The Citizens’ Campaign: Time for Change
As the United Kingdom’s political laws dissolve into a volcanic sunrise, how do we start to make sense of this moment? Some may blame it on the ash-cloud, others on reality television. But the truth is that the history of the present is being written today: not by the politicians on our television screens, nor yet by shadowy forces, but by us, the British people. This chance doesn’t come along too often.
As Hobhouse for the next few weeks, I can call it as I see it. Anyone who swims around the delta of politics has loyalties; assumptions; even vows of omerta. This baggage has its place. But in moments of real change it can stop us from seeing or voting straight. So let’s ditch the baggage, and connect a few dots: from Cleggmania to the skin-shedders of the two-party system, from TV to a deeper electronic democracy — and the growing Citizens’ Campaign.
Conventional wisdom doesn’t take long to solidify. This is the TV election, it says. The leaders’ debates introduced Nick Clegg to the nation, and granted him the same podium as the big boys. 90 minutes of X-Factor reality TV changed everything and gave birth to Cleggmania.
I’m not so sure. Firstly, this election is about much more than the Liberal Democrats (of which more later.) And their big poll surge began before Nick Clegg won the first leaders’ debate on ITV (the ICM poll showing the Lib Dems on 27% was all but complete by then).
How do you make sense of that?
The only explanation I’ve come up with is this. We the people had been going through the motions, tuning out politics as usual for quite awhile – but early last week, the election broke through our jamming fields and got us thinking.
And many of us found that when we thought about it just a bit, we were far from thrilled by the choices on offer. A pair of parties who had both let us down before. Churning out hackneyed spin and untrustworthy homilies. Led, to be unkind, by an obsessive, violent hermit and an airbrushed Etonian car salesman.
Perhaps that’s when the buried dissatisfaction, from expenses to Iraq, started to rise. The finest blog comment of the election so far nails it (from Liberal Conspirator John Q Publican): this has been a long time coming. We started to cast around a little more, beyond our grudging habits of allegiance, abstention and see-saw swinging – and the Lib Dems jumped into contention before the debate.
Then the TV cameras came on in Manchester, where Nick’s low profile may ironically have proved an asset. Suddenly here was a new character on the stage – but more than that, the right new character, an X Factor that pre-dates Cowell. He robustly personified the longed-for change which felt out of reach, but at the same time his “transparency”, his negative capability, his intelligent and passionate ordinariness, opened up the space for people to follow their hearts and hopes for change.
The debate affected the 9.4 million who watched, of course. But its greatest effect was in the nationwide echo chamber of the media — and the millions of chance conversations this sparked, falling on fertile ears, just as the pre-debate ICM poll was released. This is when the Lib Dems started to go viral. There is something a little hysterical about it — the Princess Diana analogies are not all wrong. It’s the state we’re in. But the speed with which Nick Clegg’s win flipped the narrative of this election is testament to how weak and vulnerable the “Cameron coronation” story was. The real Great Ignored — the turbulent undercurrents of public dissatisfaction with politics as usual — proved stronger than anyone thought.
Now, turning to the skin-shedders of the two parties: Nick Clegg’s debate win was so clear partly because it was immediately recognised as such by the Labour spin operation – from Mandelson to Campbell and the rest.
That recognition was dramatic, however tactical it was. It might not have been offered so generously after the ICM results had been released. And it marked a wider trend. Some of the sharpest organisers, ideologues and innovators from Labour and the Conservatives alike have scented the winds of change blowing through the system, and they seem to like what they smell. This is true of the cunning and unscrupulous, but also of the principled (the line between the two is not always clear…).
It’s tragic watching Labour big beasts contort themselves into new shapes for a hung parliament and a progressive coalition while hacking away at the Lib Dems, stretching vainly for a Labour majority and sliding in the polls. Particularly so if you hold a membership card. Some of them have known they needed to make this shift for years, some have even chafed for it, but few seem to know how to do it. You can see how Ed Balls hates it.
Labour, Labour, Labour… they’re not finding the best notes to play so far, and they’re sliding painfully. The need for renewal has never looked clearer or more urgent. Whatever the final result, the Blair/Brown era is over.
By contrast, the Obama-inspired tribunes of the Labour blogosphere, Anthony Painter and Alex Smith of LabourList, have both written important, honest paeans of praise to Cleggmania. They like these winds of change: they’ve felt them before. This is particularly courageous from Alex, who’s up against Lib Dems in the Islington council elections. But Anthony asks the real question for Labour. “This is a change election. There doesn’t seem to be any way of re-framing that. So what’s the change narrative?” Even Alastair Campbell’s post-debate musings had a touch of this honesty, before he took fright at the polls and re-discovered his baying partisan.
On the other side of the aisle, it only took populist-libertarian Tory cheerleader Guido Fawkes a day or two longer to start publicly revelling in the rise of Clegg and fantasising about a Liberal-Tory coalition.
True, the party faithful of ConservativeHome take the opposite view, as do many party spokespeople; and the camp of the nasty hit-men seems to be strengthening.
But David Cameron’s hastily re-arranged party political broadcast on Monday sent another skin-shedding message. As he doubled down on his “Big Society” story and did his best to ape Clegg, it felt like he was struggling to ride the same transforming and clarifying wave the Lib Dems have caught. You glimpse what the Tory party might start to look like if they had to forge a broader coalition — as they will if the voting system changes. This isn’t an inept campaign. It’s an existential crisis.
Still, Cameron’s offer to “join the government of Britain” and his claim to “blow apart the old way of doing things” are mostly spin. His localism, direct democracy and enthusiasm for civic services are real; but at root he wants a loyal supporters’ club, and a band of volunteers to do everything from coaching the kids to cleaning the toilets.
The British people don’t want to join in politics as usual. We don’t aspire to be ants rebuilding our country in the Cameroonian vision.
We want to change the government of Britain to its core.
That’s why a third factor — the growing tide of non-party campaigns around this election — is so fascinating and extraordinary.
Relatively speaking, the remarkable Lib Dem surge (which may yet recede) and Labour-Conservative skin-shedding are familiar ground.
But there’s a new Citizens’ Campaign out there in the country, and it’s bigger than anyone. Day after day in the polls, more people want to elect a parliament with no overall majority than support solo government by either of the main parties. Part of this is a hanging instinct, part is more deliberate and positive. By my count, well over two-thirds of a million citizens will be directly connected to this election through non-party internet movements pressing for a balanced outcome and a reforming parliament, and casting their votes for that. Vote for a Change are 50,000-strong, POWER2010 around the same – and the Rage Against the Machine Facebook campaign to vote Lib Dem is passing 120,000 members. This is far from the X Factor’s manufactured pap.
Now the heavyweights are limbering up: according to my inbox this week, the MoveOn-inspired 38 Degrees (125,000-strong) and Avaaz (380,000!) are both polling their UK members on such a direction. More on all of these another day, as their strategies coalesce. The “Hang ‘em” New Statesman article and subsequent campaign aggressively opened the space, with support from commentators like Timothy Garton-Ash (a centrist voice that swing seats will listen to, and no stranger to velvet revolutions).
Hundreds of thousands more are reading the progressive blogs, where this debate is taking off, and using Twitter — where instant reaction for everyone has broken some of the media’s lock on the narrative. This internet wave may feel chaotic, but in an election where 100,000 votes can determine the outcome, it could have a huge impact. Let’s see if the media start paying attention.
Arguably, the Lib Dem surge is part of the Citizens’ Campaign and not vice versa. This Campaign is only starting to go viral. But it taps the public energy perhaps more directly than any of the parties can. And all this provides a powerful counterforce to the tabloid barons who are pouring poison and fear in the ears of the electorate in an attempt to stop this wave. They know how much this transformation threatens the strange and deformed vision of Britain which they’ve been carving out for decades, and they’re playing dirty – but they don’t own this country, and it’s time they found that out.
It’s anyone’s guess where all this goes next. It depends on what we all do — from party campaigners to bloggers, from journalists to citizens. The second TV debate, on foreign policy, could break or re-energise the Clegg momentum. (His policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and yesterday, his frank talk on the end of the special relationship will resonate from the inner cities to the shires –the toxin of Europe runs deep, but is not yet impervious to refreshing common sense).
But just for a moment, let’s raise our sights and see what this election is really about: a cleansing surge of energy to change the way we run this country.
Let’s make sure we tell that story of hope positively, with passion and open hearts and ideas for what to change on the other side of this decisive vote.
And above all, let’s not bottle it. We won’t get a better chance to forge a twenty-first century democracy and a twenty-first century Britain — or to cast off the undead millstone of our imperial past.
Speak again soon.
Could Red Toryism deeply wound the left?
Red Toryism is perhaps the only intellectually interesting debate that has come from the right over the last, say, 20 years. In many ways it firms up the superficial ‘compassionate conservatism’ agenda that David Cameron had borrowed from Republicans in the US, while he avoided the nasty immigration rhetoric that habitually eminates from the Tories like a bad smell.
But what I like about Red Toryism, and the very reason it poses a great philosophical threat to the left and an electoral threat to Labour, is because it is a deeply emotional philosophy.
continue reading… »
Euroelections: 1994 and now
Remember the factional disarray that beset Conservative governments in the early 1990s, as Labour supporters gleefully watched the Major administrations unravel before our very eyes?
I can’t help being struck by the parallels between the political climate then and now. Except that this time round, Labour is the butt of the joke and it is the Tories that require a continuous supply of dry underwear.
One obvious comparison is the state of the UK economy, which had undergone serious turbulence in the preceding two years, as a result of the unconstrained financial markets that Thatcherism deified and the Labourism of the period still half-heartedly contemplated reining in.
Griffin is finally legitimised. Thanks New Labour!
And so finally, fascist flabby arse-wipe Nick Griffin has achieved national political legitimacy by winning a seat at the European Parliament.
And guess what?
We put him there. The progressives. Or so-called progressives, anyway.
The New Labour project, that brave centre-left experiment to bring Clintonian Third-Way politics to a post-Thatcherite Britain, is over.
Time to offer political parties a new deal – ‘reselect.org’
Both Labour and the Conservatives have moved to take away the whip – and effectively deselect – MPs that have offended public morality with their expense claims.
But is this really enough? Are we simply to be satisfied that a few examples are made of the most egregious cases of an abuse of parliamentary expenses and leave it at that? Or is there a wider crisis the the quality of representation that needs addressing?
I think that this provides us with a fantastic opportunity to renew the entire political class in the UK. It is time for us to think about how we can reinvigorate widespread participation in political parties – old and new. For this reason, I’d like to propose that we – the voters – offer the political parties a new deal. It runs like this:
“We will double the membership of the local party that we support – but only if they will let us re-select our candidate.”
continue reading… »
Why I’ll be voting Green on June 4
It is widely held that Euro-elections are little more than an expensive white elephant, a charade conducted in order to put various failed and eccentric politicians on the gravy train to the continent. This year, however, they have taken on a new importance as there is a very real possibility that the fascist British National Party could gain representation for the first time at a European level. Voters are turning away from the established parties in droves, and I believe it is likely that the rise in support for the minor parties will prove to be understated on the day.
Tories have an easy if rather peculiar alternative in the UK Independence Party (UKIP), and that group’s support is rocketing predictably. For disaffected Labour voters however, the choice is not so easy. Those on the left who half-heartedly call upon people to vote for “the political expression of the working class” are wasting their time, and in any case are selling people a turkey. The idea of asking the working people of the UK to vote for a party that has overseen their houses being reposessed, their jobs being lost, their children being sent to war and their public services being privatised, has me reaching for the sick bucket. I cannot conceive of the thought process that allows people to continue reciting the same tired old doctrines about “historic ties to the labour movement” which lead them to call for a Labour vote. In any case, the electorate are not going to listen on June 4.
continue reading… »
Could a Labour / Libdem coalition happen?
It could, according to Sunder in this week’s edition of New Statesman.
But there must be changes to the New Labour agenda…
continue reading… »
Isn’t it time socialists abandoned Labour?
With the declaration of the government that there will simply be no vote on the proposed third runway at Heathrow, the shaky position of the socialist Left in Labour is thrown into stark relief.
If socialist MPs, councillors and activists can’t influence the policy of Labour, one wonders why we should continue to be part of Labour at all? Our situation very much seems to resemble the song by Stealers Wheel, “Clichés to the left of us, Lib-Dems to the right…”
What are the pros and cons of being a socialist and supporting the Labour Party?
On an electoral basis, the claim that it is the best of a bad selection is on very uncertain ground. Frankly I’d prefer to elect Evan Harris, of the Lib-Dems, over pretty much any member of the Labour Cabinet. I’ll certainly be choosing Caroline Flint Lucas of the Greens over Peter Skinner in the upcoming European elections. Yet this decision not to vote Labour cannot be translated into a rule-of-thumb. It is only in certain areas where I would choose to advocate that.
Love-Bombing the Lib Dems
Something that my lovely fiancé has been predicting for a while has started to happen: Tory journalists are being worryingly nice to the Lib Dems. To some extent, this is function creep from Vince Cable’s elevation from third party economics spokesman
to all-knowing prophet of everything
. Only Robert Peston comes close to Vince’s level of respectedness on the economy now, and I don’t think that can be undervalued. But that isn’t a full explanation for what has been happening over the last few days. Tory journalists aren’t being grudgingly nice about Lib Dem politicians, they are actively lauding them. The Award-Winning Alix Mortimer spotted Quentin Tw… Quentin Letts doing it the other day, but what really brought it home to me was when we finally got around to watching the This Week Christmas Special tonight.
Take a look at the year in review segment. Try hard to weather Quentin discussing Gordon Brown’s buttocks (there has to be slash fiction in that) and wait for the final third, where they all discuss Clegg: both Letts and arch-Tory Nick Robinson are particularly nice – I nearly choked on my Blue Nun when Robinson (who was so horrendously misrepresentative of Clegg’s performance at conference) described him as Youthful, Charismatic, and looking increasingly likely to make a breakthrough
. But that’s not as worrying for me as agreeing with both of Letts’ points.
So why is this happening now? continue reading… »
‘Communities in Control’ – the bloggers’ consultation begins!
A big thanks to all of you who volunteered to contribute to our series on the ‘Communities in Control’ white paper – it looks like we’re off and running!
Here’s a run-down of who’s been delegated to do what:
continue reading… »
Will the left gain from the financial crisis?
It is a minor historical irony that the financial markets crash of 2008 comes about at a time when there is no dissent from the neoliberal consensus at any point on the spectrum of establishment politics.
For three decades now, people have been told – by politicians of all parties – that there is no alternative. Understandably, most of them have come to believe it. Young people, in particular, haven’t heard any narrative other than free market ideology.
That much has been brought home to me by my recent experiences as a mature student. Last year, I sat what Americans would refer to as ‘economics 101’ for the second time in my life. It’s not that I particularly needed a refresher on the essentials of supply and demand curves, but the course was deemed a prerequisite for the more advanced modules I’m taking this year. continue reading… »
Lib Dem Party Presidency – Three to Choose From
Just to pause among all the posts about Labour at the moment: nominations closed today for the Lib Dem party presidency, and (as reported on the beeb and LDV) three candidates have gone forward to the next stage: Baroness Ros Scott, Lembit Opik, and Chandila Fernando.
Why “the left” needs new direction – part 2
I argued last week that Social Democracy needs to be re-invented. This week I show how.
Harold Wilson said that the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing, a proposition New Labour has tested to destruction. Historically, our ethical impulses have focused on issues of poverty and inequality – or rather, on powerlessness. Empower people, we said, and all will be well. Benn, Scargill, Livingstone and others re-interpreted the ethical dimension as the promotion of the interests of particular social groups. This frame of reference led to a narrative of struggle clearly distinguishable from the Tory narrative of government. The problem with struggle is that either you win, in which case – like the A.N.C. in South Africa – you don’t know what to do next, or you lose, in which case your position is worse than your starting-point. Warlike words such as ‘fight’ and ‘struggle’ need to be dropped from our lexicon. They obscure our necessary ethical focus. continue reading… »
The View Outside Labour’s Bubble
A Blairite acquaintance languishing at the Labour Conference reports:
Conference is generally quite upbeat and behind Gordon. My less confident attitude hasn’t been too popular!
This just before another text asking me whether I’d seen yesterday’s poll in the Observer confirming Labour’s impending electoral annihilation. These delegates know how dire the situation is, and yet they refuse to act against it. A conference packed with loyalists. continue reading… »
Clegg and Cable get Y the credit crunch matters
The Liberal Democrats have been trying to make a splash this week, and at first they may seem to be playing in right-wing waters. Nick Clegg announced that he is “sceptical that central, controlling government gets things right”, and he believes “that tax is a means to an end and government should not take a penny more than it needs”. For the leader of a party that has arguably not entirely come to terms with the abolition of proposals for across-the-board tax rises to fund substantial increases in public spending, that’s quite a statement, and an acknowledgement that, especially in today’s economic climate, the public simply can’t and won’t pay more tax.
The party leadership has realised that the credit crunch will have a huge impact – not only on this generation, but also on the next. At a Reform fringe event at conference this week, Vince Cable said “free everything isn’t a sustainable policy”. As public borrowing increases, Cable is to be commended for pointing out the intergenerational effects of “buy now, pay later” fiscal policy. As if a potential recession isn’t enough of a worry for “Generation Y”, they will also be saddled with the bills for today’s spending splurge in the years ahead. continue reading… »
We need to take on New Tories better
In ‘Is the Future Conservative?’ we argue (pdf) that it is time for the left to take on the New Tories and that this challenge cannot be separated from creating a post-New Labour social democracy. By critically engaging with Cameron’s Conservatives the left can rethink its principles and renew itself.
Whoever wins the next election, the future does not belong to the Conservative Party. Nor will it be a re-run of the neo-liberal economics of the 1980s and 90s. Three decades of restructuring and liberalisation have been brought to an end by recession and the credit crunch. Neo -liberalism has done its work and its creative destruction is now undermining capitalism itself. The financial bubbles make it structurally unsustainable.
continue reading… »
Is Labour really on its knees?
Amid the cacophony of speculation about the future of Gordon Brown’s premiership, the imminent electoral meltdown, and the future direction of the Labour party, I think one aspect is being marginalised, which is the future of the party at a local level, and in local government. It is clear that current crisis is playing out on a national level, with national and international problems catalysed by Westminster intruigue and a failure of national leadership that can speak to the concerns of the people.
Now, the fall-out from this is obviously felt at the local level, as Labour’s loss of councillors in the May elections demonstrates. But it is not clear that the existential worries currently afflicting Gordon Brown and his parliamentary colleagues are shared by their Labour friends on local councils. In Tower Hamlets, for example, the Labour group recently increased their majority after four defections from Respect, and a by-election win (after a popular Lib Dem councillor stood down for health reasons, no less).
Of course, if the local parties are not suffering from the same crisis of purpose, this is probably to do with the differences between the nature of local and national governance. Localities like Tower Hamlets have very specific problems, to which a Labour council can confidently respond within their current ideology, without having to worry about national unity, or whether the same policy would be effective in different boroughs.
So, as the columnists and bloggers search in vain for a viable alternative to Brown, and a new direction for the party, I wonder whether the most coherent and confident voices might come from local government, rather than the national scene, policy wonks, or the unions. They are ideally placed to comment on pressing issues such as community cohesion and knife-crime, and how other concerns such as the environment and immigration can be dealt with in practice.
These are purely my anecdotal thoughts – what are the thoughts and experiences of other Liberal Conspiracy readers and writers?
Where will the Greens go from here?
For years, the Green Party operated on a system of collective leadership. Up until 1991 it had 6 co-principal speakers. Since then it’s had two. That’s led to certain groups labelling the Greens as political amateurs – with good hearts, but no idea of what to do.
But last summer the party voted by a margin of 73% to elect a single leader. The Yes campaign argued that a leader was necessary for the party to ever achieve its full potential. The bulk of the party agreed – and so this September the Greens will have their first leadership elections.
The story so far
The first nomination came in last Monday. Caroline Lucas (pictured), at present an MEP and a principal speaker, launched a campaign focused on radical politics delivered with a professional punch. Her website summed up the message:
On climate change, scientists tell us that the next 10 years will be critical in terms of whether we have any chance of avoiding the worst of climate chaos. It is still the case that only the Green Party has both the radical policies, and the political commitment, that are so desperately needed to ensure that we do.
And on social justice, we face a country more unequal than it has been for decades. Only the Green Party has coherent alternatives to government policies that are privatising public services, increasing inequalities, and leading to greater violence and exclusion.
Lucas wants the party to provide discontented liberals and lefties with a credible home. Recent events and policies clearly show the party to be of that liberal-left; where else could a party that challenged David Davis as too authoritarian sit? The energy is clearly there, and Caroline Lucas says she’ll provide the professional quality to bring that vision to the voter.
continue reading… »
What does Cameron’s “broken society” say about us?
Reading the Grauniad’s interview with David Cameron and the accompanying article, it’s very difficult not to become depressed that after 10 years of Blair, within a couple of years we’re going to be under the thumb of his very real heir, and with not just the Labour party but the entirety of the left raising barely a whimper of defiance.
Cameron’s broken society gambit is almost certainly the one detail that makes me despair the most. He knows it’s not true, we know it isn’t true, the government knows it isn’t true, even the Times, whose sister paper has done the most to perpetuate the notion knows it isn’t true, and yet I don’t think I can recall a single politician, whether they be Labour or Liberal Democrat who has directly challenged Cameron to provide some real evidence that British society is any sense broken.
Here’s Cameron’s incredibly weak case for it:
He denies he is giving a false picture of Britain by talking of a broken society, saying: “There is a general incivility that people have to put up with, people shouting at you on the bus or abusing you on the street, or road rage. There is a lot of casual violence; and I think it is important to draw attention to it.”
Bag carriers against Gordon Brown
All journalists hate slow news days, and bank holiday Mondays are often the slowest news days of the lot. Let’s be charitable and assume that this is why the Guardian led its politics coverage this morning with a potboiler of the worst order from Nicholas Watt.
It seems that an obscure New Labour speechwriter – hyped up as ‘a key ally of Tony Blair’, in a failed attempt to sex up the copy – has attacked Gordon Brown in a most unoriginal manner in a small circulation pointy-head magazine.
continue reading… »
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
|
66 Comments 20 Comments 13 Comments 10 Comments 18 Comments 4 Comments 25 Comments 49 Comments 31 Comments 16 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » McDuff posted on Why I'm defending Ed Balls over immigration » damon posted on Complete tits » Sunny Hundal posted on Complete tits » sunny hundal posted on Why don't MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours? » Lee Griffin posted on The Labour leadership's token contender.. and it's not Diane Abbott » dan posted on Defend the urban fox! » Richard W posted on Boris rise for Living Wage left of Labour » Julian Swainson posted on How many cabinet MPs went to private schools? » sally posted on Complete tits » Joanne Dunn posted on How many cabinet MPs went to private schools? » Lovely Lynnette Peck posted on How many cabinet MPs went to private schools? » Nick posted on Why don't MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours? » Bob B posted on Complete tits » Nick posted on Complete tits » Mike Killingworth posted on Complete tits |
