I’ve previously written that one of the culprits for rendering Your Party a nullity was its importation of Labourist culture. The bureaucratic shenanigans, the behind-the-scenes bullsh*t, the flouting of democratic votes and ‘abbreviations’ of its constitution have turned a promising project into a Corbyn Glee club, minus decent tunes and a promise of joy. So, it’s of interest that, according to the Guardian, would-be defectors from Labour to the Greens want to bring something distinctly Labourist along with them – a God-given right to “their” seat.
We read that among the chats/negotiations Zack Polanski and other leading Greens have had with disaffected Labour MPs, the issue of guaranteed seats has come up. i.e. If they make the jump, they want to be sure they will be the Green candidate in the subsequent election. This is custom and practice among the other parties. Remember when Christian Wakeford waltzed over from the Tories to Labour? His automatic reselection for Bury South was part of the deal. Of course, when politics is just another career, you can imagine politicians treating defection as a shuffle sideways from one position to another, with the same perks and pay intact. This attitude is baked into Labourism, seeing as the party’s constitution enshrines it and successive generations of parliamentarians treat Labour as an apparatus to serve them. Hence their utter horror when the party started showing signs of a democratic life of its own during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure.
That, presumably, left wingers thinking about crossing the floor have the same attitude is disappointing, but not surprising. What’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh. The problem, unlike Labour, is that it’s not in the gift of the party leadership to guarantee seats. Mandatory reselection sensibly rules in the Greens, as does a more decentralised structure of party affairs. It’s an approach that has deep roots in Green parties across Europe as a collective prophylactic against bureaucracy and institutional capture by unelected party officials. The relevant part of the party’s constitution lays out the procedures for candidate selection, a process that sitting MPs would, at present, be expected to go through prior to the next election. In terms of the rules, there are no privileges that attach to being a sitting member. Formally speaking, everyone is equal in candidate selection.
There are provisions for leadership intervention where no candidate has been selected, which would be appropriate to a snap election like 2017, or where a selected candidate drops out for whatever reason and a replacement needs slotting in hurriedly, but that’s it. The party membership is unlikely to vote in a Labour approach simply because they like being in a party in which the membership is actually sovereign. Nor are the leadership likely to expend political capital bending over to accommodate the uncertain pledges of defectors.
Right now, heading into the local elections as the rising electoral power, the Greens have the psychological whip hand. New MPs coming from Labour are a nice-to-have but are inessential. If Labour politicians are serious about coming on over, they will have to leave the belief in the supremacy of MPs, the chief tenet of Labourism, at the door.
