The logical next step in Labour’s leadership rules is a step too far

What should the rules be for the next Labour leadership election? And what should any other party do when it next thinks about widening engagement in its candidate selections?

There’s a logical next step, and it’s to embrace the virtues of volume and transparency as the solution to entryism. (There’s also of course something that doesn’t require any changes to be made to any rules: simply for MPs in future to take seriously the filtering role they have in the process, and only to nominate for leader people they think should be leader.)

The more people who are involved in a selection, the less the impact of entryism on it is because volume drowns out conspiracy. It’s why the reaction to Labour’s problems doesn’t have to be to retrench into an isolated tower of true and pure long-term party members only. Labour wouldn’t be in such problems either if the electorate for its leadership contest was far wider, bringing in far more Labour voters.

The other answer is transparency: make public who it is who is claiming to be a supporter of a party and wanting a vote and you have a double-win. Putting your name to a party in public doesn’t stop the dedicated conspirator but it does stop those with a sense of shame and embarrassment, a non-trivial factor – especially if you make that dedication of name to party a longer-term commitment than just asking for one ballot paper.

It also means that dodgy names are far more likely to be noticed and acted on. Just as with postal voting fraud, where the fact that the list of postal voters is public means dodgy entries are more likely to be spotted because so many different people – party members, opponents, the media, pressure groups and more – can take a look and cry fowl.

So how do you get volume and transparency? Adopt the American model of letting people register, if they wish, their party affiliation when they do their electoral registration and then use that genuinely mass electorate for party contests.

It would bring other benefits too but despite the usual love of all things American when talking about politics, its one import just about no-one in the UK talks about or desires. Not even those who talk about the need to be radical (or as it’s often put online, the need need to be RADICAL).