Thomas Sutcliffe: Britain should try US-style primaries here

For anyone, like me, in the grip of a recently-acquired addiction to US politics, the suggestion from Frank Field MP that we should adopt US-style primaries for some elections in Britain is a superficially enticing one.

He makes it in a paper entitled "Back From Life Support", which proposes a number of reforms designed to reconnect the great British voter – and, more importantly, the great British non-voter – with their democratic representatives. In an era of falling turnout and rising cynicism about parliament, Field argues, piecemeal tinkering with our electoral arrangements is no longer going to be enough to recharge the average citizen's political batteries.

And some kind of solution is urgent. Having effectively nationalised a whole slew of home-grown democratic organisations with the foundation of the welfare state, the political instincts of ordinary voters can now find expression only in the political arena – and all the signs are that that just doesn't satisfy us. With governments elected by just one-fifth of the electorate, it's time to get out the jump cables and do something drastic.

Some of Frank Field's proposals are simple. Ballot forms should include a box marked "None of These", he suggests, so that those dissatisfied by the same old political flavours could formally register their dissatisfaction at the polls. Some are attractively lateral: for every page of legislation added to the statute book, he argues, one page would have to be removed, a rule which would presumably concentrate the minds – and the prose style – of those drafting new laws. And some would involve a substantial alteration to the political culture, such as his suggestion that the candidates for constituencies should be arrived at through a primary process, open to all registered electors, rather than picked by party apparatchiks. No more parachuted candidates, dropped in from Central Office, but a process which he hoped would give local voters a much more direct stake in their MPs.

On the face of it, this seems mildly counter-intuitive. The problem is that people don't seem as keen on voting anymore, so the solution is to give them a lot more opportunities to vote – including voting for the boards of local Housing Associations and local police chiefs. To which a pessimist might say that the only thing likely to be increased by such a reform would be an overnight increase in the output of depressing turnout figures.

But in suggesting ways to disconnect candidacy from the rigid control of the established party machines, Field may be on to something. Outsider candidates – such as Martin Bell in Tatton – are usually successful in increasing turnout in constituency elections and the primary process in itself might encourage candidates to identify those qualities that distinguished them from Central Office clones.

More intriguingly, the primary process suggests a way in which one of the brakes on voter involvement – a suspicion of party politics itself – might be turned into a driver of greater participation. The Obama bandwagon makes an interesting study in this respect – a vehicle driven not just by a cult of personality but also, I would suggest, by the sense that his candidacy is co-owned by those who vote for him. Paradoxically, he simultaneously offers his voters a chance to vote for the Democratic Party – as a bundle of vaguely liberal values – and to vote against it as an established political machine that was doing business in the usual way. It might work here, too.

A very British air crash

How admirably British everyone was when a Cessna plane crash-landed in the garden of a Kent couple at the weekend.

The pilot, who staggered bleeding out of the shrubbery to knock on the conservatory door, apologised for bothering the owners but was reassured by the householder, Eileen Watling, left: "Thanks for dropping in," she said. And talking to journalists afterwards, there was no talk of compensation.

"It has made quite an impression," said Mrs Watling, looking at the aircraft wedged nose down in one of her conifers. "You'd pay a lot of money to buy something that looked like that at the Chelsea Flower Show." There are no good places to crash, but the Watlings' garden must come close.

* When I first passed one of Stonewall's new posters, campaigning against homophobic bullying, I confess I thought they might be wasting their money. For one thing, there was the copyline – "Some people are gay. Get over it!"

For the dwindling band of bigots who find the opening truism offensive, the tone of the command would surely be unproductive, I thought. And then there was its site in a North London street. Aren't we metropolitan types over it anyway? Long ago?

Then I drove past again yesterday morning and saw that the word "Gay" and the supporting strapline had been carefully obscured with spray paint – as if the very word was more than somebody could bear. There was no obscenity and no abuse, just a careful obliteration which seemed to offer graphic evidence of continuing prejudice.

Either Stonewall's ad agency are very creative or I was wrong, and it's much more of an issue than I'd complacently assumed.

t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk

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