How democratic are our parties, and does it matter?

 Years ago there was a branch of political science called Kremlinology, named after the seat of the Soviet government in Moscow. Kremlinologists would watch the activities of the USSR's leadership for signs of the direction of the party, which could be hard to discern. Sometimes the study of the internal structures of the major UK parties can feel similarly obscure to our pupils, so here is some explanation.

The specification asks for knowledge of  the "party structures and functions of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties". What this really means is knowing about 3 distinct areas, as well as how the party works.

Party leadership elections

We have certainly seen a lot of these in recent years! All parties have a balance of influence of MPs, members, and in some cases constituency parties, which in the Labour Party and Lib Dems have a role in nomination.

The Conservative system notionally has a low threshold of MPs required to get on the initial ballot of MPs. Then, from there, the MPs are whittled down to final 2, before members get their say. This can, in itself, limit the influence of members, as MPs can prevent their preferred candidate from getting on the ballot, or can manipulate the candidates in their own way. Additionally, on 3 occasions out of the 7 new leader events since the system was created (Howard, May, Sunak) there hasn't even been a leadership contest! The system created for Sunak's election was almost specifically designed to prevent a leadership contest going to the members.

In Labour, the real battle is again amongst MPs.  Ed Miliband brought in the current system which was used to elect Corbyn (twice) and Starmer. Originally the support of 15% of MPs were required to be on  the ballot, but this is hard for figures from the left of the party to attain. Indeed, Corbyn only just got the right amount at the very last minute, but won comfortably with members (many of whom had paid £3 to vote in the election, a system which has since been scrapped). As leader Corbyn originally wanted to  reduce this to 5% - the theory being that once on the ballot, left wing figures would be able to be successful amongst members, as was the case with Corbyn. This was watered down to 10%, but has been increased by Starmer to 20%, which in theory should make it harder for another Corbyn-like figure in the future.

The Lib Dem system uses STV, which is lovely of them, but given that there have almost always been two candidates, it's basically pointless. Lib Dems need the support of 1 MP and 200 members from different parts of the party. Therefore, it is much easier to get nominated in the Lib Dems, and gives much more power to members.

Candidate selection

This is where it gets even more fractious. Local members want to have a say, and to be able to choose their own candidates, whereas party leaders want to be able to guarantee that they have a good standard of candidate who will maintain party discipline. Potentially strong candidates are 'parachuted' into safe seats, such as brothers David and Ed Miliband, who were from London, educated at Oxford, and represent(ed) South Shields and Doncaster.

Recently in Labour there have been some examples of local members taking action against MPs they disagree with. Under Corbyn, more central Labour MPs were threatened with deselection, such as Chukka Umunna, who eventually left the party. More recently Sam Tarry was deselected by his constituency (though this was the opposite, with a more left wing MP being removed). In the Conservatives, Nick Boles and Dominic Grieve were threatened with deselection due to their opposition to Brexit. Members of Leave.EU mass-joined the party in order to vote for candidates who were more supportive of Brexit. Furthermore, recently David Campanale was deselected by Lib Dem members, who were concerned by what they saw as anti-LGBT views. Still, it is VERY rare for sitting MPs to be deselected, with this only happening to Sam Tarry (poor Sam) since 2010.

Parties have attempted to boost their numbers of ethnic minority and women candidates through processes such as Women Only Shortlists (Labour - though they no longer exist) and A Lists (Conservatives). These have been effective, as demonstrated by the far greater numbers of minorities on the Conservative benches, including in cabinet posts, and by Labour now having more than 50% women MPs. However, these have not been without controversy, with criticism of these as an example of positive discrimination (and this was successfully challenged in court back in 1996).

Policy formation

All party leaders want to make policy as independently from their party members as is possible. Part of this is just practicality - a leader, especially when governing needs to be able to make decisions and respond to issues as they arise. However, the Lib Dems and Labour in particular have traditions of internal party democracy that can, at least in theory, hold the leadership to account.

For example, under Jeremy Corbyn Labour's conference voted that it wanted to retain Trident, Britain's nuclear deterrent. Corbyn, who is against nuclear weapons, was forced to retain this as part of his policy platform. The Lib Dem conference similarly forced Nick Clegg to abandon his policy on Heathrow expansion, which the Lib Dem conference was against. That said, party leaders will try to ignore or avoid listening to their conference - I find it very unlikely that Keir Starmer will stick to his party's pledge to bring in proportional representation at the 2022 Labour Conference.

A telling quote about the roles of conferences is as follows, from Democratic Audit: " ‘the Liberal Democrat conference thinks it makes policy and it does, the Labour conference thinks it makes policy but doesn’t and the Conservative conference knows it doesn’t make policy and doesn’t care’". In the Conservative Party, the tradition is that the leader makes a greater proportion of decisions. Famously, John Major said of the 1992 manifesto "it was all me", and David Cameron and Oliver Letwin wrote their 2010 and 2015 manifestoes. Still, it is clear that a massive departure from the expected policy preferences of members would be hard to achieve, like if the party pivoted to being pro-EU. That said, the current high tax policies of Sunak and Hunt may test out that theory.

Analysis

So, there are clear examples for both party of being democratic or not. Historically the Conservatives have been more centralised and top-down, and Labour at times have had a more chaotic, member-led party. However, at periods of success Labour has tended to adopt a more top-down approach as well, and it is clear that Starmer has tried to limit member influence in order to make Labour more electable. There are also questions about how much say party members should have when the success of the whole country is at stake, where it can result in something like Liz Truss's brief stint in office, and her failed mini-budget. Perhaps the lesson for parties is that less member democracy increases your chances of entering government.