Mrs Dale’s Dowry.

How appropriate at this time of year to bring up the subject of Dowry, for the origin of the Christmas stocking is said to derive from St Nicholas’ act of charity in providing a Dowry for three poor sisters by hiding gold coins in their stockings as they dried over the fire by night. Without a dowry, they were of no interest to prospective suitors.

It has set me wondering what prospective parliamentary candidates bring to their marriage to a political party. Why do they want to marry a particular party, why not remain independent of mind? What makes a party adopt them?

A few months ago there was one of those unseemly ‘handbags at dawn’ histrionic cat fights that erupt from time to time, when Ephraim Hardcastle referred to Iain Dale as being ‘overtly gay’. Hmmn, what’s that all about, I pondered; for having followed Iain Dale’s Blog for many months, one could be left in no doubt that he was indeed gay, perfectly open about it, proud of his civil partnership – indeed, Hardcastle had only penned the piece in response to Iain’s invitation, on the ‘Pink News’ site, to his appearance as a prospective candidate in Bracknell:

‘I hope any PinkNews readers who live in Bracknell will come to the open primary on October 17 to select their new candidate. You don’t even have to be a Conservative to attend.’

Hardcastle had ended his piece:

“Isn’t it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause?”

To which my response has to be – if they were ‘not Conservative’ then the only reasonable reason to expect readers of Pink News to have any interest in attending a Conservative Party Primary would have to be that they were Gay.

Dale responded: “I am damned if I am going to stay silent when I see a national newspaper indulge in a homophobic attack on me.” He asked his readers to complain to the PCC.

Heavens to Betsy, as they say, is it really a homophobic attack, to even make reference to someone being openly gay and drumming up support from within a sexual identity group for political reasons? The PCC thought not, but what interested me was that Mr Dale obviously thought it did.

All this occurred in the middle of the ‘Redacted MPs expenses’ scandal, and I thought what a perfect example of ‘I am the very model of the modern parliamentarian‘ this was. You behave as you wish, but demand the right to suppress whatever reference to yourself that you demand, from those who pay your wages.  ‘He has nothing but contempt for the humble proletarian‘.

I had forgotten about this until yesterday, when I stumbled upon another fine example of  ‘I am the very model of a modern parliamentarian’. Mr Dale’s 2009 end of year awards. When you look at the front page of his blog post, it reads:

A fine example of Democracy in motion. Voters are invited to nominate their prospective candidates and then vote for them at a later date. But what is this on page two?

A prime example of the Conservative Central Office brand of intending to pervert the will of the ‘Turnip Taliban’ as they so sarcastically refer to them?  ‘At the end of the day I will pick what I consider to be the best three or four nominations from each candidates‘ – and you humble proletarians can kid yourself that you are partaking in a genuinely democratic process. No doubt anyone who complains will be told that ‘they should have Googled’ the small print, ala Liz Truss.

This morning I note the following disclaimer on his site:

“I should make clear that this poll is a bit of end of year fun. Those who vote only represent themselves and this inevitably means there will be inbuilt biases – not least because the voting choices have all been nominated by a self selecting audience. I’m not asking other bloggers to encourage their readers to take part, so I am not pretending the results will show any sort of political balance whatsoever. It is Just. A. Bit. Of. Fun.”

‘Not least because the voting choices have all been nominated by a self selecting audience. No mention of the voting choices having been self-selected by Mr Dale himself.

It is not ‘just a bit of fun’, how could it be otherwise? Mr Dale has become the consummate professional politician, and now represents everything that is wrong with our present brand of democracy.

We have moved a long way from the idea that each part of the country elected a representative from that area to speak for them in parliament. We now have a new breed of politician who tramps the country from town to town until he finds himself accepted by a selection committee. Those committees must pick someone on the ‘list’ from one of the big three parties. They must toe the party line, so long as they do, they will have the support of their chosen party in mopping up all the ‘tribal votes’ in their area. If they knock on enough doors, they may persuade a few floating voters that they are indeed a charming chappy, if they kissed the right end of any number of babies, if they avoided dropping any major clangers and causing difficulties for their party, then they shall find themselves entitled to sup at the parliamentary trough.

The system itself drives them to devote themselves to looking after the interests of ‘their’ party rather than ‘their’ voters. If Iain Dale had been rash enough to allow any number of nominations on his ‘fun’ awards, he might have fallen victim to, say, a concerted attempt to see Nick Griffin of the BNP nominated, and heavily voted for.

With what joy would the media have fallen onto the results? ‘Conservative prospective Candidate awards Nick Griffin parliamentarian of the year’. For that reason alone, and because our system is so slanted towards adopted candidates, Dale has no choice other than to offer his blogging soul to his party as Dowry.

If we insisted that all candidates must have lived in their proposed area for 5 years; if we insisted that all candidates stood as an Independent, then we might avoid another ‘rotten parliament’. It can be done, Dr Richard Taylor did so in the 2001 election, campaigning on a local issue of great interest to the many local people who knew of his work in the area. He held onto the seat in the 2005 election.

Independant candidates would be forced to do something of note, and of genuine good,  in their area to have any chance of election. Their allegience therefore would be to their voters, not to a party political system. It would matter not a jot whether their views were to the left or the right, their views would simply be those that reflected the majority of people living in their area.

We must put an end to ‘personalities’ being parachuted into a constituency on the basis of focus groups and triangulation. Of MPs who are well versed in the party political lines, but who only came to know their voters as a result of having bought a rarely visited house in the area, with tax payer funds, after being selected.  They don’t represent the voters, they represent themselves, and the major parties. So long as that continues to be, the temptation will always be for the central parties to pick names, such as Esther Rantzen, because they are recognisable to a public that is asked to vote in some creepy reincarnation of ‘Big Brother’.

It is the constituency that should be receiving the Dowry, and that should consist of nothing more than a sound reputation within the area for hard work and a genuine concern for the other inhabitants.

Tagged as: Conservative Central Office, Ephraim Hardcastle, Esther Rantzen, Iain Dale