The Polish and Romanian experiences show that party elites need to loosen control when introducing primary elections to select candidates

The Conservatives experimented with primaries at the 2010 general election, and Ed Miliband has recently proposed their wider introduction to choose Labour Party candidates. Sergiu Gherghina and Michal Radecki believe primary elections can bring significant benefits for parties and democracy as a whole, but warn that the UK needs to avoid mistakes made in Poland and Romania when primaries were first introduced in these countries.