Political Bungee Jumpers

Dan Hodges shines a light on political parachuting and bungee jumping in his regular column for The Telegraph. 

And he's right you know although this business of parachuting favoured people into key positions has gone on for a very long time and not just under Ed Miliband's stewardship of the Labour Party.

Still, Ed did say, just like the rest of them, that he was all in favour of a new politics.


Ed Miliband's bungee jumpers will leave it late 

There’s an answer to political trickery as the election approaches – pick local candidates

Buttonholed: Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, and Mary Creagh, his shadow transport secretary, face questions from the public in Manchester Photo: Getty Images

By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph

Next year, with the election just a few short weeks away, a strange thing will happen. A dozen or so Labour MPs will announce to their constituency party chairmen that – with regret – they will not be standing for re-election. It has been a very hard choice, they will explain, and it’s been a great honour to serve the good people of Grimmupp North. They’ve struggled over their decision, which is why they’ve arrived at it so late. But they think it’s time to hand over the political reins to a new generation.

And it will be a lie. The MP in question will indeed be standing down. But it will not have been a decision they have wrestled with for months, nor committed to late in the day. Instead, they will have joined the ranks of Ed Miliband’s Bungee Jumpers.

In every political cycle, as polling day draws near, the Labour leader’s office begins a ritual. They discreetly start contacting those MPs they suspect may be considering standing down. And then ask them not to.

That is to say, they don’t ask them to reconsider standing down, but instead ask them to delay their announcement until a few weeks before the election itself. In return, they promise to provide them with support as they commence their new lives. A peerage, or perhaps a nice little consultancy.

They jump late. They jump with support. They are the Bungee Jumpers.

The rationale behind this ritual is simple. By waiting so late, there is no time to go through the full constituency selection process. So instead, Labour’s ruling NEC selects the candidates from a list of favoured sons and daughters chosen by the unions and the leader’s office, and drops them in.

In 2010, when Gordon Brown was contemplating the “election that never was”, the list was exceptionally long, because so few selections had been completed by that stage of the parliament. “It was like a chess game,” one Labour insider told me. “We sat there shuffling all these names around, trying to match the right people with the right seats.” In the end, Brown ended up promising far more peerages than he could deliver, stoking resentment that lingers to this day among those who remain harshly unennobled.

This week I learnt that at least two MPs have already cut deals with Miliband’s office in this way. More will follow as Labour’s prospects of power recede.

As well as the Bungee Jumpers, there are the Parachutists. We hear a lot about privileged candidates being “parachuted in” to plum seats. On Monday attention turned to Neath, where Mabel McKeown – daughter of the actress Tracey Ullman – has been shortlisted to replace Peter Hain. But, to be fair to McKeown, were she to win she would at least have done so via an open election, one where her celebrity would have lost her as many votes as it gained.

No, the proper parachutes are those strapped to the candidates who will replace the Bungee Jumpers. Their constituents will have no say in their selection; they really will be imposed on their respective constituencies from on high.

I used to think these machinations were all part of the Westminster game. But a couple of months ago I went up to Doncaster to attend the Ukip conference. A town that once stood upon a solid foundation of coal and steel now relies on visits to the local racecourse and sales of cut-price alcopops for its existence.

The northern side of Doncaster used to be represented by a former miner called Kevin Hughes. It’s now represented by a former Harvard University lecturer called Ed Miliband.

When I was there I got chatting to a local cab driver. “Oh, yeah, I know Ed Miliband,” he said to me. “I used to drive him a bit when he first came up. He was going around all the working men’s clubs.” What do people think of him around here, I asked. “Are you joking?” he replied. “This is an old mining area. What do you think they think of him? He might as well be from Mars.”

He could have been making it up. It was, after all, just one man’s opinion. But if you’ve been to Doncaster, it does feel about as close to Mars as it does to Primrose Hill.

We talk a lot about the disconnect between the politicians and the voters. We’ve looked at changing the voting system, or giving ordinary people the right of recall. All of the party leaders have expressed their desire for a “new kind of politics”.

But there’s one very simple thing each of those leaders could do to reconnect MPs with the people they represent. They could actually choose those MPs from the people they represent.

It’s not just Labour. David Cameron had his “A List”. Nigel Farage has stood as the local Ukip candidate in Itchen, Eastleigh, Salisbury, Bexhill, South Thanet, Bromley and Buckingham.

If they are serious about bringing their parties back into alignment with the electorate, why don’t these leaders give a simple commitment: say “We will only allow candidates to stand in seats they currently, or have previously, lived in.” No more bungee jumps. No more parachutes. No more constituency tourism.

“People don’t care if their MP’s local,” the politicians reply. It’s the line I used to come out with myself. But they do care. It’s just that they’re rarely given any choice.

For years we’ve been sending MPs from Mars to represent constituencies on Venus. Now the Venusians are starting to notice. And they’re not happy.

Labour and the Unions (25 January 2014)

Scotland on Sunday reported yesterday that time has finally run out for Anne Moffat MP - a former president of Unison - who was installed into Labour's East Lothian consituency with the support of the trade unions.

The newspaper described Anne Moffat as one of Labour's most controversial Scottish MPs - and went on to report that she had been effectively deselected by her local party - following concerns about her erratic behaviour and anger over her travelling expenses.

Read the full article at http://www.scotsman.com/ - here are the key points:

"Party ditches controversial MPScotland on Sunday can reveal that activists have voted overwhelmingly to unseat Anne Moffat as MP for East Lothian and are seeking a candidate to replace her before the general election.

Assuming the decision is ratified by the National Eexecutive Ccouncil, Moffat will become the second sitting Scottish Labour MP to be deselected in the run-up to the election.

Jim Devine, the Livingston MP, was deselected after his expenses were criticised for submitting invoices for electrical work worth £2,157 from a firm with an allegedly fake address and an invalid VAT number.

The move to oust Moffat comes after a long-running battle within the East Lothian Constituency Labour Party.

The wrangling over the seat, to which Moffat was elected in 2001 as Anne Picking, will throw the spotlight on Labour's internal machinations – a state of affairs that will dismay the Labour leadership as the party gears up for the election.

There is the added embarrassment that East Lothian is a constituency shared with the Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray, who represents it at Holyrood.

A meeting of the East Lothian Constituency Party was held on Friday night in Prestonpans Labour Club. Representatives of branches voted 25 to five in favour of a motion calling for her deselection.

Moffat has endured a torrid time as an MP with a number of local activists fighting to get her deselected. Her critics claimed Moffat was not performing as effectively as expected as a Labour MP. Until this weekend she had managed to stave off deselection with the help of trade union support.

She has accused her detractors of "bullying" and suggested she was being targeted because she was a woman in a male environment. In the past she has survived a no-confidence motion and had promised to work closely with the local party to resolve their differences.

Earlier in her political career, she sacked three of her staff, provoking anger in the constituency. Then she faced accusations – dismissed by the authorities – that she abused her Commons expenses.

In 2007 it was revealed that her travelling expenses were the equivalent of driving round the world in a year.

Moffat billed taxpayers for the 24,000-mile claim despite also claiming an air fare a week between London and Edinburgh over the same 12-month period. The parliamentarian also claimed 82 train fares each averaging £119 a ticket, bringing her annual travel costs to more than £45,000.

Moffat could not be contacted last night."