst of it...
