IN both the 1980s and the 2010s the UK Labour Party’s left fought to achieve an internal democracy that has long been standard in the SNP. Every SNP parliamentarian and councillor must go through a full reselection process at every election, surprise ones aside. No-one elected to office for the SNP has a job for life. No-one should.

That is not to say the SNP’s democracy works perfectly. In particular, as the party has expanded its structures have not always kept up.

In the first Holyrood election in 1999 my local candidate was selected by a vote of about two-dozen delegates at a constituency association meeting.

Over a decade later, my own candidacy for Edinburgh Central went in front of the whole membership – then around 250 – by postal ballot. At that size most of those voting tended to have been activists. They were the people who went to fundraisers, who knocked the doors and who delivered the leaflets – in short, the people the party has always needed to win elections when most of the media has been against us. They were few enough that they could know the candidates and the candidates could know them.

For 2016 we again selected using one-member-one-vote, but by then the referendum had engorged our membership massively. Well over a thousand people had the right to vote in that election. Alison Dickie, a primary school teacher and local party volunteer, pulled a supportive team together and reached out to those members by phone and in person. She won the selection handily and, while sadly falling just short in that election, used the same approach to be selected as a council candidate the following year. She was elected and is now the SNP’s lead on education in the city.

Now we are in the same cycle of candidate selection for next May’s Scottish Parliament election. But the rules have been very different since 2017. This sort of in-person outreach has been banned. In every constituency hundreds of members will receive nothing other than an email that their computer will probably helpfully file in a secondary inbox reserved for mass mailings. Name recognition will be king.

I have already served as Edinburgh Central MSP, so what I am arguing here is not to my benefit. Instead, I am appalled that, with the worthy exception of the National family, media outlets are largely overlooking Lee-Anne Menzies, a Women for Independence campaigner who has also put her name forward. What other worthy candidates are being put off entirely, writing off selection as an impossible prospect without connections or a platform that is itself now unattainable?

In the US Congress, candidates from minorities – most famously Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have made an impact after precisely this kind of grassroots campaign. For AOC her approach became a badge of pride, tweeting pictures of shoes with soles worn-through from her pounding the streets to win over Democratic party members one at a time.

I have heard justifications of the restriction based on difficulties posed to members of certain under-represented groups. For example, those who need mobility support would be disadvantaged in a door-to-door campaign; British Sign Language users similarly if conducted by telephone. This is well-intentioned. An Access to Elected Office Fund supports aspiring candidates with additional support needs in offering transport and communication costs – I know because as Community Empowerment Minister I created it – but it cannot level the playing field alone.

THE same restrictions on contacting members were in place in the 2019 selections. Candidates with a disability made no breakthrough. Indeed, in one Edinburgh constituency last year a highly regarded potential candidate with a disability finished behind a slew of others who benefited from big-name endorsements or existing elected or staff positions.

It is also notable that both of the SNP MSP incumbents facing reselection contests are being challenged by others with existing public profiles – a council group leader in Inverclyde, a former MP in Kirkcaldy.

I’m sure the decision to restrict direct contact between potential candidates and members was taken for the right reasons but it is counterproductive and at risk of going unnoticed amidst other controversies.

One simple alternative would be to trigger restrictions in specific constituencies where it is required, as a reasonable adjustment based on the disablement of those candidates on the shortlist. Other solutions to facilitate contact and level the playing field could be explored. The risk is that we might insulate our elected representatives from the accountability we have always been proud of in the SNP and create a self-perpetuating group with no entryway for outsiders or fresh talent.

Without a change we are in danger of creating a Catch-22. Only those with an existing profile can stand to be representatives and only those who have successfully become representatives will have a profile.