Subscribe to our RSS feed For just over four years I was the leader of the Liberal Democrat group in Haringey. It was a good period for the party - from winning our first three seats in Haringey through to growing to a group of fifteen at the next elections, for years on. But there is one thing about my experience as group leader that I have real doubts over. It's the question of how the party elects its group leader.
Group leaders - especially those where we run the council or are challenging to run the council - are some of the most important people in the party in terms of real power wielded that affects people's lives.
Group leaders vary hugely - from the leader of a small group through to the person who runs a multi-million council and has more power than many MPs - but one thing they all have in common is that party members do not get a say in who they are.
And this is my cause of doubt. I have had to campaign for votes from party members for all sorts of things during my time in the party but for group leader - it was only fellow councillors who got a say. Now - when there were only three of us councillors back in 2002, divvying up the roles of leader, deputy leader and chief whip wasn't the most competitive or angst-ridden of processes! Between us, we were all happy with who did what. But even where there is real choice and disagreement - and where the result determines who heads up a council, one of the most important political jobs there is - party members do not get a say.
As I type this I can just imagine the thoughts going through some councillors' minds at the idea of members electing their group leader rather than they themselves.
So - I want to take you back to the start of this year. I just want you to imagine if our party leader was elected in the equivalent way to the way in which our council group leaders are elected. That is, by the MPs alone with party members not having any say.
Imagine if we had had an election that way at the start of the year and I had then come along to the recent London Liberal Democrats conference to say how well I thought the process worked, how the leader is the leader of the MPs - so of course it should only be MPs who should get a say - and maybe made a joke or two about some oddball members and asked if you really wanted to entrust the very serious and important choice of leader to people like that?
I don't think I'd have been very popular - and rightly so!
So instead I ask - think of all the reasons why it was right and proper that I and everyone else in this room had one vote in the selection of the leader, and then ask - why doesn't the same reasoning apply to the leader of council groups? Of course, a council group leader needs to have support of their councillors and they are the people who know the candidates best - but that can be dealt with by the nomination rules (as with party leader where a candidate has to currently have the support and be nominated by 7 MPs).
This isn't just a theoretical question, because think again - think of where local parties have gone horribly off the rails, falling apart into infighting and dispute. Almost always, a large part of the story is that the council group and members have gone off in different directions with splits opening up between councillors and party.
Having the group leader elected by members could be an important piece of glue holding the party together.
So it might be that this is the right thing to do not just in its own terms - democratic - but also the right pragmatic thing to do - to help head off some of the problems of division we've sometimes had in the past. And don't forget the benefits too of encouraging councillors to remember how important members are, to retain them and to communicate with them - whilst also giving more members more of a say and a participation in local politics and decision making. That's what we're about as a party, aren't we?
The logic of what I have written sounds pretty good to me - and the various people I've tried it out on seem to agree too. Yet within the party, I can't recall any move to introduce these sorts of changes? So have I got it all wrong, or is it time we changed things?
But what happens if the group leader has only minority support from councillors?
It is very important that a Council Group leader commands the respect and support of their immediate Councillor colleagues.
The only way this proposal could work is if you could only stand if you were nominated by a percentage of the council group otherwise you could end up in a position where a Group Leader was wildly popular amongst the broader membership (who don't see all the ins and outs of what goes on on the council and how someone performs as a Councillor) but who lacks the confidence of their immediate colleagues. That is a recipe for disaster.
There is also a cost implication of balloting the wider membership and campaigning by candidates which should not be ignored.
This is an excellent idea. There is a worrying tendancy for council groups to disappear into themselves and fail to engage with members who are an important (although far from being the only) link with the broader community.
Toby is right that there is a risk of a mismatch between the members' wishes and those of the councillors. But it is relatively rare to find a councillor who is deeply unpopular with colleagues but very popular with members - and if that happens it may be that the local party is in serious trouble whatever happens, so great is the divide. Sometimes the councillors would get a group leader they might not have chosen - but that's an important wake-up call and the winner is unlikely to be somebody they actively dislike.
I do not think Toby's cost concern is well-founded. Most good local parties mail members fairly regularly and the vote could easily be held at a hustings meeting rather than by postal ballot if cost is a concern. Enagaging with members very often flushes out donations anyway, as is common with PPC selections.
This seems like a good idea in encouraging cohesion between the Council group and the grassroots membership, provided the local party covers the same geographic area as the Council (which is the norm in North London, ie Lynne's immediate vicinity).
I can see difficulties in making it work on Councils where many different local parties make up the electorate. Do we feel comfortable, for example, with the notion of London region members electing the leader of the GLA group?
It's not the case that all council groups work like these. I believe, for example, that the group leader of the Leeds Lib Dem councillors is elected by the city membership - and that this is costly and risks electing a group leader not supported by the councillors themselves. The membership is, regardless, represented by the Leeds federation executive.
Should the same be true of the Lib Dem leader in the London Assembly, who was elected by the GLAMs? I assume Mike German was elected by the AMs in the Welsh Assembly, and his role is different from Lembit as Welsh leader. The role of overall party leader is a special case and it's a shame, in a way, that because that person is our candidate for PM they also have be "group leader" of the MPs even without great support from the MPs themselves (not that I'm suggesting for moment that Ming isn't well supported by his colleagues).
Toby - aren't all your points also reasons that have always been given for NOT having the party leader elected by the membership? On the same logic, shouldn't the party membership be excluded from electing the next party leader?
No, if you read my points carefully I think that we need safeguards to ensure that a council group leader has sufficient support amongst their immediate colleagues.
I would be very interested to hear the views of local party treasurers and existing council group leaders on this issue. Many local parties are finding the costs related to PPC selections quite onerous and the implementation of this idea requires more than appears on the surface.
Firstly it would involve finding a willing "neutral" trained returning officer (they are under enough pressure with PPC selections at the moment).
It would involve creating a set of rules which have to be followed. If they were to be modelled on the current PPC selection rules then there will certainly be lots of fun and games there.
Then there would need to be an appeals infrastructure as well.
It's not a simple matter of an extra postal ballot, there's far more involved than that and before you know it, a whole lot of money and energy is expended in a drawn out election campaign when we should be focusing on taking the battle out to the streets against the Blue Labour Duopoly.
It is a nice idea but once you look at the practicalities then you have to really ask the question "do the benefits outweight the costs?". I personally think not but I'd be open to persuasion.
People should not impute that somehow I think that electing the Party Leader should reside solely with the Parliamentary Party. I don't.
"provided the local party covers the same geographic area"
Actually, this proposal could be MORE relevant when the two are not the same. Currently, council groups tend to see themselves linked primarily to the local party that covers the largest part of the council area. I can give a number of examples where a council area covers small parts of one or more local parties.
To whom are council groups accountable under the current system?
It's an interesting idea from Lynne , but ....
I have to say that I thought as party members we elect the leader of our party, not the leader or the parliamentary group (though obviously the two posts are normally combined) My feelings are that once councillors are elected, they should make up their own minds on issues (either individually or as a group) and not follow the instructions of the wider party.
Councillors shouldn't follow party instructions on a planning application or other agenda items, I don't think they should do so when the agenda item is the appointment of group leader.
Obviously a council group and local parties should co-operate, but party instructions should never penetrate into the council chamber.
PS : I'm not sure how it would have worked out the two times I've been elected group leader on Rochford DC. The first time nobody else wanted the post (we were the largest group on the council then). I nonetheless asked for a secret ballot of all the councillors to confirm my positon (which I'm pleased I won).
The second time was when he had been reduced to just four, and nobody else wanted the post either (the other 3 being newly elected).
I must say one thing I found dissatisfactory about the leaderships election was the argument that we should vote for Ming because he had the greatest support from MPs and that this was important. As it happens I wanted to support Ming anyway. But it seems to me that ideally we should each be able to vote according to our own beliefs and preferences and if somebody else's support is intrinsically important, that fact should be reflected in the design of an electoral college.
And I would be happy with an electoral college for group leader elections too, certainly if there is any prospect of the group taking control of the council.
I agree with Lynne. And I've tried to promote a similar scheme in Oxford city council group for a while - one whole constituency and one part of another.
Those of us who stand and hope to win a council seat win or lose on the support and effort of the constituency party. We often have people whom we would perhaps dearly love to have on the council but lost.
Failing that, let's have elected mayors...:)
I think the group leader is a more complicated question than party leader. Unfortunately we are not likely to be selecting the next Prime Minister, what we need as leader is a good party spokesman. A group leader is different, (s)he has to have the support of the local party to get thing done, Blair has unfortunately proved local grass roots support is not needed for a PM, and also has to have much more administrative ability than a PM. With departmental MPs and civil servants to do the fine detail day to day work at the national level can and should be delegated, although it will be interesting to see if Gordon Brown does. In a small local council there are fewer layers of staff, which may be a good thing, but the leader, elected or not, needs to have a much closer day to day overview of what is going on. If not the electorate will blame the party at the next election. Another response suggested elected mayors, unfortunately the trend seems to have been for either a wacky independent or good public speakers rather than good administrators.
I totally agree with Lynne. There is a gap between council groups and the membership that we have to close.
I'd also be interested in finding out why we went from largest group to only 4 in Rochford. Could it be related to the gap reason ?
this is not a good idea. Some group leaders may go from one day being a million miles away from power to taking a party group into power and have to worry about implemneting the party policy that the group has a agreed on before the election. It would create great instability if a group leader had to face the membership after just taking control of the council. Incidentlywhen do most groups have their AGM and elect the leader in my experience it is just after the election.
I'd elect this one: Caroline Pidgeon
Theres no consideration of the economic and practical considerations of having such elections on a regular basis. Who would run it ensuring the election is not nobbled? who would stump up the cash to pay for the election? Won't a month without a leader paralyse the decision making facilities of the council group especially where there hasnt been any councillor(s) in that area before? The councillors are best placed to identify those who would make a leader rather than running glorified beauty contests for every single county, metropolitan, borough, city and district council.
The local party is a membership, social and campaigning group to maximise Lib dem representation locally, although it is right that councillors are accountable to the membership to ensure that they are doing whatever needs doing, the local party leadership and the council leadership operates under different constitutions due to the different requirements of these positions.