Candidate selection: this may not be as easy as you think it is…

There was a lot of talk in Harrogate about the importance of “career structure” in relation to potential candidates, and that having a selection schedule would help candidates plan their moves beyond the short-term. It was also asserted, although it was never made clear to me why, that it would improve the diversity of our candidates.

Now this is not exactly a new concept and I am aware that I was talking about career structures for potential candidates nearly two decades ago. But there are some hurdles that need to be overcome.

Firstly, control of a selection timetable currently sits with the Local Parties. They, or at least their Executive Committees, decide that they’re ready, seek the appointment of a Returning Officer and, theoretically, off they go. Of course, there has to be one available, and the basic rules of supply and demand kick in here. It does get more complex if more than one Local Party is involved, because you need to confirm the approval of each of them before you proceed. It would be fair to note that some Local Parties are more engaged than others.

Presuming that the selection timetable is to come from the newly empowered Joint States Candidates Committee, there is therefore a working presumption that conversations will be had to ensure that any such schedule has buy-in from the appropriate Local Parties, unless there is a currently unannounced suggestion that such power might be taken away. I don't have any reason to believe that any such suggestion exists.

Secondly, if you're serious about giving candidates as much notice as possible in order to do the groundwork in advance, there needs to be at least the making of a schedule. If that already exists, then all is good. if it doesn't, we've effectively delayed the start of selections supposedly urgently sought.

My gut feeling is that, in order to satisfy at least the spirit of what has been promised, we need to do the things outlined in my post on Sunday, i.e.

• thrash out a provisional timetable which includes as many seats as possible, in accordance with the plan that Campaigns presumably either has or soon will have

• advise the Local Parties where they fit into that schedule (although hopefully, the Campaigns Team will have had those conversations already)

• tell everybody what that timetable is

• arrange some approval days to handle potential applicants and schedule them

• appoint some Returning Officers for those seats on the early part of the schedule

Only then can we start selections. How much time do we need? Well, we possibly need to establish who is now responsible for what, which is a bit of an open question, especially as we don't have a widely-known timetable for State Party ratification. The organisers behind the adopted constitutional amendment may find that, if they want urgent action, they are somewhat reliant on the people they rather carelessly upset in the first place.

Now I freely acknowledge that I may be giving the impression of ever so slightly enjoying this. I'm not. But I know a little about human beings and how they operate, and you might not be reasonable in expecting a bunch of people who felt rather trashed by recent events to then put their shoulders to the wheel to make it all work.

I'll be encouraging my colleagues in the East of England to move as fast as we are allowed but, rest assured, I will be attempting to synthesise what was promised in the debate into something that can be delivered.

A wounded, but still feisty, Regional Candidates Committee meets…

Occasional readers (and in fairness, this is an occasional blog these days) will recall that in the dying days of last year, I was elected to my Regional Candidates Committee. I had a slightly naïve notion that, especially in the early stages of the Parliamentary cycle, my knowledge of both process and the rather less tangible morality and ethics aspects of candidate selection and approval might prove useful. And then it went quiet.

Someone rather better connected to the internal politics of the Liberal Democrats might have wondered if it wasn’t too quiet. But that really isn’t me now - you forget just how connected you are as a Regional Officer, especially in London.

The publication of the General Election Review did lead to a slight indrawing of breath at the claim that the candidate system is broken (“English Candidates Committee aren’t going to like that.”, I thought) but I didn’t put two and two together until the publication of the Constitutional Amendment F10, effectively withdrawing key functions from the State Candidates Committees.

It wasn’t, and it remains, wholly unclear how a repurposed Federal Committee, with a majority of members with no experience of candidate system management, will “fix” the system and there had evidently been little or no consultation with English Candidates Committee, so one might imagine that, three days before the debate in Harrogate, a first meeting of our Committee might be less than entirely positive.

The agenda was, pretty much in its entirety, a discussion of what had happened, how we perceived the proposal, and what we might do next. One of the problems with a constitutional amendment which is justified by a not easy to deny sense that the system is broken but without any suggestion as what the fixes might be, is that people tend to assume the worst - that it’s a power grab (which it is), or that Local Parties will lose the power to decide who their candidate will be (unlikely, but hold that thought for another day).

And, as a result, we were unable to agree, either as individuals or as a committee, to supporting the proposals.

I did raise two matters of ‘Any Other Business’, however, suggesting that we invite the Regional Campaigns Officer to talk us through their aims for 2025 and where we might fit into that, and that we would write to the seven MPs across the Region to courteously remind them that we’ll be coming to them in the summer of 2027 to ascertain their intention to re-stand (or otherwise), in accordance with the current rules.

We’ve agreed to both, so I have at least made a contribution early…

Coming soon to Suffolk - Local Government Reform and Devolution

It’s now more than a week (but feels so much longer) since I chaired the recent Mid Suffolk Forum of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils. And, unsurprisingly, the main item on the agenda was moves to abolish the current Borough, County and District Councils and replace them with some sort of Unitary arrangement.

In Suffolk, previous attempts have run aground on the inability of the parties to agree. The County Council always wants a Unitary County, whilst the Districts don’t, and Ipswich wants the biggest unit that Labour can reliably control, some sort of “Greater Ipswich”.

In 2009, when Hazel Blears was promoting her own reorganisation agenda, we ran through pretty much that pattern, made more opaque by her apparent willingness to contort the stated criteria in order to achieve her desired goals. Not exactly gerrymandering, but not exactly just either. In the end, the promise by both opposition parties to scrap the whole thing, combined with the passing of time, did for the proposals.

This time, Jim McMahon laid down some criteria which seemed to rule out many potential options - a target population of 500,000 and a county with a population of 780,000 rather pointed to a County Unitary solution. But, unlike in 2009, when the Conservatives dominated the Districts here, now, Babergh, East Suffolk and West Suffolk are run by rainbow coalitions, whilst Mid Suffolk is dominated by the Greens. And none of them are keen on a County Unitary.

There has been some rowing back by the Minister too. Rumours that he’d be happy with a 4 or 5 Unitary solution for Norfolk and Suffolk combined (an average of 320,000 residents for each) create a whole new set of possibilities - Greater Norwich and Greater Ipswich (both good for Labour), a possible reincarnation of “Yartoft”, a bringing together of two struggling port towns plus a rural hinterland straddling the county boundary - but makes reaching an agreed decision that bit less likely.

We were to receive a presentation on behalf of the County Council and, in fairness, Andrew St Ledger, standing in for the County Chief Executive (I might have dressed more formally had I thought she was coming), made a decent stab at explaining things.

There were questions. Smaller Councils, such as my own, are concerned about potential asset transfers as the new cash-poor Council(s) withdraws from non-statutory activities. How does Drinkstone, or Creeting St Peter, cope with the financing of newly-acquired assets? Or, in the case of Stradbroke, a relatively small village with a leisure centre which serves a large geographical hinterland, how can the tax base cope if responsibility falls back onto it?

We talked of clusters, and how they might be organised, of the seemingly deliberate failure of the Conservative Group on Suffolk County Council to share their plans with Opposition councillors in real time. But it was an hour or so extremely well-spent, I thought.

I also got in a gentle dig at Suffolk County Council for its past failure to respond to Parliamentarian requests for briefings on reorganisation plans. Once again, Peers have been forgotten which, given that the required secondary legislation will receive most scrutiny in the Upper House, strikes me as churlish and potentially problematic. That might have struck home, given that Andrew St Ledger appears to be far more capable, and considerably more engaged than Stephen Meah-Sims did last year (albeit that this isn’t a high bar).

I do think that there is a genuine desire to include our sector in the planning of the new local government arrangements for Suffolk, which suggests that some lessons have been learnt. But there are still six months to go before final proposals are required, so I suspect much energy will be expended, and much debate had, before then.

F10 is passed overwhelmingly. Now the work begins…

I have made my position clear on the proposal to change who manages the candidate pipeline. And, whilst the speeches in favour were impassioned, and the problems outlined all too genuine, I remain unconvinced that “moving the deckchairs” actually does anything to address the complex issues that make approving and selecting candidates so challenging.

I did, and still do, support the espoused goals of the movers. All of the issues they raised in terms of diversity, democracy and career development are entirely valid and should be the focus of all of us involved in the “candidate pipeline”.

But the status quo offered a pretty poor defence, and the constitutional amendment was overwhelmingly carried. That’s democracy. And so we move on. I’m not entirely sure who takes on that mantle but, having won, I presume that more detail will emerge.

There is the small matter of State Party approval, and I would hope that English Council will simply acknowledge events and not put obstacles in the way, which "might" delay the transition. In the meantime, as a member of a Regional Candidates Committee, we’ll have to sit down and work out what we do whilst that transition happens.

It’s clear what our campaigners want, and we need to think about how we deliver that in the near term.

My gut feeling, and this is only a first instinctual draft, is to

• thrash out a provisional timetable which includes as many seats as possible, in accordance with the plan that Campaigns presumably either has or soon will have

• advise the Local Parties where they fit into that schedule (although hopefully, the Campaigns Team will have had those conversations already)

• tell everybody what that timetable is

• arrange some approval days to handle potential applicants and schedule them

• appoint some Returning Officers for those seats on the early part of the schedule

We’ll have to assume that the Selection Rules recently passed by the English Party are effective until or unless someone tells us they aren’t, but that’s a (potential) problem for another day.

There was talk of a different role for Regional Candidates Committees, of pastoral care and support. Traditionally, we saw our role, and indeed, it was defined, as process focused, so some of us, myself included, might not have the skill set for that. Training and support were delivered by others, whereas we were rather more neutral arbiters of an occasionally challenging HR process. Indeed, I used my skills as a Returning Officer as a springboard to apply for, and get, a job running high volume internal recruitment schemes for my employer.

I was damned good at running systems and ensuring that they respected vacancy holders and applicants alike, but I wasn’t much good at dealing with the personal issues of colleagues.

But we’ll see. Ultimately, I’d like to see what emerges from this process, so that I can determine where, or if, I have a useful role to play.

A brief sojourn with my Council colleagues

Monday saw me heading to Creeting St Peter for our final meeting of the 2024/25 fiscal year. I have to admit that it feels a little odd to be chairing a Council that serves a community that I no longer live in, but I still feel that I’m making a contribution, and until my colleagues conclude that they’d be better off without me, I’m happy to serve.The agenda was a fairly light one, but with a vacancy and a colleague unable to attend, it was mostly a meeting of noting reports.We did discuss the proposals for local government reform, benefiting from the presence of our County Councillor, Keith Welham, and one of our two District Councillors, Ross Piper.It’s all rather unsatisfactory, as there’s no sense of agreement between the two key players - the County Council on one hand, who want a unitary County, and the massed ranks of the four Districts and one Borough, who want two or three smaller Unitaries. And there’s an awful lot of “well, if we got this arrangement, we could do that”, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.But rather than waste time in conjecture, we made our way through the rest of the business. That included a planning application regarding putting solar panels on the enormous shed which is the regional hub for The Range. Given that we’d been questioning why they weren’t required in the first place, we were hardly likely to object.The finances remain healthy, which as acting Responsible Finance Officer reassures me, although I am beginning to think that we need to think about a reserves policy going forward.We ended things reasonably promptly, and I was offered a lift back to Needham Market by Ross, who I hadn’t really had an opportunity to talk to up until then. Whilst we come from different parties, I am convinced that he merely wants to put something back into our community and he is certainly keen to take up our issues where he can.Our next meeting isn’t until May, when it will be time for the Annual Parish and Annual Parish Council Meetings. I ought to start thinking about my report, I guess…

More thoughts on those proposed changes to the way the Party manages candidates

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...

Am I to be abolished just as I was getting started?

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...