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Parliamentary Candidates

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The Electoral System in Britain

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Abstract

The quality of the work performed by the institutions of Parliament and Government can be no better than the quality of the personnel who fill the places within them. Precisely who is able and willing to stand for Parliament, and whom we choose to elect to political office, raise questions which determine the entire running of the British state. A fundamental principle of parliamentary candidature is that the electorate should be as free as possible to choose whomsoever they wish to represent them. Accordingly, there are no statutory qualifications or requirements as such for a parliamentary candidate to satisfy, simply an ancient legal presumption of the courts that he or she should be of full age and a British subject. However, there are a number of legal disqualifications upon specific grounds, ranging from the holding of a public office deemed incompatible with membership of the House of Commons (such as a civil servant or a judge) to being a person suffering from severe mental illness. So far as legal requirements are concerned, then, it is easy to become a candidate for Parliament in Britain.

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Notes and References

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  121. A separate problem is where candidates are nominated with names and/or party descriptions which confuse the voters. For example, a ‘Roy Jenkins’ (who had changed his name) stood with the description of’ social Democratic Party’ (which he claimed to have founded months before the SDP broke away from Labour) against Roy Jenkins, then leader of the SDP, in the 1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-election (the SDP leader won). A worse instance came in 1994, when a ‘Literal Democrat’ candidate stood in a European parliamentary election, and polled over 10 000 votes, with the real Liberal Democrat losing to the Conservative candidate by 800 votes. In the Literal Democrat case (Sandersand Anotherv. Chichester and Another, QBD 11 November 1994), the Election Court ruled that the nomination and ballot papers had been valid, and refused to order a fresh election. The remedy for this mischief is the introduction of a legal requirement that the description of a candidate should be ‘true, fair and not confusing’. This improvement in our election law can be effected simply by a short amending bill (or a clause being added to some other legislation on electoral affairs which is passing through Parliament), modifying the existing legislative provision on nomination of candidates in rule 6(3), Schedule 1, Representation of the People Act 1983.

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  1. King’s College, University of London, USA

    Robert Blackburn (Reader in Public Law)

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© 1995 Robert Blackburn

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Blackburn, R. (1995). Parliamentary Candidates. In: The Electoral System in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24090-6_5

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