Open Up

“Open primaries, and in particular all-postal ones, are working”

This was the surprising endorsement from the Guardian’s Julian Glover on the Conservatives all-postal primaries. On Friday, over 12, 500 voters in Gosport picked Caroline Dinenage through an ‘Open Postal Primary’ to replace the infamous Sir Peter Viggars. Glover’s article highlights that Dinenage:

Postal Open Primary - Gosport

The second ever “postal primary” was held in Gosport today, giving everyone in the constituency the chance to have a say in who should be the town’s Conservative Candidate.  The winner was Ms Dinenage, who will fight Tory Sir Peter Viggers' seat, the MP who claimed for the infamous £1,645 duck house. According to the BBC news-site:

“Once we had rotten boroughs, now we have a rotten Parliament”

John Strafford has held office at virtually every level in the voluntary part of the Conservative Party, including nine years on the former National Union Executive Committee.   In his newly-published book, Our Fight for Democracy – A History of Democracy in the United Kingdom, he analyses the weaknesses of British democracy today and suggests how it could be improved.

Politics' Drift Beyond Satire

Legendary comedy producer and Open Up’s very own man behind the Tales From The Duck House films, John Lloyd, had an eloquent post published on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog this weekend.

Update: Open Up in the news

We are now two weeks into the campaign and media coverage is increasing nicely. The highlight of our week was appearing on Sky news last Thursday, with John Lloyd speaking about his involvement in the project, and underlining the need for political change. Our videos were also highlighted on the BBC's Sunday Politics Show (you can watch it here).

"Duck house MP" Peter Viggers will be replaced using primary

Open Up Campaign Update: 27th October

Last week we launched the Open Up campaign calling for open primaries in the UK. There’s been a huge reaction already with both offline and online media covering our campaign and encouraging the public to sign the petition. 

Open Up campaign on Radio 5 live today

Update (22-10-09): You can listen to the show here. You can skip direct to the section on the Open Up campaign - it starts after about 2 hours 29 minutes.

Day 2: Open Up gets Fry-ed

We’re ecstatic with the support we’ve received so far for the Open Primaries petition. Thanks to Stephen Fry (and to everyone else as well) for tweeting about the campaign – and for nearly breaking the website! Hopefully, we’re now back to normal service, so if you weren’t able to sign the petition first thing this morning because of traffic levels, please have another go.

Follow the progress of the Open Up campaign

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