The chosen few who select our MPs

By Shaun Ley
Presenter, The Candidates, BBC Radio 4

The most important day for determining who will become an MP in the next Westminster Parliament is the day of the general election, right?

Wrong. In most places, the most important day is the one where whichever party is dominant locally picks its candidate.

Mr Brown was the successful candidate at the Dudley North selection

Even in 1997, the last election to transform the political landscape, the majority of constituencies did not change hands. So it is selection day, rather than election day, which really counts.

As I have been finding out over the last few months, for a documentary to be broadcast on BBC Radio Four on Sunday lunchtime, party selection contests are unpredictable.

Stand-off

Local members make the choice, a power they jealously guard. Hence the difficulties faced by Conservative leader David Cameron as he tries to get more women selected, and the nasty stand-off between Tories in South West Norfolk and their candidate Elizabeth Truss. Whether she is to be deselected will be decided next week.

One of the selections I've followed is that of the Conservative candidate in Dudley North - a seat held by Labour at the moment but vulnerable.

Local Tories had already begun their selection earlier in the year, so activists were not best pleased to be ordered by party headquarters to start again.

Although the Conservatives are ahead in the polls they, like the other parties, are struggling to recreate the mass political movement of old

But that was good news for hopeful candidate Graeme Brown. He had only made the reserve list; but by the time the selection was re-started, one of the other hopefuls had dropped out, so he was added to the shortlist of four.

This obeyed a new rule the Conservatives have introduced: A requirement that local associations shortlist the same number of women as men.

Mr Cameron hopes this will maximise the prospects of more women getting selected.

It did not work in Dudley. Two women were interviewed, one a social worker who lives in the town.

Shortlist controversy

But the association opted for Mr Brown, who is now enduring some flak from the local newspapers because he works in London.

For me, though, more revealing was the size of the "selectorate": Just 21 local Tories voted. Although the Conservatives are ahead in the polls they, like the other parties, are struggling to recreate the mass political movement of old.

In Scunthorpe, there were probably three times as many selectors occupying the stalls at the Plowright Theatre on the Saturday morning of Halloween, when Labour chose its candidate.

Labour's Nic Dakin after his selection in Scunthorpe

This is one of that majority of constituencies which rarely changes hands. No surprise, then, that 32 hopefuls applied.

Labour, too, has rules for drawing up shortlists. Scunthorpe was not required to make it all female (a practice which remains controversial within the party more than a decade after it was introduced - I am told one seat in the north of England, with a woman MP who is retiring, successfully resisted efforts to impose an all-woman shortlist) but the final four had to include at least one woman, and one candidate from an ethnic minority.

That was Saj Malik, a taxi-driver and councillor from Oxford, who as soon as he made the shortlist, upped sticks and moved into a room over a pub in Scunthorpe, the better to wage his campaign of wooing the selectorate.

Costs rack up

Tough on his family, but not untypical of the sacrifices made by would-be MPs; and as many pointed out to me, something they pay for themselves. If you apply for several seats, the costs can rack up.

Yet the local party went for the local man, Nic Dakin who runs the college in Scunthorpe and used to lead the council.

In a normal year, he could start looking now for that second home in London.

Next year's election could see the largest turnover of MPs in 60 years

But the expenses scandal has strewn unexpected obstacles on the road to Westminster.

There probably would have been no new candidate here at all, had not the sitting MP Elliott Morley been barred from standing again because he had claimed for a mortgage that had already been paid off.

Next year's election could see the largest turnover of MPs in 60 years.

Yet, despite a few seats where the Conservatives have allowed non-party members to take part in selections, the majority of the eventual winners in the Westminster Class of 2010 will have been chosen by a relatively small number of party activists.

If you live in a safe seat and want a say in who represents you after 2115, your influence will be greater if you attend the selection meeting of the dominant political party than if you make it to the polling station on election day.

The Candidates will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 1330 GMT on Sunday 15 November.