Writing for The Times’ ‘Red Box’ newsletter, Professor Tim Bale explores party leadership systems and their methods for deciding who should stand as a candidate. He reveals that Britain’s four biggest political parties show support for closed (i.e. members-only) methods. On the subject of local MPs, Professor Bale notes that “the party differences are reflected in figures compiled by Demos on the proportion of parties’ MPs who were born, educated or live within 20km of their constituency, namely 74 per cent for the SNP, 64 per cent for Labour and only 33 per cent for the Conservatives.”
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