United Kingdom
In reply to the discussion: Corbyn on ballot. [View all]Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)The requirements of democracy are that you get to decide which party to vote for, and if you want to, you get to start your own. It doesn't mandate any particular form of internal power structure for a party, and its clear that the one the Labour party currently has doesn't work.
If, as seems depressingly likely, the Labour party doesn't survive Corbyn's leadership, he will be remembered partly as author of its demise, but Ed Milliband's catastrophic decision to extend internal democracy will also earn him a share of the blame.
A system which can enable someone to remain as "leader" after 80% of his colleagues have expressed no confidence in him cannot work.
We need to be moving power from the hands of the membership - who, in the main, are professional teachers, plumbers, surgeons, cleaners, etc - to the hands of the elected MPs, who are professional politicians, not in the other direction. They're not liege lords, but they are mostly experts, and despite what Gove thinks, that matters.