Not my Euro campaign

I have been observing the Yorkshire and Humber Euro Selection with bewildered amusement. On balance I don't regret my decsion not to run. Its clearly an inordinate amount of time and effort which I don't have although I'd like to think I might have spiced things up a bit and added to the gaiety of nations. The basic problem is the God forsaken electoral system that Jack Straw lumbered us with. If you are trying to appeal to 5000 to 6000 ( who over whelmingly don't care) who have never heard of you across a region the size of a small country there really is only one game in town. Name recognition.

Its been funny to watch varying candidates using desperate measures to get there name, innocently of course, in front of members or on internal party communications. I'm very unusual. I know a particular candidate well and have been doing a bit of campaigning for her. However in nearly every other case people vote for who they have heard of or on a locality basis.

Heaven forfend that the siting of the lucrative MEP's regional office has anything to do with it, or promises of where it might go if a certain person was selected against another.

The other odd thing is how little is at stake. With out wanting to prejudge the result the sitting MEP has name recognition light years ahead of most other candidates and she is standing for re selection. She also has admirably high quality mailings to party members which have been consistant throughout her term.

So is anything other than 2nd place on the list up for grabs? Is this a shadow selection to be the front runner when a vacancy finally arises?

Perhaps I shouldn't speculate but having a selection on a regional basis is absurd. We are lumbered with list PR so I can't think of an alternative. The only skill though that this selection is testing is how big a contacts book a person has and there skills at self promotion. Neither is necesserily the best criteria for an MEP.