LAST year the journalist Michael Crick set up the Tomorrow’s MPs account on Twitter with the idea of shining a light on how parties pick their candidates, what he describes as “Britain’s hidden elections”.

“Often these things would be covered by local papers in some detail,” he tells The Herald. “Now there are a lot fewer local papers, and they're more downmarket and less interested in politics and they haven't got the people to go into all the details.

“And I just decided this is really important stuff. The people chosen as candidates are tomorrow's MPs, ministers, and prime ministers, and it's therefore vital to know more about the kind of people that have been chosen, the processes whereby they get chosen, the fiddles and the fixes and the accidents, and the demographic trends and all of that.”

To paraphrase Otto Von Bismarck, parties often treat their candidates like sausages, keen that we only see the final product. They’d probably rather we didn’t see how they source the meat that gets stuffed into the casing.

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Normally, we only really hear about the internal contests when the competition is furious or flawed.

I always think of Labour’s 2012 selection battle for Falkirk (sparked by incumbent MP Eric Joyce standing down after decking a Tory in the Commons).

It was probably one of the party’s ugliest, leading to an angry dispute between the leadership and major financial backer, Unite the Union.

There were allegations and counter-allegations of corruption and gerrymandering. At one point Police Scotland was even involved.

In the end, the situation led to Labour changing their membership rules, and their rules on how party members could vote in internal elections, which in turn led to the incredible selection process that saw Jeremy Corbyn elected leader.

With a by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West imminent and a general election likely now a year away, we’re in the middle of a selection frenzy.

On Tuesday night, Labour unveiled Michael Shanks as their candidate. He’d been selected despite local members writing to Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer to question the integrity of the contest.

Local favourites hadn’t made it onto the shortlist, picked by a special panel, which included Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie and sole Scottish MP Ian Murray.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Douglas Chapman, the SNP’s MP in Dunfermline and West Fife faces a challenge from someone who’s a bit more in tune with the leadership.

You’ll remember that he made life uneasy for the top brass during his brief spell as the SNP’s treasurer when he resigned in protest at the then chief executive Peter Murrell's failure to open the books.

We only know about all of this because anonymous sources briefed journalists or dropped Crick a DM on Twitter.

In the US, the equivalent process is far more open, with very public primary elections for everyone from state senator to President.

All of the main UK parties have adopted a much more private process.

“Certainly, the Conservatives are very secretive,” Crick says. “The Lib Dems are quite secretive, surprisingly secretive given their supposed commitment to openness and transparency.”

“Labour are a lot more secretive in Scotland than they are in England. I've always thought there was a streak of Stalinism about the Scottish Labour Party,” he adds.

There’s clearly an interest in what he’s doing. Within two days of setting up the Twitter account, he’d been followed by around 16,000 people. Less than a year later and he’s now reached more than 30,000.

It’s got to the point where he’s hoping to take on a full-time assistant between now and the general election.

While candidates and ordinary members are enthusiastic about his account, party bosses are less keen.

“I've not officially approached the parties at all because I find ringing party press offices pretty much a waste of time on most occasions," the veteran reporter says.

“What I refer to as Starmer's henchmen, the people who are planning and plotting many of the selections, are not very pleased at all with my work because I've opened up the process to shine a bit of light on it, though not as much light as I would like.

“I think the other parties feel the same way. I think the high command would rather I went away because it makes it harder for them to do their fixes and fiddles.”

“The one big nut that I've yet to crack is...

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