Chartist, November-December 1998
There were always going to be losers among sitting MEPs in the selection of Labour candidates for next year's European Parliament elections.
The elections are to be held for the first time under a regional list system of proportional representation – which means that Labour will win only 43 of the 84 seats in Great Britain, down from 62 under first past the post in 1994, even if it does as well as in the 1997 general election.
But the way that the losers have been chosen has shocked even hardened cynics in the party.
The obvious democratic way to choose candidates would have been by one member one vote ballot of Labour members in each constituency, with rankings determined by the number of votes won by each candidate.
But the party leadership wanted to control the selections, and most sitting MEPs believed they should automatically be given winnable places on the regional lists. So the NEC decided to ditch OMOV in favour of a system that gave the preferences of party members a subsidiary role.
Sitting MEPs were guaranteed places on lists if OMOV "trigger ballots" in their existing Euro-constituencies endorsed them – although they were not promised winnable positions. Every single sitting MEP who had decided to stand again comfortably won the trigger ballot.
Other hopefuls had a more difficult task. First they had to be nominated by a constituency Labour party, then win a place in a national pool of potential candidates in an OMOV Euro-constituency ballot. An NEC-dominated selection panel then whittled down the national pool to a shortlist and finally chose the candidates and their ranking after interviewing the sitting MEPs and the new potential candidates.
The party apparatus claims that the process was rigorous and fair. But even MEPs who have a good chance of winning say that the selection interviews were superficial and based on loyalty tests, with the members of the panel showing little knowledge of the workings of the European Parliament. And the results certainly suggest that MEPs considered awkward by the Labour leadership were singled out for rejection.
Of the 49 sitting Labour MEPs standing again, 12 were given list positions that Labour cannot possibly win even if it does as well next year as it did in 1997. Of these 12, no fewer than 10 were signatories of the famous advertisement in the Guardian, backing retention of Clause Four of the Labour constitution, that appeared the same day in 1995 that Tony Blair met the European Parliamentary Labour Party in Brussels. Another five of the Clause Four rebels will lose their seats if Labour does just a little worse than in 1997 – which is the least that can be expected.
Three sitting MEPs given unwinnable positions – Alex Smith, Michael McGowan and David Morris – have withdrawn as candidates since the lists were drawn up in late September, and a fourth, Christine Oddy, is threatening legal action against the party. Several other sitting MEPs whose only hope is a repeat of Labour's 1997 performance are quietly seething.
Not that the MEPs are the only ones with a cause for complaint. Only six of the 106 new potential candidates that made it through to the national pool have been given list positions that are winnable.
"We all knew it would be difficult to choose candidates for the new list system," said one MEP. "But at least if we'd had OMOV it would have been down to party members to decide who they should be and the results would have had democratic legitimacy. The way we actually did them, the selections looked like a giant stitch-up."
