political parties » 21stCenturyFix.org.uk

The true conservative nature of the English

conservative bias, England, English, political parties, UKIP, unclassifiable No Responses »

May 142013

I read recently, though can’t now pinpoint where, that no single political party representing the English has ever properly understood their true conservative nature. This tweet which has just come my way reminds of this observation:

Farage: a pint, a fag, no control of his party, bigotry galore, and people vote for him? We need a change in electorate as well as govt.

And returning to the original observation, I realise now how mistaken it is. It’s not that no single political party has ever properly understood their true conservative nature but rather, quite differently, that such parties have understood it all too well. And as a result, they have – to a greater or lesser degree – chosen to ignore it.

As I argued some time ago in relation to the destructive swings of excluding politics:

The desire for vengeance, the impulse to recover so much lost time, the blind hatred of the other’s ideas … all this leads to an awful environment akin to a pressure-cooker of prejudice, where time postpones the ability to impose what inevitably become one’s tragic instincts.

Nevertheless, as the pendulum swings back, eventually power does return to the vengeful right – or, indeed, the vengeful left. And so all those suppressed and supposedly politically incorrect opinions find their voice, their bullying courage and their aggressive channels of communication all over again.

Yet pressure-cookers are only good for cooking food. Opinion is surely best let out on a regular basis. As the Spanish would say, only by speaking can we understand people. And if we choose, on either side, to suppress the right for political movements to participate in democratic process, each time the pendulum swings evermore violently back we can only expect further violence in return.

Perhaps what uniquely distinguishes UKIP’s verbal discourse, then (as opposed to the managerialist and toff-nosed leaders who peddle its wares), is that it looks not to avoid such possibilities of violence. It looks, in fact, not to approach the electorate from the point of view of those educated political souls who understand the dangers of giving the public what it actually believes in but, instead, to engage the same by giving public voice to all its prejudices. Whilst traditional right- and left-wing parties have both managed to contain such English conservatism, this doesn’t mean the latter has gone away. And although in the presence of an economy which at least offered hope it has been happy to simply bubble under the surface, generally out of sight of all those social networks and media as its prejudices are shared across multiple garden-fenced and pint-inscribed conversations, when crisis hits home the fracturing nature of English conservatism has finally found in Farage’s foraging in the undergrowth of our beliefs that pressure-cooker valve I refer to above.

The danger is, of course, that what starts out as a release valve of pent-up pressure converts itself into a political party with its hands on the levers of power.

Perhaps, after all, we do need a new electorate. But that will only really happen when the real powers in this world stop wilfully destroying environments of support, empowerment and societal liberation.

A big ask indeed.

On the other hand, if your aim is actually to engineer brutish societies of lowest-common-denominator capitalism, those are surely the kind of voters you’ll end up getting.

So conservatively focussed on Ye Olde Merrie England, even our dearly beloved Mr Gove wouldn’t feel out of place.

Talk about one forward gear and five reverse. In their love of ancient comfort zones, political cowards without exception surely.

A start vs an end: the means to a new kind of democracy

Anthony Painter, Good Democracy, Labour, Peter Levine, political innovation, political parties, politics, sorted No Responses »

Mar 302013

There are many kindly things which Anthony Painter is careful to say today, in order to couch his cautious welcome to potentially new ways (at least, that is to say, in England amongst the major parties) of carrying out political activity. If you read his piece, I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

Three things he says in particular which I’d like to focus on this afternoon (the bold is mine in both paragraphs). The first two, here:

The major risk is that Labour simply rides a wave of resistance politics and cites this as evidence of change and the founding of a ‘new movement’ while actually changing its power structures very little. This explains my anxiety about claims of fundamental change and a ‘new movement’. Both locally and nationally, the Labour Party remains extremely closed and narrow both in terms of access to political position and to policy influence. It’s a party that still fears pluralism; its core value is loyalism. Diversity is seen as about representation of certain groups rather than a complete opening out. It is still more a phalanx than a network.

And the third:

To be serious about change and ‘transformation’ there are far tougher questions that have to be asked about power. The conversation we are having is about organisation ultimately – though it is often dressed up in the language of power. The conclusion on this level is that there are many brilliant initiatives taking place but much of political sell around is, well, political sell. Until some vested interests not just in the Labour Party but British democracy more widely are cracked, however, transformational change will remain elusive.

All three observations are music to my ears – and really need no expanding. I commented a few days ago on how the newly-formed and so-called Coalition of Resistance should’ve really been named something along the lines of the Coalition for Recovery. It seems to me the left always foolishly – or at the very least, rather unfortunately – makes the mistake of defining itself in terms of reactive processes, rather than looking to take the vanguard.

Paradoxically enough, maybe, when we consider the internecine histories of socialist and Communist parties.

That the Labour Party fears pluralism is also self-evident in my experience. Tribalism of a most closed and blocking kind is definitely a driver for those who claim to truly believe. Of course, this is almost certainly due to real suffering and hard experience – but it doesn’t make political advancement and communication any easier in a latterday world of collaboration, connectedness and flat hierarchies of teamwork. The instincts here, of openness to new ideas and new ways of thinking around subjects, do not come easily to those whose very life journey has taught them to be suspicious of strange bearers of gifts various.

Painter’s other point, about the need to crack vested interests “not just in the Labour Party but British democracy more widely” could easily become a motto for any new movement in any political grouping, where the aim was to properly and coherently recover our democracy. The job ahead of us is much more profound than sorting out Labour: Labour, after all, is like it is because when you choose your competition, inevitably you become just like it. Monolithic and tribal trades unionists, political thinkers and councillors are as they are because they are faced by powerful and expanding forces of Big Money which present exactly the same profile to the world. After all, how on earth can any worker consider facing down a transnational without the support of an equally transnational network of informed and connected activists?

So the objective ahead must be democracy itself. A democracy in and of a society where the concept is breaking – and if not breaking, then stumbling certainly. A Good Democracy (more here), as per Peter Levine: a democracy which is simultaneously inclusive and efficient.

The task ahead, to create a truly sustainable politics, where people renew and inform and communicate ad infinitum, means understanding the process more as a start than as an end: a start which – on the back of different ways of organising ourselves – not only never ends but also serves as a means to a different kind of democracy.

The one, in fact, we always assumed we had a right to.

OFPolitico – the new independent regulator for politicians

democracy, democratic deficit, free press, Leveson inquiry, MPs, MPs expenses, political parties, politicians, politics, regulation, unclassifiable No Responses »

Mar 182013

The Royal Charter deal hacked out by hacked off politicians, presumably fed up to the back teeth of the whole sorry mess, is currently being resisted by those it is designed either to channel or shackle – depending, that is, on your point of view. Yes. It’s true. Such an intervention by Parliament in the doings of the free press could lead to a police state some way down the line. Alternatively, in the light of so many recent and documented events in #hackgate land, it could just as easily lead us to a useful downsizing of the existing and perniciously cosy nexus of politicians, the media and/or police.

Some thoughts to be getting on with, in no order of importance:

Just because you’re “anti-press abuse” doesn’t mean you’re “anti-press”. In fact, if you truly love a free press, you’d surely prefer it not to abuse its potential reach.
Wishing to prevent the abuse of the powerless by the powerful is compatible with wishing to hold the powerful to account. The problem of giving or not the media free rein arises when powerful media and powerful politicians become, essentially, indistinguishable actors and actresses in our democracies. This is lately more a case of an economically shackled press which, whilst acting as if it believes in freedom, really believes in corporate self-interest. The free press they claim we’re on the point of losing has never been free in the way they would sell it us.
Self-regulation of newspapers clearly failed: it was the media players who once had the chance and the media players who cocked it convincingly up. It’s clear that something really important needs to be done: if an independent regulator is the only way forward, then let it be so. If there is another way, of course, then let disinterested parties with no conflicts of interest, either political or financial, decide.
A free press should exist to inform and illuminate our democracy, not to allow certain individuals to lever power on the backs of their media ownerships. There is nothing in the least salubrious nor free about a society where monopolistic media units decide who speaks, on whose behalf and when. Especially when fifty percent or more of all copy is (freely!) sourced from the same wire services or cut-and-paste press releases.
Finally, while we need the service efficient and effective journalism may once have managed to provide, the financial pressures on all media organisations – a haemorrhaging of resources in some cases these days – no longer guarantee in themselves the service a good democracy requires. It’s a joke to say that a latterday Citizen Kane will hold power to account in the public interest. It’s a bad joke; an irony of the toughest kind. Yes. He or she will hold power to account – but only in a very personal sense; only in terms of the interests of his or her shareholders, of his or her publishing corporations, of his or her global financial needs.

Where I do, however, agree with the newspaper professionals is here. As per the Guardian article linked to above (the bold is mine):

Trevor Kavanagh, the associate editor of the Sun, said it was worrying “when three political parties get together and their final verdict is welcomed so enthusiastically by Hacked Off which is definitely seeking to shackle and gag the free press. We simply do not want politicians to have control whatsoever in what goes in or doesn’t go into newspapers.“

This is fair enough. We might go further, of course. We, the public and sovereign voters, simply do not want newspapermen and women to have control whatsoever in who gets in or doesn’t get into power.

But perhaps, in the circumstances, that’s a bit of cheap shot. (On the other hand, perhaps it’s not.) Which brings me to my final point tonight. If self-regulation is clearly past its sell-by date for newspapers and other media, and the evidence thus far would seem to indicate this is singularly the case, perhaps self-regulation is also past its sell-by date for politicians and other professional leader-types. We’ve had so many scandals in relation to MPs’ expenses, revolving doors and all kinds of self-enrichment scams subsidised on the ever-weakening backs of the taxpayers that, hardly surprisingly, the evidence would appear to bear out the assertion: leaving all the above, as well as salary increases and living and working conditions various, in the hands of interested parties like MPs is bound to lead to similarly systemic abuse.

Not to mention the conflicts of interest that lobbyists pay highly to take advantage of and which no one, but no one, is doing anything about.

Time for an independent regulator for MPs and other parliamentarians then? It would be a good moment for the suggestion to gain traction. As the “free” press lost some of its choking and often self-interested stranglehold over politicians via the introduction of truly independent regulation, so a counterbalancing institution would be slotted into place to control – in an equally systematic manner – potential abuse of a political nature which newspapers might formerly have dealt with and uncovered.

That it required the actions of the Telegraph and other papers for the abuse of MPs’ expenses to come to light should not be forgotten, of course. But what equally must not be forgotten is that the system of oversight which should have brought it to light in the first place was more or less as self-regulated as the systems which the very same press subscribed to in their own industry before Leveson.

And look where that led us all.

In both cases, it is significant that a bacterial-like culture of self-enrichment and deception spread out as it did. So if the only solution for a corrupt British press is a new independent regulator, perhaps we should demonstrate how competent and even-handed British democracy still can be by putting in place – as soon as is practicable – an exactly similar institution to channel – or shackle, depending on your point of view – these professional enablers and leaders of our sacred body politic.

Peopled by representative persons without political or financial interests in the matter, it could be a kind of supreme court of the citizens.

A democratic circle which would serve to satisfactorily complete a dirty undemocratic cycle in the most elegant and sustainable way possible.

A brand new electoral system fit for a coalition age

ConDem-millionaire complex, election manifestos, elections, electoral reform, Labour, Lib Dems, Lib-Con pact, LibDems, political innovation, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, sorted, Tories 3 Responses »

Dec 012012

Here’s an idea – an idea for a completely new electoral system. Let me explain the background first.

I have to say that before this Coalition government emerged, I thought the idea of a coalition between a couple of left-leaning parties was just what the British body politic was crying out for. It didn’t happen that way, of course. New Labour finally blew it under the weight of its evermore creaking contradictions – and the Lib Dems rather more rancid right-wing tendencies came out on top as national government and power beckoned.

But I do now begin to wonder if the problem is really Cameron & Co – or something else. They are, after all, simply quite old-school first-past-the-post politicians – politicians who find themselves biding their time for a future they expect will bring them ultimate victory. They may, of course, also be conscious that they’ll get soundly kicked out at the next general election – but by then, through awful self-inflicted economic crisis, they’ll have stamped their positions and policies on anyone who dares to follow on.

Whether this anyone be a different party or – simply – different leaders within the same unhappy grouping.

It does, however, seem that a certain trend and tendency is being established. Two fairly impervious postures with an osmotic membrane of a kind sidling between. That the Lib Dems are running the risk of extinction at the moment, precisely because they have allowed the aforementioned process of osmosis to poison the public’s perception of their politics, and that their prior chameleon-like ability to pick and mix has metamorphosed into the uncertainty of violently flip-flopping behaviours, doesn’t mean that the functionality they could provide isn’t going to be needed in the future.

Which is where we come to my idea for a new electoral system: an electoral system designed to enable coalition government by facilitating its transparent formation. Let’s say, some way down the line, the United Kingdom (or whatever it is by then) decides to adopt electronic systems of voting. Let’s even suggest, once adopted in that typically British toe-in-the-water way, we decide to embrace further advantages such systems could bring. One of these advantages could run as follows: for many years, and throughout the first-past-the-post era, people have complained that voting for one party or another inevitably means compromising on certain issues. Yes. Labour might be OK for one voter on welfare but not hit the mark quite on Trident. Or the Tories might convince someone on the economy (well, this is a thought experiment and we are supposed to use our imagination) but not on privacy rights. Or the Lib Dems might get it right on grass-cutting and dog-control policy but be totally all over the place as far as drugs is concerned. How about, then, we use an electoral system which allows us to vote for a different party in a discrete number of specially selected policy areas? Yes! Once the votes were all counted up across the national landscape, each party would have direct responsibility for those areas the public had judged they should be in charge of. And a representative from the relevant party with expertise in the corresponding area would then be assigned by the party to hold the ministerial portfolio in question.

The figures of Prime Minister, Speaker and so forth could all still exist. The PM could, even, continue to have responsibility for reshuffles and changes of government. But in each case, he or she would have to choose from members of the parties which the people had voted for in each policy area.

This would clearly be a brand new electoral system – a system which depended heavily for its functionality on virtual-community technologies and multifarious software tools. But it would also be a brand new electoral system entirely fit for a consensual and collaborative – that is to say, a coalition – age. No longer would politicians have to triangulate their positions. No longer would the electorate have to compromise when they voted. In everything we began to do in such a body politic, honesty, sincerity and directness would become the definers of a completely new era in representative democracy.

What say you?

What upsides and downsides do you anticipate?

And how on earth, once accepted the principle by a sufficiently large constituency of citizens, could we convince enough of our first-past-the-post, anti-collaborative and anti-consensual politicians to finally and utterly let go of their carefully-tended turfs?

Party time?

Chris Dillow, on a high, political parties 3 Responses »

Sep 162012

Chris has just posted a fascinating thesis. Whilst it’s long been held that Labour is in the vicious grip of voter-base fragmentation – a grip that New Labour may eventually be seen to have simply ameliorated – there may also exist the possibility that the Tory voter-base is disintegrating just as dramatically:

What I am doing, though, is raising a question. It’s long been a cliche that Labour’s class base – industrial workers – is shrinking and fragmenting. But might the same be also true for the Tories?

The idea is definitely attractive, in the sense that it suggests a convincing symmetry. Surely, after all, those who grow up and benefit in opposition to another are just as likely to decline when that other begins its own decline.

Which leads me to wonder if this isn’t clear evidence of the opportunities that might exist for totally new kinds of political parties. Three examples. Here, from the United States and a website called abetterpeople.com (just so you’re aware, posts of mine are currently syndicated to this website):

The Party

America, the entire World for that matter, is in need of a political force, a political party, focused on the needs of the citizens of the World, not just those with the financial means to influence the outcome of policy.

Our Goal.

In early 2013 to register a new political party in the United States. This party will focus on the needs of all citizens, both the needs of the 99% and the needs of the 1%. However, all needs will be treated equally.

The Charter, The Platform.

A Better People, and our Founder John F Moore, have a few core values that we want to see incorporated into this new party:

All people have an equal voice.

All people are entitled to the same basic human rights.

Through transparency in government and politics we can create a positive transformation.

There is no room for hatred of any people.

Democracy is not perfect. It is, however, better than other forms of government in existence today. We wish to see democracy, by the people, flourish.

Okay, what else?

This is a political party of the people, for the people, by the people.

We want to partner with all citizens of the world and create an initial charter of what matters to this new party. All of you, in equal part, can weigh in by commenting on this initial article.

We will use A Better People to crowdsource many of the initial steps, many of the next steps. We hope you will join us as we seek to create a Party for the People.

Here, from the UK and a website called www.2020uk.org (again, a post of mine from 21CF is due to go up there next week):

WELCOME TO 2020UK
2020UK is a group seeking a new form of governance where cooperation replaces conflict. Party politics have served this nation for many years but the world has become more complex and large international companies have as much if not more power than many governments including our own. Is it possible that a new grouping which takes the best from all political persuasions working together is the way forward for the UK? That is just one of the questions we are asking. As far as we know we are the only group that concerns itself with governance (as opposed to governing) and has no associations at all with any political party. Further details of this concept behind the ABOUT US tab.

Meanwhile, here I described on Facebook the other day the Pirate Party movement – probably out of more than a little ignorance on my part, but certainly with an attempt at good faith:

I’m inclined to think the Pirate Party is the triumph of alternative worldviews over traditional politics. Like a religion, in the sense that its beliefs are separately formed – and also serve to explain and understand many incoherences in traditional politics. You may not agree with the explanations and conclusions – but logic and cogency do play a part; especially as they are looking for a much deeper understanding of the whys and wherefores of modern life. Use technology to explain away our inappropriate dependence on it? In a way, yes. If Google didn’t do evil, the Pirate Party doesn’t do dependence. [...]

I then go on to talk of elites, a subject which does worry me – and probably should worry you too:

[...] Yet neither Google nor the Pirate Party have seen themselves able to avoid creating new elites. In that way, the 21st century isn’t defined so much by right or left but more by the elites continued ability to reinvent their power over everyone else. Perhaps despite their better instincts, perhaps because of their worse. But “right” and “left” and “non-aligned” all seem to wish to recreate self-serving hierarchies.

Which is sad, but possibly inevitable too …

Now, whilst I don’t necessarily adhere to all the objectives of the above-mentioned movements and their predictable attachment to organisational structures I would probably find resistible, I would be happy for my thoughts and ideas to be shared on their platforms – and for one simple reason: the fragmentation of voter bases on both left and right of the political spectrum which Chris describes so perspicaciously in his piece seems to me a clear given – that is to say, an unassailable reality any 21st century politician must really begin to take onboard. And even though all the above – in their different ways – are struggling with this weary reinvention of the wheel of organisation, they are at the same time also addressing with intelligence and good faith the need to create a different approach to bringing people together in constructive consonance. Something I find truly laudable.

My question, I suppose, in the end, is whether the Tories or Labour are even aware of the issue. In the US, it seems clear to me that both the Democrats and the Republicans are so awash with money as not to need to even consider any alternative to the brute force of traditional politics.

Pigeon-holing and square pegs in round holes are the clichés which come lazily to mind as a result.

It may then be that it will be those who inhabit less wealthy societies who will come up with alternative solutions like some of the ones I draw your attention to above – and way before the existing political parties even begin to creep in such a direction. The main challenge we have, of course, is whether we can resist the juggernaut of ever-increasing concentrations of self-interested wealth in modern politicking – before we have a chance to re-engineer how we organise our civilisation.

____________________

Update to this post: another post which references Chris’s original can be found here, making absolutely patent the quandary a complex population of thinking voters now finds itself in when asked to choose between limited and never entirely representative alternatives.

Can you be clever at politics and stupid at government?

a con, Coalition, government, New Labour, political guerilla warfare, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, pork-barrel politics, privileged white men, professional politicos No Responses »

Aug 262012

I wonder if this Coalition government of Cameron’s isn’t living proof of and a definitive answer to the question I pose in the title to this post. It was Paul’s article on the English GCSE smoking gun which got me thinking along these lines. Especially where he says (the bold is mine):

Broadly, I think James is right to point the finger at Gove for deliberate political interference, but I think that interference may have been (deliberately) more indirect, and therefore deniable, than first supposed.

It seems to me that one of the prime dangers for the left right now – and more widely the buffeted people of this nation – is in overestimating the importance of being good at government for modern political parties to stay in power.

It seems to me, quite anecdotally I have to admit, that politics as a process and tool for the betterment of civilisation has morphed into a quite separate survival kit for those who belong to those self-contained shock-and-awe guerilla units which to date we have learnt to call political parties; which used to be sourced in and served to represent the interests of particular and well-defined sections of society; and which now – in their lily-livered triangulations – only manage to side with what they judge, well beforehand, to be the de facto winners in any and every political outcome.

And whilst New Labour for a while managed to attend stealthily to the needs of the less well-off, even as it preached liberty and freedom for the unnecessarily ostentatious, it’s this sub-Blair Coalition government of eagerly PR-focussed and cleverly Machiavellian types which has come to the final and destructive conclusion that it’s not the legacy you leave behind you, nor even what history says you do – but, rather, in each and every moment, when and who you do it to.

This is, after all, supposedly the grand age of all individualisms. How fitting, then, that politics should have become a guerilla warfare against its own voters. The ultimate individualisation of all: that which turns those who cede all power to precious representatives into mere weapons of mass and mutual destruction.

We, as voters, are no longer the point of modern politics. Neither is good government the aim any longer of all this politicking. Rather, it’s simply become a battlefield for socially acceptable benefit claimants: scroungers off the state galore who use ourselves, the voters, as their more or less permanent means (lobbing us as they do back and forth) to a more or less permanent set of positions of employment.

Professional politicos – don’t you just love ‘em? So obsessed with their calling are they that they’ve finally managed to split off the external objective – society’s progress – from their own internal needs.

A mighty purification of interests going on there.

A mighty purification indeed.

And is that sorry sound which I now hear actually yours truly falling into yet another clever trap laid by moneyed white Anglo-Saxon middle-aged men?

Middle-aged men, with their inevitable hands on the levers of power, who want to see the socialising and supportive – which is to say, overtly politicised – state fall into:

a lazy unexamined disrespect; and
a rigorously controlled disuse.

I do hope not.

But I rather suspect so. Don’t you?

Prejudice vs values – so was Labour a party of mumbo jumbo?

Labour, New Labour, political beliefs, political parties, politicians, politics, prejudice, Tony Blair, triangulation, tribalism, two-party system, two-tier society, unclassifiable, values No Responses »

Jun 272012

Bob Diamond, the top boss at Barclays, has this to say on the circumstances that led to a £290 million fine being slapped on the bank for apparently manipulating – in contravention of its own rules and to its own benefit – interbank interest rates over a sustained period of time (the bold is mine):

“The events which gave rise to today’s resolutions relate to past actions which fell well short of the standards to which Barclays aspires in the conduct of its business. When we identified those issues, we took prompt action to fix them and co-operated extensively and proactively with the authorities,” Diamond said.

“Nothing is more important to me than having a strong culture at Barclays; I am sorry that some people acted in a manner not consistent with our culture and values.”

The Guardian report which lays out these pretty repulsive facts starts out by telling us (again, the bold is mine):

The £59.5m fine from the Financial Services Authority is the largest penalty ever levied by the City regulator, which found that Barclays contravened its rules for a number of years and involved “a significant number of employees”.

Both these passages lead me to wonder if my previous piece on prejudice in politics isn’t being replicated in other areas of life. And perhaps when I said “prejudice”, I should have really said “values”. And when I say values, perhaps I should make the distinction between overt and covert values. For when Mr Diamond says “Nothing is more important to me than having a strong culture at Barclays [...]” and we learn that what happened took place over “a number of years and involved a ‘significant number of employees’”, what then do we have if not an organisation with two separate sets of cultures? The overt one, the one supposedly promoted by HR and communications departments various, the one – in fact – which Mr Diamond argues did not prevail; and the covert one, the one many people operated under for many years, the one which concentrated great wealth in the already deep pockets of its shareholders and managerial class – and which, presumably, went undetected by absolutely everyone at the top.

And so it is that I am minded to come back to politics. When politicians, think tanks, supporters and tacticians all slaver on about the importance of values in political action, are they actually following the same line Barclays Bank apparently followed? Overt values for the working classes and covert values for those who wish to get to power on the back of the former’s votes.

And if such a circumstance wasn’t sufficiently bad in itself, when they talk about values as if they were an intellectual breath of fresh air – and when they refuse to recognise the existence of any equivalent cousins of a covert nature – are they actually talking not about a distinct concept of political weight but, rather, about rank-and-file prejudices very similar to the most primitive which any of us out here are inclined to hold?

Just dressed up in fancy language …

In short, are political values nothing more nor less than tiresomely cobbled-together belief systems – as lacking in scientific rigour or, indeed, any basis in real and useful evidence as any mumbo jumbo we might be required to stumble across?

And if so, what does that mean for our most beloved political parties? Mine, for example – which, in Tony Blair’s massive reign, was rebuilt through the clever sleight-of-hand that was this game of remaining true to our values – even as we arguably changed our political colours.

All of which leads to me to want to add one final thought, before we shut up shop for tonight: if Labour has been a party of mumbo jumbo, it’s not the only political party which has played what is clearly a long-standing game of overt values versus covert values; nor the only one which has been selling the idea that values are far more resilient and acceptable than prejudices.

They are all, in fact, I would suggest, to a greater or lesser degree, tempted by this euphemism that the word “values” has become ; and, just as similarly, tempted to create a two-tier relationship – as per the Barclays example we started out with today – between the values they aspire to in public and the values they practise when at work behind the scenes.

Business and politics were never so mirroring as today. When it could be so good, it turns out so foul.

What have we done to our societies?

Really, what have we allowed to take place under our stupid noses?

What if prejudice quite correctly is the stuff of politics?

conversational politics, evidence-based blogging, evidence-based professionals, in a hole, political innovation, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, prejudice No Responses »

Jun 272012

Chris concludes his post today in the following damning and depressing way:

[...] Miliband says, correctly, that Labour became “disconnected from the concerns of working people.” This is not just a political problem but an individual one for those of use who jumped through the Govean hoops of “rigour”: we become socially isolated, geeks, weirdos and nerds. Academic success has big drawbacks.

It could, then, be that the costs of rigour outweigh the benefits.

If I understand the implications correctly of his conclusion, academia and politics simply don’t mix. Academia is for a world where evidence is valued. But the problem politics has with such an approach – quite at the margin of whether we should trust our current leaders and give them the benefit of the doubt in what they do – is that most ordinary people don’t seem to value evidence at all. In much the same way, in fact, as most political actors in charge – who don’t seem to either these days.

I’ve recently had occasion to criticise politicians for being medieval (more on the greasy-pole theorem here), but Chris’s piece today makes me wonder if I’m being unfair. What if politicians are right to use prejudice to move the mountains of voters? What if nations cannot be usefully moved in any other way? What if we are condemned to a society and civilisation where “the concerns of working people” unhappily equal attitudes constructed on the sands of prejudice instead of solid opinions based on the realities of careful study?

If – as members of political movements, as promoters of evidence-based social and mainstream media and as thoughtful people in general – we are foolishly swimming against an ultimately unstoppable tide, perhaps it is time we admitted that voters are on the whole not scientists, researchers nor PhD students – and prejudice-based politicians who intuitively press our buttons know far more about the business of politics than we, in our white plastic towers of iPads and connected gadgets various, will ever know.

It’s a saddening thought though, isn’t it? A saddening thought.

____________________

Further reading: a couple of websites which have come my way recently and which attempt to inject evidence and objective information into the hackneyed debates of politics. First, Political Innovation‘s new project Who Funds You?: a sharp attempt to make absolutely clear which political and business ideologues are funding which allegedly – and in some cases superficially – even-handed think tanks. Second, a new blog from Andrew which looks at how an overarching superstructure of attitudes, behaviours and hows might inform any British government, whatever the political inclination.

Sustainable politics, anyone?

Ed Miliband, party politics, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, professional politicos, Psycho, pyramid politics, sorted No Responses »

May 052012

One of our biggest battles, as we try and think our way out of the mess that New Labour left behind it, is understand and accept exactly that it was pyramid politics itself which became the cause of our problems rather than their solution.

As Adam Bienkov, writing for New Statesman, says of Ken Livingstone today (the bold is mine):

The problem was not Ken’s agenda, but the fact that it was Ken calling for that agenda. The sad truth is that after 41 years in London politics, too many Londoners have simply stopped listening to him. Every politician has a shelf life, a point where voters look at them and coldly decide to give another product a go. For Ken that happened in 2008 and he has spent the past four years failing to come to terms with it.

Now, whilst I’m inclined to agree Bienkov is right in what he says, I’m also inclined to believe he doesn’t have to be right in what he says.

Let me explain.

In the light of the economic crises which have destroyed the standards of living of the vast majority of citizens, we thrash and flail around as we attempt to invent and fashion the idea of a sustainable economics: the sort of thing which doesn’t Big Bang its way onto our horizons, only to contract when we least expect it just as suddenly from our grasps. No. Something less dramatic seems to be the tenor of our latterday discourses: something which grows sensibly, sustainably, in accordance with and respectful of the environments we are obliged to operate inside.

A sustainable economics, then, where top people aren’t so top and bottom people aren’t so bottom; where creativity and leadership are allowed to flower at every level; where, indeed, the levels flatten and become as close to a single hierarchy as is practically and sensibly possible.

In times of crisis, we look for such solutions. Only in times of relative success do we ignore the consistent need for sustainability.

So if we translate this desire to political science, could we contemplate the possibility of a sustainable politics?

Not one based on that Darwinian slant of dog eat dog in unending conflict. Rather, where modern commercial virtues such as collaboration and teamwork came to the fore of all political activity.

A while ago, I suggested Ed Miliband might be looking for this – even as he tried to negotiate our way out of the bind New Labour had dropped us in; and even as most of us managed to misunderstand those instincts.

In reality, I think, if I interpret them rightly, his instincts are pretty true for a 21st century context. Both big business and current political practice are still unhappily engineered – at least in part – on the basis of an age-old history of kings, queens, serfs and servants.

What we need now, on the other quite different hand, is a new and sustainable politicking based on the far more democratic ideals of a republic of the voters.

Politicians with backbone or voters with powers?

Labour Uncut, lobbyists, on a high, open government, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics No Responses »

Apr 202012

Kevin suggests that what the lobbying scandals need are an improved political class. He writes interestingly when he says:

The correct place to start is to recognise that most MPs – in all parties – are pretty straight. Let’s encourage them to know their own minds a bit more. And let’s provide them with proper independent policy support to help them formulate their own positions on the key issues.

One observation before we continue: whilst I agree that most MPs are likely to be straight, I am inclined also to believe that the higher up the greasy pole they get, the less straight they become. This is a serious issue, of course, because the higher up they are, the more disproportionate their influences.

Anyhow. Kevin continues to write interestingly when he concludes the following (the bold is mine):

The conspiracy theorists and gesture politics mob who want to choke-off lobbying will simply fail to do so if ministers come forward with weak measures, or we will see our democracy asphyxiated if they come forward with clumsy, catch-all ones.

But let’s use this moment to change politics as much as lobbying. Unless we beef-up our MPs’ ability to shape the policy agenda, rather be shaped by lobbyists of whatever hue, we will have missed a trick.

And the bottom feeders of the lobbying world will get away scot-free when this latest, predictable and toothless attempt to clean-up the industry fails to do just that.

I said much the same thing when I suggested the following recently, with respect to the related subject of party political funding and PR. Which is precisely why I argued in favour of a system whereby customers of companies could decide whether to make a purchase on the basis of a traffic-light labelling system which explained how much an organisation was spending on funding and PR per political party. In fact, I expanded on the theme in another post the other day on the subject of a US site called sopatrack.com. Here, tools which scrape publicly available data help determine which US congressmen and women vote “with the money” – money the wider constituents of the American Congress may raise for their own, often grubby, purposes.

The virtues of the above two ideas? Both of them give back to the voters the knowledge that translates into power – without requiring the current political class to change, a priori, its behaviours. The only legislation we would actually need would be freedom of information powers to access the necessary datasets where access did not currently exist. Not a small order, I do have to accept – but far easier an order to define and delimit than the diffuse desire to do something about political corruption.

So whilst Kevin is right – we do need a political class with more backbone (which, as he rightly points out, does imply independent means to study matters of modern import accurately and objectively) – the constituency he misses out of the equation, the voters themselves, also needs a greater capacity to oversee what’s going on.

And the tools I mention above, providing not a political straitjacket but rather constructive carrots and sticks, could achieve just that.

Evidence-based politics – the 21st century challenge

evidence-based professionals, Internet, on a high, political innovation, political parties, politics, sorted No Responses »

Apr 122012

I suppose, from a voter’s point of view, these may (though maybe ought not to) be the purposes of politics, in order of priority:

make life better
shape policies which achieve the first priority
create tools which allow the shaping of policies which achieve the first priority

And I suppose, from a politician’s point of view, these may (though maybe ought not to) be the purposes of politics, in order of priority:

win elections
elect leaders who achieve the first priority
create tools which allow the election of leaders who achieve the first priority

As can be seen from perhaps this slightly cynical description of where voters and politicians might not exactly coincide, whilst the politicians are mainly interested in everything that leads up to winning power, the voters are essentially interested in everything that happens as a consequence of their representatives achieving their goal.

No wonder we as voters are fed up to the back teeth of our politics. The purpose of politics as understood by the “top-flight” politicos has very little overlap with the expectations of voters. No amount of listening, conservations or dialogues can cover over the implications of the above: in the end, most voters and most politicians who get to mean anything on the national stage end up having totally different interests, to the extent that they are most engaged by completely separate stages in the process of politicking.

And the solution to this manifest misfit of goals? Perhaps we need to change the landscape politics operates in. In an Internet world, where constitutions are now written by citizens, maybe we could begin to leave votes and referendums more to the tranquil and leisurely pursuit of people behaving as empowered and energetic citizens than to the personality-ridden contexts of modern politics. In such a way, we would be able to click and express preferences on proposed policies – but in a resourceful manner which, as we searched them out for ourselves (or with the aid of appropriately indicating algorithms), would be akin to skimming and surfing through a political Wikipedia. We would thus be able to leave behind all that swaying-of-the-emotions stuff which leads us to periodical dismay.

Meanwhile, the election of leaders could be left to an analogous process of public analysis of strengths and weaknesses, but in this case using any proven HR system for choosing job candidates.

We could – as a nation of engaged voters (or even to start with at simple party level) – work in groups to define the qualities we would want of our leaders before submitting our requirements to an automated system which would draw on a series of ready-made questions and objectively useful challenges. As a result then of such a competition of abilities, we as a nation (or party) could vote in accordance with a much clearer idea of how someone might behave under all kinds of extreme but usefully predictable situations.

If we must stick with a system that delegates a relatively unlimited power to hardly self-limiting politicians, at least give us more objective information to make that decision with a little bit of intelligence and sensibility.

And maybe – you really never know – we might one day get the evidence-based politics I’d argue we deserve.

Improve politics by all means – but don’t confuse authenticity with opportunism

in a hole, political chicanery, political dissonance, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, shackles of democracy, Telegraph 2 Responses »

Mar 312012

Charles Moore has an interesting piece over at the Telegraph today. His final paragraph defines the current political situation thus:

We have too much debt. We pay too-high taxes. We build too few houses. We are losing old jobs and costs prevent us creating new ones. We are having a bad time, and we want the people who rule us to lead us out of that, and think of little else. It is simple, but not easy.

And whilst I don’t agree with everything he says – I’m not sure it’s costs that are really preventing us from creating new jobs, for example – much as one might sign up with a slightly heavy heart to a manifesto (ie not agreeing with everything you found in it and yet even so agreeing enough), so I am inclined to say: “Yes, in this case, I agree with practically everything you argue.”

As regular readers of this blog will note, I suggested the other day that the Coalition was far cleverer than its public performance might suggest – that, indeed, its public performance might even be a deliberate case of discombobulation. in fact, evidence that this latter scenario might be the case is included in Moore’s article:

[...] now that I have heard the Conservatives’ private explanation, which is being handed down to constituency associations by MPs, I begin to feel angry.

The private message is as follows. “This is our Thatcher moment. In order to defeat the coming miners’ strike, she stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour Party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers’ strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed.”

Moore talks about the difference between Thatcher and these lot by suggesting Thatcher did what she did in the weeks prior to the miners’ strike without inconveniencing very much the public. (Yesterday, meanwhile, it would appear that at least one member of the public was severely inconvenienced by taking the original government advice too literally.)

But where I agree one hundred percent with Moore’s thesis is when he talks about the public’s yearning for authenticity. From Thatcher to Blair, authenticity was clearly the prime driver in a wider public’s acceptance and embracing of powerful figures who obviously had their own minds. You didn’t have to agree with everything they did – you did, however, need to agree with where they were coming from.

And as Moore also suggests, the deception left behind, after Blair’s own breaking of the contract he once forged so strongly with the British voters, is “hanging over British politics like smog”.

Quite rightly too.

Moore also refers to Galloway, though, as an example of authenticity. Here, I think, he gets it wrong. Galloway isn’t a careerist; isn’t a celebrity; isn’t authentic in the least. Galloway, quite simply, is an opportunist who will say what he must. If anti-Semitism is necessary to win an election, anti-Semitism it will be.

With such opportunism, no one should have any truck. Nor confuse it with the authenticity which we may yet yearn for in the future.

Here’s a suggestion, in the meantime, as to where we might attempt to go instead: Ed Miliband started his leadership with an apparently unfocussed keynote speech at Labour Party Conference. This is what I said of it at the time:

Now I’m not saying Ed Miliband has succeeded where Hitchcock did decades before: transgression is not quite where most British politicians are to be found these days. But I do think, in an analogous way, that – in his recent speech at Party Conference – Ed Miliband was at least attempting to break certain moulds in quite a courageous manner. The very fact that many people felt obliged to criticise his delivery – and not see his register as conversational rather than traditionally declamatory – does make me wonder if this poor man doesn’t have the hardest job in politics: to sell grassroots collaboration to a political party wary of, and thus resistant to, all such similar promises.

A political party which claims to be the very essence of grassroots politics – and then consistently finds itself in search of yet another charismatic group of fixers.

A political party which could be perfectly positioned to create a new kind of political, social and business environment (as, indeed, Miliband in his speech promised to fight on behalf of) – and yet which generally finds itself dodging and fudging the most insistent contradictions and incongruences inhabiting its core.

Is Ed Miliband’s speech going to be a Hitchcockian achievement? Misunderstood on its first outing by those who claim to know – yet generally, in the future, to be well received by those who can only vote? Battling against those “vested interests” which make economies in their own image and for their own purposes is an issue he is courageous to raise. In a sense, then, perhaps we could say – with his conversation – that Miliband proposes nothing more nor less than that neo-New Labour I was unhappy with the other day: but in a better and far more constructive register; that is to say, all the unfinished business which New Labour was never brave enough to get round to effecting.

Could this, then, be a way of tying the authenticity of New Labour’s legacy of top-down delivery into a 21st century grassroots approach to devolved empowerment? A way, precisely, of not confusing authenticity with opportunism but – rather – transposing the former to the real people who need supporting. For as Moore quite rightly points out of the Coalition and its leaders:

[...] You are asserting privilege, when you should be dressing your best because you represent your country. You are acting as if you own the place. You don’t.

Our politicians, for far too long, have been behaving in opportunistic ways. To describe it in terms of customer-focussed management systems, politicians’ customers (or clients if you prefer) should be external – that is to say, the voters and their families, friends and support networks – whereas of late (and not just this government either) their customers have been manifestly internal; their customers have become themselves. Businesspeople who don’t simply have the ear of politicians but have actually – suddenly – become the political classes themselves.

Which is why it is, in fact, time to construct a register of communication for politics which does not use the language of business.

Authenticity in politics should really mean service, not ownership. We need, in British politics, to recover that sense of service. And whatever the politics that emerges from such a sea change, it surely cannot be as bad as the politics we now have.

Political parties 1-1, voters kind of a humungous 0

Labour, marketing-speak, political guerilla warfare, political marketing, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, Tories, unclassifiable 2 Responses »

Mar 302012

Over the past two weeks we’ve had a sequence of rather silly narratives. The Budget finally put its stamp of approval on the 50p to 45p income tax argument that whilst the rich need more money to survive, the poor need less. Then there was the Granny Tax which apparently hit around four million middle-class pensioners. The government followed this by jacking up the price of stamps – I guess the only people who use stamps these days are poor people with little access to the Internet – as well as the VAT on hot pasties, so prejudicing again those less well-off individuals unable to afford the exorbitant price of meat these days.

The government also succeeded in turning a potential petrol tanker strike on the subject of terms, conditions, health and safety – a potential strike which was, in fact, still being negotiated at ACAS – into a nationwide panic-buying disaster of monumentally foolish proportions, simply by encouraging ministers to be filmed on TV urging the wider populace to fill up their jerrycans and store them – possibly illegally – in their garages!

We should of course neither forget that at the weekend the Tory Party co-treasurer had to resign because he’d been caught offering access to Cameron’s dinner parties for a quarter of a million pounds a throw.

But in the grand scheme of things, this latter fact appears now to be pretty irrelevant.

So now do you believe me when I suggest this government is using NLP?

Today, however, we awaken to the fact that George Galloway has just won from Labour the Bradford West by-election with a massive swing and by 10,100 votes.

This curious event, even where judged by the BBC‘s Nick Robinson as a “one-off political coup by a political one-off”, should surely convince the marketing-led political busybodies who occupy the higher echelons of number-crunching political parties that the demagogic approach will have its day if the disconnect between what politicians say and what politicians do remains.

The result of all the above is very clear: whilst before this morning the past two weeks looked like a clear political win for Labour – even as it depended more on the government’s own furiously shocking lack of an ability to manage news than its own essential virtues – right now it would seem that Tories and Labour are pretty much drawn equal.

The voters meanwhile? A humungous 0 is my opinion.

Until politics becomes more about the voters than the politicians, until the real client is the non-professional in the equation and not the careerist who makes a job of it, the Galloways of this world will always have their opportunities.

I’m not saying we don’t need careerists. We couldn’t do without them.

All I’m saying is that we need them to understand that their interests are much less important than the voters’.

Instead of, right now, quite the other way round.

Calling all 21st century politics and politicians!

copyright, copyright madness, digital literacy, digital world, Lawrence Lessig, on a high, Open Rights Group, political parties, politicians, politicking, professional politicos, sorted, technology No Responses »

Mar 262012

I wrote yesterday on the Open Rights Group’s 2012 Conference, held in London on Saturday at the University of Westminster.

Here, now, you can find the keynote speech given by Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is best known for his work on copyright, but of late his accumulated wisdoms have led him to investigate the real reasons behind the destruction of our democratic discourse. In the speech you can find below, you will see examples taken from the fields of technology and copyright which – whilst entertaining in themselves and of vast interest to the geekier ones amongst us – have a much greater relevance to the much wider context of general political activity.

Mr Lessig is an obsessive seer of connecting strands. He understands how our society works by taking many different-angled bites at the apple of our behaviours. I would beg you, therefore, whether you consider yourself a geek or a politician, to take the time out to see and listen to what he has to say.

His is no longer a discourse limited to the rarefied concepts and theory of copyright law. He speaks universally – and deserves universal attention.

Many thanks, by the by, for Open Rights Group’s herculean efforts which brought him to British shores this weekend.

Recognizing the Fight We’re In from lessig on Vimeo.

What does “getting a grip” mean for us lefties?

in a hole, Labour, LabourList, left, left-wing blogging, left-wing politics, Lib Dems, neo-New Labour, New Labour, political parties, politicking, producer-consumers, Tony Blair, Tories, triangulation No Responses »

Mar 182012

Over at Labour List today, Sue argues we lefties should get a grip:

I don’t like the current Labour position on welfare, I’m almost constantly head-desking whenever they issue a press statement, I do realise they set a lot of these “reforms” up and I worry about the possibility of an election any time soon – they clearly couldn’t run drinkies-in-the-proverbial right now, but on the whole – on the whole - get a grip lefties.

Start defending our record. Accept the bits we got wrong and move on, but for goodness sake, anyone claiming “They’re all the same/Triangulation/They’re worse than the Tories/I’ll never vote Labour again” might want to ask themselves just how long they’d like to keep this cabinet of millionaires. And just how much we’re going to allow them to get wrong before we unite and fight.

It’s funny – or perverse; whenever someone argues we should jack in political parties I find myself beginning to disagree, but whenever someone comes to me saying the primary responsibility of us lefties is to unite … well, I really can’t help reacting rather negatively. Yes. I agree with Sue that we should get a grip – the question is who gets to get the grip and precisely on what.

Unable, in a first instance, to answer this question, I thought I’d carry out a thought experiment to see if that would help. A list of personal positives which I would be prepared to attribute to Labour:

when I came back to Britain in 2003, I was in a serious state of mental ill health – the NHS managed in the end to help put me back together again;
my children received a better education from the time they rejoined me in England than they almost certainly would have done in Spain had they stayed – they are now bilingual, the eldest is studying Mandarin Chinese and Russian at university, the middle one wants to go abroad to study film and the youngest is already considering proactively how she might get jobs once she is sixteen;
my wife regained confidence in herself and her own ability as a teacher due to the then relatively buoyant labour market – little by little, she has achieved a certain degree of stability and self-respect;
I have finally managed to get to a position where I can see I may be able to earn my living from writing via the Internet – something I dreamed of since 2002 and which would make my life entirely fulfilled if I achieve my goal;

These are all good, big and life-changing moments which allow me to see Labour – even New Labour – through a positive prism of perceptions. However, I have to say that at least one of them – my mental ill health – was in part due to the lies and obfuscations which surrounded the process leading up to the Iraq War.

I lost my faith, during that time, in much of what could be reasonably expected of party politicking – I still resist, for example, at a local grassroots CLP level, to get involved with active politics. In part I do feel it has something to do with this back story. A story of political innocence being taken advantage of by those who know how to manipulate sincere emotions for their own personal benefit.

So many big positives for me in a little under a decade of living under New Labour – even as the primary one which brought me back to Britain was the massive negative of a questionable and bloody political process.

If I, as a relatively unpractised leftie, do need to get a grip as Sue suggests, then I might be inclined – in the light of all the above – to suggest the grip I really need to get is over a political party which doesn’t know how to communicate; doesn’t understand that consultation is nowhere near a proper dialogue of equals; and is riven with the triangulatory instincts she blithely tells us to ignore.

Here, then, is where Los Indignados can teach us more than one lesson: in order to unite around positions and policy, you first have to agree on process and procedures. Without due agreement on the latter, no progress shall ever be sustainably made.

Do not, then, as a leftie who needs to get a grip, simply exhort me to hate the Tories and fight the good fight. I don’t want them to define how my politics will function any more than you want them to define how the country will function. And if we give up on truly empowering process and procedures before we’ve even really started, if we refuse to learn the lessons other groups and organisations springing up across the world can teach us, we shall remain anchored in a past that will become – by itself and not because of the Tories – evermore irrelevant, ineffective and ineffectual to a proactive and generally empowering producer-consumer society such as ours could become.

If the Tories manage to force us to limit our ambitions to creating a New Labour (II), they will have won a long-term political battle without us even having cared to engage. Just as the terrorists of 9/11 created a generation of fearful legislation and terrified citizens, so the Tories may yet achieve their goal of turning us lefties, those of us who supposedly need to get that grip of Sue’s, into a wearisome terracotta army of conservative instincts ready to continue implementing the philosophies which Tony Blair so carefully set up and entrapped us all with.

As a Lib Dem acquaintance of mine (yes, it’s possible for a leftie like me to have one) quite rightly said to me recently, the NHS bill we’re so desperate to get dropped had its foundations laid by New Labour in 2006′s National Health Service Act.

If we really want to get the current bill dropped, and I am sure we can all agree we do, we should surely also campaign to unravel the straitjacket of philosophies which Tony Blair was directly responsible for – and which have led to Lansley’s moment of awful glory.

Meanwhile, dear Sue, we should surely remember that “getting a grip” can just as easily mean subjugation as empowerment.

And remembering thus, act accordingly.

On politicising social-ism (or a kind of Labour Party, Part III)

Amazon, Facebook, Internet, Labour, on a high, open web, political parties, social media, social networks, sorted, Splinternet, virtual socialism, web No Responses »

Feb 142012

Yesterday, I put some half-formed thoughts down on the subject of Facebook and a monetisable socialism. I also linked to this post from Bev which, whilst long (like many of my posts, mind), is well worth your while. I quote from the latter part of this second post as follows (the bold is mine):

We might start with philosophy – though as someone who makes a living from philosophy, I would say that! According to Aristotle, writing many centuries ago, humans are best understood as ‘social animals’. We are not units existing in isolation from others. And if we are to flourish, we need good, strong relationships and strong communities.

If we don’t like philosophy, we might look to social science. Recent research by the New Economics Foundation found that feeling good about your life doesn’t only come about through achieving your personal goals. Feeling good also comes from knowing yourself to be a part of a wider community. Over emphasising ‘the individual’ while ignoring the social dimension of human beings ignores the fact that we need each other to live well.
The clue to socialism’s relevance is, then, in its name – social-ism.

As Bev evidences, we are clearly social animals. And as the Facebooks of this world indicate, we are now monetisable social animals. Something which many of us might decry.

But in the success of such social networks at their carving up of what was initially a free worldwide web – as well as making it make serious money for mainly US corporate behemoths – there is surely a broader lesson: the social instincts of human beings, whilst always at the mercy of a selfish individualism across the world, can never be entirely expunged. If politics can no longer create worthy spaces for it to exist, it will surely reappear and flower just as significantly somewhere else.

It’s curious, it really is: whilst companies like Facebook want to engender captive marketplaces of social-ism (to use Bev’s terminology) in their customers and clients everywhere, for themselves and their corporate figures they are looking to have the rights a fierce individual-ism apports:

Despite not being natural persons, corporations are recognized by the law to have rights and responsibilities like natural persons (“people”). Corporations can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state,^[2] and they can themselves be responsible for human rights violations.^[3] Corporations are conceptually immortal but they can “die” when they are “dissolved” either by statutory operation, order of court, or voluntary action on the part of shareholders. Insolvency may result in a form of corporate ‘death’, when creditors force the liquidation and dissolution of the corporation under court order,^[4] but it most often results in a restructuring of corporate holdings. Corporations can even be convicted of criminal offenses, such as fraud and manslaughter. However corporations are not living entities in the way that humans are. ^[5]

Do as I say, then, not as I do.

Though we should hardly be surprised – money drives many of us to many incoherences.

But what is the wider political lesson we can learn from all of the above? That the winds of Bev and Facebook’s social-ism can be channelled and used to our advantage, if only we are able to see our way beyond the logistical and organisational structures of old.

For it isn’t entirely inconceivable, if we know how to grasp the opportunity, that – five years down the line – a political party of Labour’s intellectual weight could communicate, engage, dialogue, function, fund, advertise and – most importantly – look exactly like the Facebooks and Amazons of today’s splintering Internet.

Not a political party which uses new technologies to structure its interface with the public. Rather, a political party which – much like Amazon and Facebook – couldn’t have come into existence without such new technologies.

Not a real-world political party which knows how to push its real-world message using virtual tools but, rather, far more significantly, a virtual-world political party which knows how to push its real-world message using virtual-world tools.

The ravings of an Internet wonk?

Just think about it. The barriers to setting up a new political party – in this virtual world of cheap communications technologies – are much smaller than they were even ten years ago; so just imagine what the next five will bring.

And whilst real-world parties claim to be investing in tools to communicate more effectively with their constituencies and their potential voters, in reality what they’re doing is analogous to the content industries’ attempt to avoid having to deal with their out-of-date business models: that is to say, creating the very technologies which make it easier for any political Johnny-come-lately to suddenly come in and frighteningly raise the bar.

I really wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if – at some unhappy time in the future – the existing political parties came together to try and pass an ACTA of the Westminster political bubble to make it practically impossible for any new party to come into existence.

For that is what is really at risk of happening: the political parties are doing everything they can at the moment not to fundamentally change their ways of seeing, whilst at the same time unintentionally making it easier for other political visionaries to set up – even, perhaps, across the globe – a multi-million-member base of supporters and followers: everyone participating from home, in hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, to the degree and capability each possessed and chose to dedicate to the cause.

Volunteering heaven, in fact.

Indeed, it does occur to me that Facebook itself might one day choose to transmute into the kind of political force which – in terrible or benevolent hindsight we still cannot know – history will describe as the grand and considerable 21st century re-interpretation of what political groupings once had to be.

So before it does, or before someone else makes such a move, surely we should consider and value the chances of doing so ourselves for what we might term – after the experiment that was New Labour – a Labour Party, Part III.

Not monetising old-fashioned socialism, then, exactly – more a question of politicising, in their different ways, both Bev and Facebook’s new-style social-ism.