People's choice
Sir: I am surprised that Randolph Churchill, in his courteous review of my book The Selectorate (20 October), should put forward as a serious ob- jection to a primary election system the possibility that candidates might pack constituency parties with their own supporters. I would have thought that a simple qualifying rule restricting the vote to people who had been members of the party for a period of months before the primary would nullify that particular manoeuvre.
As to the question of the cost of primaries, I think he is again exaggerating the difficulties. A primary would most certainly not have to be 'on a scale of activity and expense almost to match the real election? The primary would be con- ducted within the party, and would therefore con- cern a more sophisticated and knowledgeable electorate than is the case in a general election, rendering unnecessary the expensive propaganda effort expended in such a contest. It is also likely that the introduction of primaries would result in more people joining a political party, thereby in- creasing its income and making it more able to bear the additional expense involved.
As I point out in the book, should primaries prove to be inordinately expensive—and it is diffi- cult to see why they should—there is no particular reason why the state should not bear a larger por- tion of the cost of general elections, thus releasing party funds to meet the cost of primaries. The prin- ciple of state intervention in this field is not, after all, contested these days.
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