Not a Proper Party

I’m not an active member of my political party. I tend to think it’s better for my work not to be too involved. Still, I see membership as one small element of being socially-concerned. I was a long-term member until leaving in September 2015, then re-joined the following July. I realised that I could help make a difference when there were internal votes at stake.

This didn’t always go down well with my small daughter, who hadn’t seen me all week, and was then was dragged along to meetings past her bedtime. She passed the interminable hours by watching movies with headphones — once singing along to all the songs during a fractious speech from the floor.

One Friday evening, she burst into tears. ‘I don’t want to go to the Labour Party. It’s not a proper party! There’s no cake or balloons!’

I agreed — it wasn’t a proper party.

I heard her voice in my head every time the political news was bad.

That was some years ago, and I had completely forgotten her complaint until this week, when hearing the political news from the US after the Biden-Trump debate.

It is interesting to see how political parties end up doing succession. Even where there is no formal process, it has to happen by default, because all political careers end.

In the case of the US presidential nomination, the stakes are high. It therefore makes sense to have a full suite of options, should anything go wrong with the lead candidate. Biden currently qualifies as ‘young elderly’, but is approaching ‘very elderly’.

When looking globally, sudden incapacity and sudden death happens to those in office and to political leaders all the time. Indeed, death is a certainty for non-abdicating monarchs — which is why Operation London Bridge and Operation Unicorn were planned for in the United Kingdom from the early 1960s.

When the stakes are high, it makes sense to have a Plan B, Plan C and so on until the need to hold options is satisfied. Selecting a party leader or presidential candidate is akin to selecting and managing a megaproject. The social risk is not that there is substantial delay in delivery or cost overrun — but that an objectively-better political platform loses to a worse one, with disastrous consequences. From the point of view of the rest of the world, there are security implications too.

Some party figures argue there are no clear alternative candidates. Perhaps shoring up confidence in Biden reduced the risk of needing other options to an extent — though hardly eliminated it completely. Leaders need to be able to project indefatigability, but human biology is a hard constraint.

There is such a thing as overcommitment. While it remains an option to go all in on Biden, the options to abandon or to change tack do remain.

Perhaps for some senior Democrats there are good reasons to let the current contest play out even if failure is very likely, and regroup for the next round. Perhaps they believe success is more likely by going all in. However, if a second Trump presidency is an existential threat to democracy, then there is an obligation to have a Plan B, Plan C, and as many options as needed.

This would still be the case even if Biden were young and match-fit, because anything can happen to any candidate over a period of several months.

Not having an adequate set of credible contenders ready-to-go is revealing of system weakness. If the best time to plan for this situation was four years ago, the next-best is today: it’s time to properly partify.