“The 38-year-old mother-of-two secured 4,892 votes, or 38.6%. James Bethell, a venture capitalist based in London, came second with 2,965 votes. Sam Gyimah, an entrepreneur, came third with 2,867 votes, and Julia Manning, an eye specialist in the NHS, came fourth, polling 1,935.“

The selection process was first used in Totnes, in July earlier on this year where local GP, Dr Sarah Wollaston replaced expenses row MP, Anthony Steen.

 In July 2009, as the open primary in Totnes was taking place, the Board of the Conservative Party was meeting to determine the rules for the future selection of parliamentary candidates.   It was a stormy meeting – the last stand in the battle to defend the rights of ordinary Party members – a battle that was lost.   The decisions taken will affect democracy in the United Kingdom for a generation.   So what happened?

Under the new rules the Party Chairman will decide whether a local Association should select its candidate by a Special General Meeting or by an Open Primary.

For each constituency a sifting meeting will be held at a place designated by the Party Chairman at which the Approved List of candidates will be reduced to six names, 50% of whom will be women.   At this meeting there will be six representatives of the local Association including its Chairman and two Deputy Chairmen.   The Party Chairman will have a veto on the six names to go forward to the next stage of Open Primary or Special General Meeting.

As from the 1^st January 2010 the Party Chairman will give an Association the names of three parliamentary candidates from which to choose their candidate.

The real impact of this is that the Party Chairman will determine Conservative candidates and consequently the Conservative Party composition in the House of Commons.   The Labour Party looks as though it is going down a similar route.   Many of the current members of the Cabinet were parachuted into their seats by the Labour Party hierarchy.   Peerage promises are seductive.   So a tiny number of people from our two main parties will determine who sits in the House of Commons and effectively form the government of this country.   Is this the way dictatorships are created without the need for bloody revolution?

So how are Open Primaries affected by these changes?   The model for Open Primaries is normally the United States.   How do Conservative Open Primaries compare?

In the United States anyone can stand.   As we have seen above, under the Conservatives, the Party Chairman decides who the candidates will be.   You can virtually guarantee that the only candidates allowed to stand are safe Conservatives.   After all they have to fight a General Election on the Conservative Party manifesto, which they have to sign up to, even though they will have no say in its composition.

In many States electors have to register support for a Party in order to vote.   With the Conservatives anyone on the Electoral Roll can vote in an Open Postal Primary or an Open Meeting Primary, even if they are members of another Party.

The candidates in the United States raise their own funds for campaigning in the primary.   The Conservative Party pays for a postal primary.   The costs in Totnes amounted to £38,000.   There are only half a dozen constituencies in the country that could afford this, so unless the Party at National level funds a postal primary it will not happen.

Campaigns in the United States are usually prolonged, giving everyone plenty of time to investigate the candidates.   The campaigns run by the Conservatives are strictly limited in time

Caucus meetings of registered voters are held in the United States at which the merits of the different candidates are debated and then voted upon.   These are banned by the Conservative Party.

A distinction should be drawn between Open Primaries where there is a postal ballot as in Totnes and Open Meeting Primaries, which are often lumped together and called Open Primaries.

The most common, because of costs, are the Open Meeting Primaries.   The Conservative Party imposes a number of restrictions on Open Meeting Primaries:

The meetings are advertised in the local paper so there is no guarantee that every elector is aware that the selection is taking place.

At the meeting no debate is allowed between the candidates – they are not even allowed to be on the platform together.

CVs of the candidates are only made available at the start of the meeting.

The elector must be present for the entire meeting and cannot leave for any reason.   Contrast this with a postal primary where the elector doesn’t have to hear any candidate before voting.

Limits are imposed by Central Office on the amount of money candidates can spend on their campaigns.

The vote on the final adoption of the selected candidate by Conservative Party members is done by a show of hands, rather than by a secret ballot, which can be intimidating, and which the Conservative government made illegal in the Trade Unions in the 1980s.

It can be seen from the above that there are major differences between what the Conservatives call Open Primaries and what in practice most people understand as Open Primaries.   The Conservative Open Primaries are a gimmick.   The media and the people have been hoodwinked by the Conservatives into believing that the process is totally open. It is not.   The process is controlled in detail by the Party hierarchy.   There is also the danger that the selection can be manipulated by the members of other parties, who can vote for the weakest candidate.   The Conservative Party does not care because it has vetted all the candidates.

There is much talk about electoral reform but when will the people “wake up and smell the coffee?”   Whatever the system of election, be it First Past The Post or Proportional Representation it becomes meaningless if the candidates are chosen by a few individuals.   Our two main political parties are wholly undemocratic organisations controlled by small oligarchies. In a democracy it is essential that the political parties are themselves democratic.   It is in a dictatorship that candidates are imposed.   “Once we had rotten boroughs, now we have a rotten parliament”.   Democracy R.I.P.

The event was attended by over 700 members of the public, making it the most successful open primary to have been held in the UK. However, according to reports Conservative HQ again chose the final six conservative candidates from over 600 applications therefore ensuring central office control.

Dominic Raab, has yet to move to the area, but will now take the place of Ian Taylor, the current Conservative MP, who is to stand down as a result of the expenses scandal. According to, Mr Raab “one of the real advantages of this open primary has been the opportunity to get down here – talking to residents, talking to businesses, talking to councillors”. Local constituents must be delighted that this ‘open’ primary has ensured Mr Raab the opportunity to ‘get down here’ to the area he will now live in and represent.

It must be noted that constituents’ questions had to be submitted before the event, and spontaneous questions after each speech were not permitted. There is no doubt that the Conservatives have led the way on the ‘open primary’ discussion but it would seem there are still immediate changes needed before these can justifiably be labelled truly ’open’.

http://tinyurl.com/ych762v

‘even though the PM and his advisers are extremely helpful and progressive, I can’t help noticing they’re all men.’

With so much written about change, Open Up is calling for action. Open primaries will break the party hold on politics which has failed the diversity of this country so greatly. That people do not care about politics in Britain is not true. People have always cared about politics, and our system must represent all and not just some.

According to Oona: ‘one answer for the political sphere comes from openupnow.org and its campaign for open primaries so that political candidates are selected by a wider range of people’ .

Totnes has provided a benchmark, where a female local GP who truely represents the constituency was voted in with a record turnout- this must happen throughout Britian.

Its time for politics to Open Up and recognise the diversity of Britian. MPs chosen by the people for the people.

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.

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!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Look at him. He looks pretty confident he’s right. I suspect it’s not just the certainty of youth that’s driving him, either.

In any case, the national press were convinced. The report prompted stories in the weekend papers about how after the general election, more MPs would come from privately educated backgrounds, and from private sector professions like management consultancy and political communications.

None of the reports I’ve read questioned the notion of discussing election results in such detail before citizens have been to the polls.

If you’d like to read those newspaper reports, you can click here, and here.

If, however, the idea of pre-destined election results reminds you of something that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, I’d suggest you click here instead, and sign the Open Up petition for Open Primaries.

My favourite line from the Madano press release:

“Although the report does not cover the latest wave of future resignations from Parliament, the number of likely winnable candidates still to be selected still only amounts to around 10% of the overall number. It is apparent that these selections will take many months to be confirmed. It is not expected that these future additions will radically change the overall characteristics of this new generation.”

Let’s just see about that, shall we?

Later today, the Open Up blog is revealing its first guest blogger, campaigner and journalist Heather Brooke. Heather was the woman responsible for kicking off the expenses scandal way back in 2004 when she filed what she thought would be a routine Freedom of Information request to see how MPs were spending taxpayers’ money. You can read more about Heather’s campaigning work here.

To stay in touch with all the happenings on the Open Up blog, just grab the RSS feed. You can also follow the campaign on Twitter and Facebook, and watch the campaign videos on Youtube.