I understand that should our representatives pay any attention to the wishes of the vast majority of the British people on certain fundamental issues which are great concern to them, that is, if they adhere to the democratic mandate, then this constitutes “pandering to populism” in the eyes of the left. On these fundamental issues, therefore, the left are de facto in favour of a massive democratic deficit. I was really struck by this bizarre anomaly when I first encountered left wing blogs, and the many convoluted attempts to either ignore it or explain it away.

Panels chosen at random, eh? Have you thought about talking (perhaps through their union reps) to the people who have the most experience of this, viz. crown court bailiffs?

There’s no a priori reason to think that the views of people willing to give up time to this sort of talking shop will be typical of anyone else’s.

Thanks for highlighting this debate, Dan. I’ve had my say aplenty in the comments you link to, but whatever people’s eventual stance on whether projects like Power 2010 are worth the significant opportunity costs that they incur, I think it’s at least good that the whole issue of how best the left uses its finite resource to best effect, and who has effective control over much of that resource, is actually explicitly considered.

Don’t you see that’s what got us into these problems- democracy is what gave us ZANULAB- its because the British people are unredeemable and all ought to be shot, well all apart from those that voted for Iain Duncan Smith- that we have all our problems. If only we could go back to the days in which the British people were forced to eat dung, whilst their betters governed the country- then we could get back civilised ideas like slavery and whipping for servants!

Hi Don – thanks for posting these questions. Sorry for slow reply – we’ve been busy launching the new improved Power2010 site. http://www.power2010.org.uk/home

It’s refreshing to see a critique from a blogger that actually deals with what the campaign aspires to be rather than with what it doesn’t (i.e. a mass movement to overthrow capitalism).

These are important questions for a campaign like this so it won’t surprise you to learn that the team thinks about them a lot as we evaluate the strategy and our approach.

In response to your Q 1 about the need to get responses from a sufficiently wide range of people and not just politically engaged people online, I agree that this is vital. Obviously, the campaign only has limited time and resources so the consultation will necessarily be imperfect but we are reaching out to people beyond the usual self-selecting groups. We’re talking to youth groups and poverty groups, first time voters, the unions, women’s instititute, environmental groups, peace campaigners, and groups readers of this site might find less palatable like the countryside alliances. The limits of time and resources means we often have to go to where people are already and where they’re meeting, but there will be public events of the kind you describe. Bringing disenfranchised groups into a process like this is notoriously difficult, but it’s just not the case that we’re just reaching out to bloggers and their ideas – this is just one way of engaing people and spreading the word.

On Q 2 and the danger of off-the wall ideas, I’d like to have more confidence in a democratic process than that. The pledges will have to be on political reform so something about immigrants wouldn’t actually make it in anyway, but my sense is that when people get together and deliberate on an issue with the aid of unbiased information they don’t come to reactionary conclusions but actually quite sensible ones (there’s evidence from deliberative polling that backs this up, see the work of Fishkin at Standford’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy). The citizens’ panel is being run by an outside agency and a balanced panel of academics will be overseeing proceedings so the process has legitimacy without danger of “fixing” – more info on this will be posted on the website soon.

In response to Q3 asking why any politician would bother to sign up, the key, as you say, is to demonstrate popular support for reform. The standard response of most MPs to questions about constitutional reform, is “That’s all very well, but people don’t care – there’s nothing in my mailbag from constituents on this”. If enough people in constituencies do write to their candidates, call them, challenge them in a public meeting then this response is no longer available to them – they will be forced to say whether they back reform and people can choose to vote accordingly. Obviously the more people the better but a well organised minority around the election can be successful in shifting opinion. According to Alisdair Campbell, and the rest of the political class, Constitutional reform is something worcester women and mondeo man don’t “give a shit about”, so an important part of this will be showing how dealing with other issues – the economy, civil liberties, the environment etc – requires a healthy democratic system. By reaching people who hadn’t previously thought about these issues we can leave the long-term reform movement in better shape and put the specific reforms on them Power2010pledge on then agenda for the next parliament

Anyway, I hope this addresses at least some of your concerns – thanks again for the questions.