If you’ve enjoyed our “Tales from the Duck House” films, take a look at this “making of…” video, featuring producer John Lloyd talking about what inspired him to role up his sleeves and dive in to the world of political reform.

We’ve also released a new duck video this week – watch a “Partly political broadcast” here.

Today, Open Up is launching its first major ad campaign in the national press. See if you can spot the ducks swimming through your favourite newspaper, or take a sneak preview now (click on the image, left, to enlarge it).

Jon Miller, who helped create the ads, says he took as his inspiration the inertia of Westminster:

“We’ve had the expenses scandal and the Kelly report – but what’s really changed? That’s why we liked the line “Another Day At The Duck House” – the MPs are just back to business as usual. It’s all over bar the grumbling – but that’s not good enough. We want real change, and that’s the message of this ad.”

In the week or so leading up to today’s publication of the Kelly report, as his recommendations slowly and inevitably leaked into the news ahead of time, one thing has been striking. And that is the contrast between MPs’ reactions to Kelly’s proposed changes, and the reaction of the general public.

While MPs have railed against travelling up to an hour by train home from Westminster instead of shoring up for the night in a city centre pied-a-terre at taxpayers’ expense, the general public have loudly compared this fairly reasonable journey home with their own daily commutes. And while MPs have pointed to the harm and heartbreak that will result in Kelly’s veto on the employment of family members (rather melodramatic, given that the recommendations will not come into force until after the general election, and even then, may well be watered down), the general public have looked at the employment and equality legislation which binds them, and scratched their heads in bemusement. MPs are not living in the real world, the public cry. From the outside, this looks true, and should be worrying: MPs have the power to shape the real world for the rest of us, after all.

The truth is that nothing that Parliament or Government have done since the expenses scandal has come close to addressing the fundamental question that scandal raised, namely, how can MPs and the general public see things so differently? How can they think it’s acceptable to use our money – above and beyond what we pay them to do their jobs – in order to enrich themselves on the property market, to pay their gardening bills, to even pay their accountants to organise the whole steal for them?

The only answer can be that the relationship between MPs and constituents is broken. Kelly’s recommendations will do nothing to mend it, nor will Legg’s iron fist. MPs may think we want to see them punished. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We want to bring the trust and respect that should exist between MPs and their constituents back from the dead. The first step towards doing that is resuscitating representative democracy through the introduction of open primaries.

The major party leaders have instructed “their” MPs to swallow everything Kelly and Legg throw at them. But it’s not a tightening, but a loosening of grip that is needed from party leaders now. The party leader who first backs Open Up’s call for open primaries in every constituency in the UK will be the person who has made the first step away from the expenses scandal and towards a brighter future. Because in doing so, he will have put power back where it belongs: in the hands of the people.

Here at Open Up, we’ve been following the story of Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Elizabeth Truss with interest. According to this report in the Guardian, members of the South West Norfolk Conservative association are considering deselecting Ms Truss, after it was revealed she had had an extra-marital affair with a Conservative MP – a fact she had apparently not disclosed to party members before her selection. Ms Truss is what’s known as an “A lister” – that is, she’s on a list of candidates drawn up by Conservative Central Office as a means of broadening the number of female and ethnic minority Conservative candidates, especially in safe seats.

The local party and those Conservatives aligned to the central office have been trading insults on blogs and in the press. But wouldn’t it be better if instead of spatting, the Conservatives gave the residents of South West Norfolk the opportunity to decide for themselves who represents them in the next Parliament, by holding an open primary? We think so, and that’s why we sent the local Conservative association a letter yesterday, reproduced in full below. We’ll keep you posted on how this develops.

Mr David Hills
Chairman, South West Norfolk Conservative Association
Shirley House
23 London Street
Swaffham
PE37 7DD

2nd November 2009

A return to local choice for South West Norfolk – Open Up

Dear Mr Hills,

Having read the article ‘Conservative leadership takes on local party faithful’ in the Guardian (31/10/09), I am writing to introduce the Open Up campaign and offer our support for local choice in South West Norfolk.

Open Up is a non-partisan campaign calling on political parties to hold Open Primaries in every constituency before the next General Election. Also, Open Up calls for all MPs standing in the general election to compete for re-selection through an Open Primary.

Open Up is not backed by any political party, candidate, association, or company—we are simply a group of people who feel the current political system doesn’t work in the interest of taxpayers and voters anymore.

We are deeply concerned that local constituents have little say into which candidates are deployed by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) to stand in the General Election. We believe that Open Primaries empower local people to select the candidate that’s right for their community.

The Conservative Party made a positive choice to hold an open primary in Totnes, and have committed to following suit in Gosport. We encourage the South West Norfolk Conservative Association to demand that CCHQ hold an Open Primary in your constituency—thus giving the choice back to the people of South West Norfolk.

Open Up can help in a number of ways, including making our experienced supporters available to answer any questions that might arise over the feasibility of holding an Open Primary. For example, Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University and a constitutional expert, would be delighted to answer any questions you might have. In addition—but only if you wish—Open Up can help drive positive media coverage of the primary. And of course we are open to all suggestions you may have about how we can assist.

This is a huge opportunity for South West Norfolk to join the success of Totnes, Bracknell and, soon, Gosport in transforming the political system to one that’s honest, effective, modern and democratic – a government of the best possible people representing local issues.

We want to feel proud of our politicians again, to feel proud of our government, to feel proud of our country. I will follow up this letter with a phone call to you, to see how we might move this forward.

Yours sincerely,

JOE HEWITT
www.openupnow.org

We are now two weeks into the campaign and media coverage is increasing nicely. The highlight of our week was appearing on Sky news last Thursday, with John Lloyd speaking about his involvement in the project, and underlining the need for political change. Our videos were also highlighted on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Show (you can watch it here).

In print, we hit the London Evening Standard, Times Online, Portsmouth News, Liverpool Daily Post and Wirral News. Author, former MP and political journalist Martin Bell showed his support for our campaign in an article in the Telegraph backing our pursuit of open primaries. On top of this, Sky news online posted up our duck films. The total number of viewings of the duck films has now reached a massive 33,000!

Twitter-wise, we have near-on 600 followers, with tweets about the campaign continuing to grow day by day.

Within the world of blogging, Open Up continues to be a subject of great debate, appearing on the Canvey Beat blog, as well as on openDemocracy’s network. From discussions by political commentator Iain Dale and Birkenhead MP Frank Field, it is clear to see our profile is rising and reaching the right ears and eyes. In fact, Frank Field has openly challenged the Open Up campaign to put their money where their mouth is and aid in the calling for an open primary in Birkenhead. Though we can’t fund a primary in Birkenhead, we have agreed to do all we can to help. We’re hoping this will lead to more and more constituencies announcing their desire to reselect MPs through open primaries.

Hitting such a diverse set of media only goes to demonstrate how relevant our campaign is for everybody. So if you haven’t already, please join the call for change.

Do our MP's blindly follow the Whip? Image courtesy of iammikeb@Flickr

1. The people who elected them and whom they represent?
2. The MP makes up their own mind according to their personal opinions?
3. They get sent a fax from their party HQ telling them when to be in Parliament, and once they are there they get told which way to vote by a senior member of the party?

If you guessed (3) you’d be right for most of the time. The system is known as “whipping“.

Each of the major parties employ certain MPs to act as “Whips”, a position which functions much as its name suggests – to enforce so-called “party discipline” and make MPs vote the way the leaders of their party want them to.

The Chief Whips send out weekly circulars to “their” MPs notifying them of parliamentary business. The circulars use a code involving underlining. If a vote is underlined once, the Whip considers it routine, and attendance is “optional”. Items underlined twice are more important: attendance is required, unless that MP can organise someone from the opposing party to be absent as well, (a bit more like musical chairs than democracy). Any vote underlined three times means that failure to attend, and vote with the party, will result in disciplinary action. What disciplinary action usually means is expulsion from the party, at least temporarily. Because parties, not constituents, choose who gets to stand in elections, this effectively puts that MP on notice that he or she may well lose their job at the next General Election.

So, how often are votes dictated by “three line whips”? We don’t know, because the Whips’ weekly circulars are not made available to the public.

That’s right. They’re a secret. Just chew on that for a second.

Newspapers occasionally report that votes have been declared “three-line whips” by particular parties. Here are just a few reported examples:

• In 2002, the Conservative party imposed a three-line whip forcing their MPs to oppose the adoption of children by gay couples.
• In 2007, both Labour and the Conservatives imposed three-line whips in favour of a proposal to renew Britain’s nuclear weapons system, Trident.
• In 2008, the Liberal Democrats imposed a three-line whip which instructed their MPs to abstain on a vote to ratify the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.
• In 2009, Labour imposed a three line whip in favour of a vote to keep the full detail of MPs expenses secret from the public.

What has this got to do with Open Primaries? Well, right now party Whips can dominate MPs, because it is political parties who chose whether an MP gets selected or not. If voters got to choose who got selected, the Whips’ power would be substantially diminished.

So is your MP working for you, or for the Whip? It’s hard to tell categorically – and not just because the Whips’ weekly reports are kept secret. Even if we could see the Whips’ reports, there’s often no way to tell whether a particular MP would have voted the way they did even if the Whip hadn’t told them to – we can’t read MPs’ minds, after all.

Still, there is a very simple way to tell whether your MP is voting on particular issues in the way you would want them to, thanks to a very cool website put together by volunteers called Public Whip. If you’ve got five minutes, give this a try.

Go to Public Whip, find the box labelled “Find out how any MP or Lord votes” and enter your postcode in the space provided.

You’ll be sent to a new page (see image, below), where the name of your MP will appear. It’s worth checking at this point whether this was the person you voted for in the last election (their party name appears in the third column of the summary box near the top of the page). Obviously, if this MP is not the person you voted for, they’re less likely to share your political views. But if this is the MP you voted to get into power, then to see if they’re representing your views, read on…

Click on the tab marked “Policy comparisons” near the top of the page. Now you should be taken to a list of policies, including the Iraq invasion, abortion, the rights of homosexuals, fox-hunting, ID cards and laws to combat terrorism. Down the side of this list is a list of percentages. A low percentage means that your MP is generally voting against these policies. A high percentage means they are generally voting in favour of them.

Any surprises? If you’re shocked by what you see, leave a comment to this blog post. Do you share their opinions? Do you feel fairly represented? Let us know!

This morning, Conservative Home reported that Gosport – home to Sir Peter Viggers and his ducks – would be the next constituency to run an “all-postal” primary to select the Conservative candidate for the next general election.

Conservative party chairman Eric Pickles has now confirmed the news, stating:

“I hope this will build on the success of Totnes. It’s vital that we continue to empower local people and allow them to have the final say. I hope this will encourage people in Gosport not previously interested in politics to get involved and get their voice heard.”

Sir Peter announced he would be stepping down at the next general election at the height of the expenses scandal in May. We’re delighted that his party has chosen to put the issue of his replacement to the people of Gosport.

John Jackson is chairman of Mishcon de Reya

It is our political parties that have become a necessity in, but also the kidnappers of, our representative democracy. And it is they that are leading us headlong towards the collapse of public confidence in our parliamentary system. They are doing this, as they have for some time, in three main ways.

They exercise substantial control of parliamentary candidacy by deciding at central or local level who is allowed to put themselves up for election as representatives of constituencies.

They are the self-appointed guardians of the rule that all holders of ministerial positions sit in one of the two houses of Parliament and are members of (or, in rare cases, supporters of) “the party”.

They make clear to “their” MPs (via the whipping system and other more subtle pressures) that the realisation of any ambition to have a political career including ministerial office is dependent on supporting “their” government and not “rocking the boat”.

By these means the political parties have captured our freedoms and largely destroyed the notions that Government should be subject to the control of Parliament and that Parliament should consist of the people’s representatives freely elected. We are, in effect, forced to vote for a party which will create the next government with our MPs reduced substantially to cannon fodder in relation to national matters and encouraged to focus on “constituency matters”. Test this by asking your MP two questions, one relating to a purely local matter and the other to a national matter. You will get a prompt response to the former but, very likely, will have to wait for a response to the latter until someone on the MP’s staff has checked with “central office” what the party line is.

No wonder that Parliament has become a rather self important cosy club in which intelligent people, forced to engage in a ritualistic death dance with its own arcane rules, are exposed to the temptation of taking concealed reward for accepting a largely frustrating and intellectually sterile role in life. Hardly the centre of a people’s democracy! This is not what those who have fought for our liberty over the centuries, and particularly in the 17th century (not so long ago!), intended.

There is a little known event which started us on the path to domination by political parties and the mess they have got us into.

The Act of Settlement of 1701, best known for securing the occupancy of our throne in protestant hands, was also intended to be the final nail hammered into the coffin of royal executive supremacy by the parliamentarians. Following on from the thinking underlying our Bill of Rights – the expression of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – the Act of Settlement laid down the principle that no person with an office under the Crown (i.e. no minister) could be capable of serving as a member of the House of Commons. Since the House of Commons already had secured control of “supply” (money needed by government to carry out its policies) this principle was designed to ensure that Government was not only separate from Parliament but also controlled by a Parliament with the means of quickly and directly imposing its will.

That provision of the Act of Settlement was to come into force on the (protestant) Hanoverian succession but long before that happened it was changed in 1705 into a provision that only the holders of offices created after that year could be barred from being MPs. Since all the great offices of state already existed, this change neutered what the parliamentarians wanted.

Had the provision in the Act of 1701 stood, no ministers would have been in and able to manipulate the House of Commons. There would have been no party whips controlled by ministers and no members on the payroll of ministers and “expected” to vote with government – the payroll vote. What would have been the consequence of this? One possibility is that we would have moved to the structure adopted by the rebelling American colonies later in the century with the head (Mr President) of an appointed executive (the ministers) elected separately from the legislature. A true and democratic separation of the powers!

Who pushed for the change of 1705? Surprise! Surprise! It was the emerging political class already organising themselves into the political parties which were to become the Tories (the King’s party) and the Whigs (the large landowners’ party). Those politicians, with deeply undemocratic instincts, saw and seized the opportunity to take the power which the parliamentarians had wrenched from the Crown. And by ensuring that sufficient of them were embedded in the House of Commons they could claim that they had democratic legitimacy (”we have been elected”) and ensure that those with political ambition were required to become first a member of a House of Commons which they substantially controlled.

This was the essence of what they (in horse racing parlance “the nobblers”) did and was precisely contrary to what parliamentarians had fought and died for. It was a dreadful defeat and ensured both that Parliament, representing the people, would have a very limited control of Government and that we would only ever have a pale shadow of a truly representative democracy. The situation was made worse by the cynical use the Tories (the King’s Party) made of the remaining royal prerogative to create peers (who could be ministers also) and obtain control of the “upper house”. This eventually caused a series of constitutional crises culminating in the curbing of the Peers’ powers nearly one hundred years ago and a “promise”, still not kept, by the political parties to reform the House of Lords.

The political parties have not served the cause of democracy and “we the people” well. They could have done much better – and would have done – had their leaders been less interested in the power that goes with governing us and more interested in helping us to govern ourselves. The right thing for them – the parties and their leaders – to do is to support the cause of popular reform and start by liberating our elected representatives. The primaries route for which Open Up is campaigning is a very attractive way of doing just that.

It is my hope that Open Up, and other reforming campaigns such as Power 2010 which have derived much energy from the hugely successful Convention on Modern Liberty, will succeed. A truly reforming House of Commons consisting of independently minded members should consider carefully why the creators of our Glorious Revolution wanted Government separate and excluded from our Parliament – a Parliament with the last word. I believe that those creators were right and that we should fight for what they wanted. Whether the politicians and their parties like it or not it is time for us, we the people, to become parliamentarians again. This time we must win and make our victory permanent.

Last week we launched the Open Up campaign calling for open primaries in the UK. There’s been a huge reaction already with both offline and online media covering our campaign and encouraging the public to sign the petition. 

Here’s a snapshot of the buzz about the campaign so far…

For starters there was a really positive and detailed discussion on open primaries over at the left-leaning blog, LabourList.

The author of the LabourList post was then invited to take part in a discussion on BBC 5Live’s Simon Mayo show with blogger Iain Dale political reformer, Antony Barnett, and our very own John Lloyd.

This gave us some great coverage with the argument for open primaries being heard by about 6.5m members of the population.

The 5Live coverage also helped increase awareness of John Lloyd’s awesome campaign videos, Tales from the Duck House, which you can view over at Open Up’s YouTube channel. Current views stand at more than 30,000!

More online coverage which helped boosted campaign awareness was secured by high-profle blogs Boing Boing and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish as well as being tweeted by Stephen Fry!

Both blogged positively about the campaign and helped drive additional further coverage which includes: Frank Field, Iain Dale, Jason Kitcat, Harry’s Place, Liberal Conspiracy, Sky News Online and the Times.

We rounded off the week with a fantastic Guardian Comment is Free blog post by campaign supporter, Peter Bennett-Jones.

These are but a few of a long list, and as if that doesn’t demonstrate how wide reaching the campaign currently is we’ve been the topic of hundreds of tweets on Twitter and the Facebook Page now has over 280 fans.

Join us if you haven’t done so already and sign our petition to make UK politics more open and democratic!

Yesterday, Frank Field MP answered the Open Up call for open primaries. Mr Field says that as a sitting MP who’s been shaken by the expenses scandal, he would welcome the opportunity to go back to put his case to his voters. He writes:

“[Sir Thomas Legg’s] letter bangs around in my head incessantly. This is the basis of my renewed interest in an open primary. Such a move would allow my constituents to pass a specific judgement on the question of my expenses, but also my record as their MP. They would have a choice between me and other candidates wishing to stand in a safe seat. This is not a choice that my constituents get in a general election. Whenever that occurs they also have to consider how their vote will affect the formation of a government and who will be Prime Minister.”

We’re delighted that a high-profile figure like Mr Field has become the first MP to rise to the Open Up challenge. He has also issued a challenge of his own:

“The Totnes open primary cost £40k. Does your campaigning extend to raising the money to put your idea into practice?”

So who should pay for open primaries? It’s a question that has come up rather a lot since we launched the campaign. We’re not going to duck it. But we also can’t foot the bill ourselves, and nor do we think we should (even if we had the money to run one open primary, if we say yes to this one, we’d have to say yes to all of them). So what are the options?

There look to be two choices when it comes to who funds open primaries: the political parties, as the Conservatives did in Totnes; or the taxpayer, who funds the running of the ballot in a general election. Some have already pointed out that, even conservative estimates based on the cost of Totnes put the total bill for holding open primaries in every constituency at around £20million. And there’s also the question of whether any extra money raised by political parties to run open primaries would count as campaign spending, which is capped by the Electoral Commission during a general election. We’re consulting with the Electoral Commission right now to understand what the issues might be here, and will keep the blog updated on what we find out.

£20million is a big number, but it’s not stratospheric. Let’s remember that large amounts of public money, as well as party funds, go into general elections at the moment. In 2005, more than £71million of public funds was spent on administering the general election. On top of that, the three major political parties spent in excess of £40million on campaigning.

Given that we’re already able to predict the outcome of the general election in 2010, it’s fair to ask whether this money could be made to go further, and give voters a real choice. There’s already so much cross-party endorsement for primaries, as well as emerging popular support for the Open Up campaign for open primaries, that the cost of running them simply can’t be used by opponents to change as a quick way to dismiss the issue.

And if public funds were used to cover some, or all, of the estimated £20million cost of open primaries, would that be a bad thing? Our democracy is worth investing in. We’re already spending millions on elections. Open Primaries will result in a better democracy, that could well reduce government spending in the long run, and save us all money.

And let’s put £20million into context. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the so-called “arm’s length” body set up just before the end of the last Parliamentary session to regulate MPs’ expenses claims in response to the expenses scandal, is estimated to cost the taxpayer £1.1million in set up costs alone. Across 2007-2008, MPs claimed over £11million in second homes allowances. And the Olympic velodrome, which was slated to cost £20million in 2005, is now more likely to cost £105million.

Finally, if Douglas Carswell MP gets his way, it’s likely that funding open primaries before this general election would be a one-off cost. Legislation he proposed at the beginning of this month carries a provision for Returning Officers to include ballot papers for open primaries when constituents vote in local or European elections, letting primaries “piggy-back” on the costs of running these polls. This could reduce costs dramatically in the long-term.

Here at Open Up, we don’t want to duck (quack!) the costs issue. But we also know it’s not one we can solve on our own. Here’s what we can contribute. As voters, we can make it clear to political parties that we would respond positively to investment they make in democratising their candidate selection process. As taxpayers, we can ask the state to look again at how they are spending our money on elections, and see if there are ways to spend it that would improve representation and help permit open primaries to happen. And as campaigners, we can continue to provide a platform for promoting change, a platform that opens up the difficult challenges to debate, and helps spot the opportunities to overcome them.