No. The winning candidate will stand for their own party as normal. Think of the primary as taking the guesswork out of tactical voting.
Absolutely! We expect losing candidates to remain on the ballot paper, but with clarity on who everyone is getting behind. It’s actually more democratic - because for the first time in generations, there’ll be a real chance of change!
Our First-Past-The-Post voting system discourages co-operation, and breeds tribalism, short-termism and complacency. The only other country in Europe that fully uses our system is Belarus, Russia's ally in Ukraine.
We are totally independent from all the political parties. and we are self-funded and. We we all work as unpaid volunteers. This is a community-led, grassroots effort.
No. Our aim is to replace the Conservative MP with whichever of the progressive candidates that the majority of our followers think is best-placed to win the seat. Our followers* will choose the candidate in a secret ballot, overseen by party officials.
* Only those followers who are on the electoral roll in East Wiltshire are eligible to vote in this process.
There is no exact definition for progressive politics but it generally includes a combination of kindness, fairness, equality, democracy and modernity. There is an interesting article here about it (NB we are not endorsing Tony Blair or the Labour Party): https://www.institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/why-progressive-politics-matters.
We are not asking the parties to stand down if unsuccessful. Once we have an East Wiltshire Primary winner, the losing candidates can remain on the ballot paper, but we don't expect the losing parties to fund any serious campaign. This is similar to what happened in the Tiverton & Honiton by-election where there was general acceptance that the Lib Dem was the best placed candidate, and in Wakefield where the Labour candidate was the clear choice. By uniting behind a single candidate the Conservative majority was overturned.
We hear this from all sides every election time. Yet the Tory MP is still polling to win. Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different result’. We sincerely hope that this is the last election under the current FPTP system, but for now, the only way to avoid an unfair result is to choose a single progressive candidate in order to avoid the vote being split and handing victory to the Conservatives.
We are in touch with these organisations via https://themovementforward.com and will be keeping them updated on our progress. The East Wiltshire Primary is, in a way, like a highly informed tactical voting exercise. People will be voting tactically for the people's choice, but based on a far more comprehensive data set than used by these national sites. We have been informed that the tactical voting sites will use our results to produce their advice. So in short, we are confident we will be fully aligned.
Sadly, no. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have decreed at a national level that their candidates cannot take part in the original primary process, so we have moved to a new process as described here: www.eastwiltshireprimary.org/how
This will happen once the candidates have been selected by the parties, manifestos published and we have attended the public hustings and emailed to ask the questions that are asked by our followers. We will then share these answers and organise the vote. We aim to get this done as far as possible before the actual general election.
No, they are not as we don't consider them progressive.
The Primary process is designed to platform candidates from the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems. In the rare case that a progressive independent candidate were to be a serious contender in a constituency, with a proven electoral track record, then we would consider platforming them if circumstances were right. We would have to be confident that any inclusion of an independent would not lead to further fragmentation of the progressive vote.
- Follow us on social media and share our posts
- Tell friends, family and colleagues
- Sign up so we can keep you informed
- Contact us about attending one of our ambassador training sessions on how to explain the primary and answer questions