Apologies to you on two counts.

Firstly, I had read your guest post. I had simply failed to tie it to you. That guest post had me nodding along in agreement. I’d only like to say that it is now worse than that and that she seems quite willing to threaten global peace by playing chicken over Georgia. Perhaps she thinks it’s a US State?

Secondly, I hadn’t realised you are a politician. So I suppose I should cut you some slack in terms of nuanced debate. For your amusement, the Tory candidate in Glasgow East thought they were ‘in with a chance’. How we laughed. It is about as realistic as assuming Nader is going to come through the middle and win the Presidency. So, you have to chose.

Anyway, it is fine to hang onto principles, but it ain’t realpolitic.

From a merely selfish point of view, I’d prefer any US President that believed in diplomacy as the first resort in international disputes. The Republicans are, in my honest opinion, completely off their collective trolleys.

Why is NAFTA such a bad thing? In the world at large, I can think of quite a lot of worse evils than a trading partnership.

So you are enraptued? Willing to die for the Sarah Palins of this world? I”d say you have choen the wrong side, but then, I don’t want religious nut jobs on the trigger. They are only too willing to enrapture thee and me. And, I don’t know about you, but threatening nuclear anihillation is not actually an intelligent option, is it?

Still, and all, you see the McCain / Palin ticket as sensible? You thus think that the bully will always suceed. For the threat of nuclear war, which is what the McCain / Palin nexus offers, is a win win bet? Tell that to the Chinese.

I don’t think so.

We are not is the sensible position that you suggest. It is not as if the Greens are likely to win the next Preisential Election, is it?

You have to make a choice between folk that believe the first option is the ‘illuminated parking lot’ which is the Republican modus operandi, and the somewhat less aggressive Democratic opinion.

Sarah Palin is mad, so she is.

Can’t see the current bunch being too keen on that, given the way they’ve dealt with the rail franchises they’ve had to take over…the idea of ’successful state assets” is such anathema to the PFI dogma.

nor the majority of the electorate, to be honest. I mean, British people voting for what amounts to “a relatively smaller absence of jam in several tomorrows’ time”…??

One is a very slow drift in a vaguely libertarian-ish direction, and the other a decline of belief in the ability of governments to manage the economy.

Blair attempted to accomodate his Party to these changes, but was a lot more successful at persuading the electorate than his party. That is not too surprising because it is all very easy to demand “new ideas”, but as soon as you try to change things, the people who will be hurt by it complain. Not to mention the people who could be benefited more, if you listened to their complaints.

The Thatcherites found it easier to be radical because the interests that they were damaging (trade union leaders, for example) had little influence within their Party.

It is to Marx’ personal credit that the theoretical work he did was backed up by political activism which helped transfer academic analysis into the mainstream of real political debate, it is to his and society’s eternal discredit that it was necessary for him to choose a side in order to do so.

I mean it’s like saying that the left-right divide started in the nineteenth century!

If you discount Seldon – and I do – then Keynes was the last left-wing economist whose ideas permeated the thinking of the left’s political class and influenced policy.

There’s been a fair bit of new thinking since but very little has found its way into policy and, as importantly, ideas that have been around for a while but which need to be reassessed and brought up to date have been simply discarded.

Marx’s work on structural instabilities in capitalism stands up even if state socialism has been discredited.

Andy:

No that’s not tangential at all, in fact I mentioned it in the previous article I posted here.

Sovereign wealth funds are an interesting development in the sense that they provide a way for the state to be an actor in the financial markets other than as a regulator or via taxation.

Why this hasn’t had that much attention to date is, I suspect, largely because the most well known SWFs have tended to be those of the Arab States and, more recently, Russia and China and so they’ve tended to be seen either as rich men’s playthings or as political vehicles, even though Norway’s is the second largest in terms of assets and does function as a social investment vehicle.

I haven;t looked at the number to see if this is viable – although Chris Dillow and Vince Cable seem to think it is – but one of the option for the future of Northern Rock would be to rebuild it rather than run it down to be sold off, and if the government were to transfer it to a British SWF then you’ve got quite a nice little asset to get thing started down the road of the Norwegian model.

Arguably a bit “left”, too.

Just a thought…

There’s participatory economics from Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel (1990), economic democracy from David Schweickart (1992), participatory planning from Pat Devine (1988), the pluralist commonwealth discussed in Gar Alperovitz’ “America: Beyond Capitalism” (2005), the idea of participatory democracy that is gaining ground, including things like the Porto Alegre participatory budget which started in 1989, and versions of which are now being tried around the world including in the UK, and don’t forget the citizen’s basic income idea championed by Liberal Conspiracy’s own Chris Dillow which is also supported by the Green Party. And I’m sure that’s not an exhaustive list, not even close.

The only way to have new ideas is to liberate yourself from any preconceptions you hold about what can, will or must work and you start experimenting.

If you can practise what you preach and you never need to make adjustments, then you’ll never have any complaints. If you complain it’s because you can’t work out what the adjustments you need to make are, or you don’t know where to find them.

My advice is to stop worshipping any golden calves you might have.

the left hasn’t come up with many good ideas lately, especially on economics. I agree with that.

The left hasn’t come up with that many ideas per se in the last few decades… I also agree with that.

You then go on to a question about whether this is the time to look inwards:

There’ll be a time and place for liberal and left-wing bloggers to close ranks and put everything behind a push for victory but that time isn’t now – we need the ideas first and, fortunately enough, that may just turn out to be playing to our strengths and into the right-wing blogosphere’s key weaknesses.

I agree with this, but my point here isn’t about ideas. I’m fully aware that the left is bereft of many ideas at this moment. Not that the right is any better, though the ToryHome bloggers seem to have convinced themselves hilariously that their recent poll successes is down to some intellectual revolution on the right.

We definitetely need more ideas and thoughts here – not going to deny that. But thoughts and ideas can be differentiated from strategy.

One of the things I want to do is start drawing attention to important election campaigns or races across the country we should be paying attention too, and if possible throwing some resources behind.

Thats very different to having arguments over ideas on here…

Firstly, that is an excellent analysis. I don’t know what you think about the Global Warming challenge, but there seems to be a systemic political problem in dealing with it. Neither the left nor the right appear to have thought it through. So, all I’m saying is that 20th C political philosophies seems to come up short when some new ‘event’, as McMillan said, comes along.

I’d been thinking a bit about Sunnys’ post, and one possibility that I didn’t see mooted, was turning this blog into an on-line Think Tank. I genuinely think that there is more original thought coming from the various authors here than there is from more traditional fora. Policy Exchange comes to mind.

You said:

There’s very little overt courting of Westminster elites and the political lobby and a lot more debate around issues of policy, philosophy and ideas – it might not be the stuff of the ‘netroots’ movement but it is generating ideas and fresh perspectives on left-wing politics and although much of it is not formally attached to any one political party, as yet, it is closer to the mainstream of liberal and left-wing politics than the Liberatarians and Witans are to the Conservative mainstream under Cameron.

I’d also agree with Sunny that it is not enough to simply argue amongst ourselves.

For instance, the arguement over 24 weeks was passionately argued and arrived at what I thought was an intelligent and well informed consensus. Equally, the arguement against 42 days was informed and right. I suppose I would say that though, wouldn’t I?

So, what I am proposing is that where there is a consensus here, which is almost always fact driven, it should be submitted to government or publicised through the media, in the same way that traditional think tanks do.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic.