Secretive Ballots

I enjoyed this extract from John Rentoul's musings in The Independent the other day and his campaign to persuade the Scottish Labour Party to publish full details on the number of people who actually voted in the recent leadership election.

I must send John a copy of my recent blog post on the subject, Secretive Ballots, but isn't it amazing that Labour is so reluctant to explain how many ballot papers were sent out and how many were returned in each section of its electoral college.   

3. Today, my campaign to force the Scottish Labour Party to publish the numbers voting in the party members and trade unionists sections of the leadership election college enters its next phase. So far, the figures for the election of Jim Murphy and his deputy Kezia Dugdale published five days ago consist only of percentages, although the party has published the full breakdown of how MPs and MSPs voted, which is interesting in some cases.

Murphy’s leadership has to be based on honesty about the state of the Labour Party in Scotland. That means we need to know how many members it has who are active enough to vote in a leadership election. The party claims 12,000 members, which is a mere 200 per constituency, but it is widely assumed that the real numbers are lower. As for the trade unions, surely Unite wants to advertise the enthusiasm and engagement of its many members in Scotland?

Secretive Ballots (14 December 2014)

Here's how the Scottish Labour Party announced the results of its leadership election vote.

The breakdown of the vote in the Electoral College follows. Each of the 3 Sections in the Electoral College is weighted equally, and makes up 33.33% of the overall vote.

Leadership

Sarah Boyack MSP: 9.24% of overall vote

Section 1 (MPs, MSPs/MEPs): 4.22%

Section 2 (Members): 2.3%

Section 3 (Affiliates): 2.73%


Neil Findlay MSP: 34.99% of the overall vote

Section 1 (MPs, MSPs/MEPs) : 6.75%

Section 2 (Members): 10.89%

Section 3 (Affiliates): 17.34%


Jim Murphy MP: 55.77% of the overall vote

Section 1 (MPs, MSPs/MEPs): 22.36%

Section 2 (Members): 20.14%

Section 3 (Affiliates): 13.26%

Now what's interesting is that, just like the trade unions, Labour is trying to get away with publishing only the percentage figures - not the actual numbers of votes cast in each section of the electoral college.

Which hides, for example, the total number of ballot papers issued to Scottish Labour Party members (Section 2) and the number of ballot papers issued to affiliated organisations such as the trade unions (Section 3).

In other words the turnout in the ballot remains a secret which is a very strange way for a modern political party to behave, if you ask me. So while Jim Murphy has recorded a decisive victory, Scottish Labour remains on the back foot by being so defensive and secretive about the percentage turnout amongst individual party members (Section 2) and trade unions (Section 3).

And this matters because the trade union bosses opposed Jim Murphy's election as leader tooth and nail with Unite, in particular, claiming a victory for Murphy would be a disaster for Scottish Labour.

But are union bosses representing the views of a narrow activist base or the views of ordinary, everyday union members?   

If the turnout in the trade union section turns out to be spectacularly low, then you have your answer - Britain's union bosses (the Bubs) are unrepresentative when it comes to representing the interests of their own grassroots members.  

PS Jim Murphy should be congratulated on winning both Sections 1 and 2 of the electoral college because Johann Lamont (Murphy's immediate Scottish predecessor) and Ed Miliband (Labour's current UK leader) won their respective crowns only by securing a big majority of the votes in the trade union section (Section 3).