Last night I was catching up with an old school friend consuming pints of beer when I got a call from Newsnight about the Tories use of primaries to select their candidates and would I go on the programme to talk about uit? Again what’s this got to do with shopping?
Well as you might be starting to tell; I think pretty much everything is to do with shopping. Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you and all that.
Anyway primaries open up the selection of candidates to all voters not just party members. Where is the harm in that I hear you say. Well I want candidates who believe in something and don’t try to be all things to all people. I also believe in a proportional electoral system that makes everyone votes count. Then democracy becomes the clash of big ideas and competing visions of the good society and not an attempt to appeal, like some retailer, to the median voter. I want an agenda for a post consumer society. You won’t get that with primaries only a no-change mush in the centre probably with Esther Ranzen as the candidate.
If you have nothing better to do you can watch the programme here. Its the second item after a Peter Mandelson interview.