This is a contribution to the Liberal Conspiracy Mission Series

Sunny wants to build Liberal Conspiracy with more political strategy, activism and news. But it is not just content that he is after. What Sunny is attempting is ambitious, important for British blogland and on-line publishing and for OurKingdom, as we prepare a relaunch. He’s written three posts. I commented briefly on the first.

Liberal Conspiracy is immensely creative and refreshing. As well as tackling issues and being smart and forthright, it goes about things in a different way from your average lefty or liberal blog. It looks outwards to what is happening not inwards to what ‘line’ it should be taking. With this new development Sunny is trying to get us all to think with a similarly fresh spirit about our methods and how we resource them in the coming era of citizen journalism. continue reading… »

Where in Europe has the left has made a popular breakthrough, has a chance of making a real difference, even if in highly adverse circumstances, and has a policy that combines openness, democracy and sustainability? The answer is in Greece, but is the British left capable of taking any notice?

After twelve years in power there has been a sorry reversion to post-45 parochialism, except that an obsession with America has replaced the Empire as if singing the international meant dancing to the tune of the White House.

Of course, one reason for this is that social democracy is in ruins across much of the continent of its birth. But George Papandreou’s PASOK party, having just last month gaining a surprising absolute majority, is different.

It is working to adopt a form of progressive government that combines green development, democratic openness and international reconciliation. How does New Labour measure up when seen in this modest comparative light? It is a painful question.
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There will, finally, be a general election within a year. It could well prove to be yet again a fight between the two main parties for control over the dictatorial authority of the British state, now as ‘modernised’ by New Labour, with total victory once more provided by a minority of the vote.

While if the electorate feels there is no realistic offer of a choice to open up the system, continuing negative feedback of massive abstention will confirm popular revulsion yet make the problem worse.
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Saturday, I learnt from watching the news yesterday, was our first ever Armed Forces Day. According to the official website “The first Armed Forces Day is 27 June 2009, and is an opportunity for the nation to show our support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community”

The tradition in the United Kingdom has always been that we do not celebrate the military or have parades of armed men in our town centres if we can help it – unless we are in Northern Ireland. We conquered, or not, when duty called, and commemorated the actions and their dead.
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You want to know where we go from here? We need a new Magna Carta. Sunny recently said he wanted “an insurgency to take our rights back from the state”. This now includes our right to honest government, though I think we always knew that. The emphasis needs to be on achieving this.

In February the Convention on Modern Liberty in London and across the UK showed a clear public concern with the threat of authoritarian power and a hunger to debate and confront it in an intelligent and democratic way. Guy Aitchison, Clare Coatman and Tom Ash are, from today, launching Magna Carta 2.0 with the aim of taking the spirit and intelligence of the day to the country.
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I have had the strange experience of publishing an article in the New Statesman, once a familiar home. It’s a reply to Conor Gearty’s absurd attack on the Convention on Modern Liberty.

Does the Statesman have a future? If the question continues to be asked for as long as it HAS been asked, since the 60s in fact, that gives it another 50 years. I’ve not met the new editor Jason Cowley. His magazine faces three problems: socialism, the Labour Party and the Guardian. Historically, ie before the 1960s, the NS appealed to a broad liberal as well as left readership as well as enlightened Conservatives.
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I’ve never been part of anything that got so many congratulatory messages than the Convention on Modern Liberty, and enquiries about what next and “how do we turn the energy into action?” So, how do we?

Jack Straw in his sniffy Guardian article said, “My very good constituency office files show no recent correspondence relating to fears about the creation in Britain of a ‘police state’ or a ’surveillance society’”. Can we answer Straw by taking the energy of the Convention to the country?
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“It’s a total waste of bloody money!”; “I have not made my mind up yet”; “I’ve voted for him already” (one of 10,000 postal ballots requested, 59 per cent sent them in); “I just don’t know about politics, I don’t vote.

A lady somewhere will be turning in her grave” (clearly meaning her mother); “I never thought I’d vote Tory, but this time I will” (an enthusiastic Lib-Dem); “Look at all these leaflets!”; Definitely I’m voting for Mr Davis … I don’t need a car thank you, my son will walk me there”.

I canvassed for David Davis on the eve of the by-election. The uncertain did not want to discuss. We had a single conversation with a man who did raise 42 days – he was for locking them up, but not, on consideration, if they were innocent. Davis’s core team is very competent. But it is hard for them. Many voters are puzzled about why David Davis has done it, especially Conservative voters. I’ll come back to this, his core problem at the moment. But also party activists who worked especially hard to ensure he won the constituency in 2005 to frustrate the Lib-Dem’s “decapitation strategy”. They backed a leader. They wanted him to be Home Secretary.
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