First up I agree our democracy is worth investing in, no doubt about it. You’re probably right that the only viable way of running and financing open primaries would be through government or an agency (but I think the Electoral Commission wouldn’t want to get involved in the actual running as it muddies their watchdog role).

“Triangulation” (the strategic race for the middle ground, often credited to Bill Clinton) is a symptom of our first past the post electoral system. Open primaries wouldn’t change that and they wouldn’t change how the big parties centrally formulate their manifestos to win marginal seats.

There’s no denying that opening up politics, whether through open primaries or other means, is an implicit threat to the current ‘main’ parties just because they’ve got the most to lose and are emblematic of the current political culture.

I agree that we need to move the ‘reform movement’ (or whatever we want to call it) beyond the usual suspects who have been banging on about it for years and years (e.g. Electoral Reform Society members). However, my view is that open primaries are the wrong reform to focus such outreach around. Proportional representation is a more likely candidate given the number of groups that support it (ERS, Unlock Democracy, Power Inquiry, LibDems, Greens, that Labour manifesto promise plus Gordon Brown’s recent nod to it etc etc).

I had the pleasure of meeting politics students from Brighton City College this week. They were from all ages and backgrounds, a marvellous bunch who were really alive what’s going on. As I was in the process of writing my thoughts on open primaries I used part of the session to discuss the idea with them. Before expressing my own views they leapt in with concerns about fairness, costs and whether rich candidates would be advantaged. I can see why open primaries are attractive from the point of view of breaking the two party stranglehold. But I think to these students and most people, the inherent fairness of something like proportional representation is instinctively more attractive and clearly threatens the establishment far more than open primaries.

So why not join the fight for PR first and we can continue the debate on open primaries later???

I’m absolutely delighted that you’ve given some time to thinking about the open primaries campaign. And thank you for being so generous towards me and towards the Open Up campaign

You’re absolutely right to highlight the fact that open primaries will come with a pricetag attached. There’s no easy way of addressing this, but it is worth saying that our democracy is worth investing in, and that if running the ballot was administered by the Electoral Commission and paid for by the state, I believe a case could be made that this was money well spent.

A lot of people from within political parties have read the Open Up campaign as an attempt to destroy party politics, but I think that it’s far from obvious what effect open primaries would have on the public’s engagement with political parties. It’s an unknown, but evidence from Greece’s Pasok party suggests opening things up can re-invigorate party membership. And if new people come with new ideas, then in a society where most (but not all!) parties’ membership is in decline, surely that is no bad thing? The two parties certainly need to re-calibrate, and to move away from previous attempts at “triangulation” (Can you tell I’ve recently re-read the POWER inquiry?).

And I had to smile when I read:

“Changing the culture in our politics requires a more open media, a redesigned educational system, a new constitution, reform of political funding, a recall process and most importantly — a system of proportional representation to elect members to both houses of Parliament.”

That is certainly the Jason I know, and the Jason I largely agree with. I wouldn’t want for a second to distract from these ambitions. Open Up is attempting to reach beyond the relatively modest amount of people who have been pushing for reforms such as these for many years to reach a mass audience, to amass a movement that the political elite, who continue to block these reforms, can no longer ignore. My personal hope is that, if we succeed in our call for open primaries, that movement will be ready and energised to push for even more reform.

But I agree, anything to make political involvement more engaging has to be welcome. I must admit I skipped my local party’s monthly meeting tonight!

Another issue is that so much attention is being given to the electoral system: rightly so in some cases, such as your call for PR. But what about what happens in between elections? The real problem, much deeper than the electoral system because despite the deficiencies of FPTP it is still possible for smaller parties to win (albeit v hard), is that people just dont want to engage in politics. Even if you had a fairer electoral system, if people aren’t bothered about the outcome, they won’t care about the process. Giving us PR would be a massive step forward, but we need to be asking questions and coming up with solutions about how to make politics more interesting and relevant to the everyday lives of most people, so they have positive reasons to get involved in between elections as well as during them.

Changing the structure of the universally boring local branch/association/party meeting would be one step towards that: maybe having more of a social life aspect to the events parties run; maybe simply asking more people to do stuff other than delivering uninspiring leaflets or having uninspiring conversations on the doorstep.