In my view anything that stirs things up and gets people thinking about the wider, systemic nature of the political crisis in Britain, is very welcome indeed.

But I must admit to a sense of relief that I wasn’t asked to sign. I am entirely in support of the spirit of opposition it expresses but troubled by the way they have gone about it.

I’ll start with the fundamental principle of organising opposition in the present. At the start of the year I wrote a piece warning 38 Degrees against becoming the victim of their success. I’m glad to say that 38 Degrees are showing sensitivity about sharing credit and supporting partners.

In this context, the way Compass – for it is they – have gone about launching the Jury campaign is weird. Given its ambitious call for a ‘convention’ what is needed is an alliance of organisations and networks, not just a call by relatively familiar political intellectuals, especially if we are to increase the personal influence of these intellectuals, as we need to do.

The call should have been backed by 38 Degrees, UKUncut, Unlock Democracy, the Fabians, activist blogs like Liberal Conspiracy and a big list of others including the Campaign for an English Parliament and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish organisations. We must now take on board the fact that there are different national elites in the UK with their own parliaments.

Instead, the campaign does not even have its own url and webpage, and to support it you are sent on the day of its launch to the second item on the home page of Compass, where you are invited to email the group in order to sign the petition. This gives the impression of it being simply an organisational branding or positioning exercise.

I am also uneasy about the strategy that the Compass initiative advocates. This is one of the best things about the proposal. What seems wrong is the way its agenda has been set in advance.

The Compass campaign has come up with an answer to people’s anger before that anger is fully expressed. What if the public’s more profound concern is with corporate power as such rather than the elite’s disregard of the “public interest test” in dealing with it?

What will the wider public make of the agenda of the five issues the call sets out for the 1,000 strong citizens jury to deliberate upon? It is a list that stipulates in advance the great questions needed to be addressed to bring our masters to heel. But it omits liberty, the database state, the national question, immigration. And the EU as well, which is arguably undemocratic, corrupt and an influential aspect of elite control in the UK.

What we need is an open democratic process that is fearless and trusts the public, asking them what they want addressed.

—
cross-posted from Our Kingdom

First, that the strategy of its controlling management was strategically dishonest. Second, that it was run with appalling waste and incompetence and that the two main funders (JRRT and the ERS) may suffer from it. Third, that despite this an exceptionally important independent cross-party network of volunteers and activists was “galvanised” by campaign.

This network could seed a genuine movement for democracy, citizenship and political reform – in a country where, since the suffragettes, such change has usually been led from above.

But these activists may need financial support which led me to call for the JRRT to hold a public inquiry into what went wrong and what its role might best be as the main funder of democracy campaigns in the UK. See my post here on that.

My argument also draws on the report published on Liberal Conspiracy by Andy May. I think the JRRT should draw some lessons from the debacle, given it spent and arguably wasted nearly £2 million in a sector where organisations and blogs can flourish with grants of two or three per cent of that amount.

The ‘Yes campaign’ was run from the get-go of Clegg’s appointment of John Sharkey as the Campaign Director as a Libdem operation.

Its aim seem to have been to deliver a result that would support and validate the Coalition and not upset David Cameron. Indeed, the case for an inquiry is reinforced by an account of the appalling way the Sharkey apparently treated the Conservative Yes to AV campaign.

But in practical terms of building what Sunny calls “an infrastructure” that can assist reform, strengthen activists and resist the way Westminster destroys energy, we need to look at the less sexy issues: such as how money should be spent and accounted for in campaigns.

There are, no doubt, many more lessons that can and should be learnt from the fiasco of the Yes campaign.

This will require a full, open and honest public inquiry – which the JRRT should now set in motion. It is the very least that it can do, given the many thousands who donated their time, energy and support and the many millions more across the country who want reform.

Perhaps she had noticed the article by Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards and once Thatcher’s Chief of Staff, in the Mail on Sunday. It  drips with longing for ‘Attila the Pen’ as he looks back on the internal memos of her first years in Downing Street.

But this longing for Thatcher is profoundly misconceived, if not deranged, picking up from the later madness that drove her from office.

Dobbs writes:

there are valuable lessons to be learned from the Eighties, perhaps the first of which is that no revolution was ever won by hand-wringing. ‘Let’s follow the compromisers!’ has never been much of a battle cry.

What shines through from 30 years ago is that history can be written by the force of personality and sheer willpower…

Recessions don’t disappear by waving a wand, and successful politics requires nerves of steel to keep sight of those elusive long-term solutions. Otherwise we end up like Ireland.

This is a fascinating melange.

First, what is “the revolution” that these Tories are so determined upon?

Second, there was in the UK of the 1970s a major social and economic crisis, with double digit inflation and interest rates. This did call for a new political direction. But Thatcher’s solution, far from being a mere act of will, was bankrolled by North Sea Oil which had turned the UK from a massive importer to an exporter of energy, a de facto beneficiary of OPEC’s closed shop.

Third, while she broke the influence of the unions thanks to the even more deranged and undemocratic syndicalism of Arthur Scargill, her own revolution was the ‘Big Bang’ that deregulated the City of London and helped lay the basis for the US-UK finance-led boom of the last thirty years.

Today’s recession and economic crisis, however, was caused not by the wage inflation and low domestic productivity of her time but by the very forces that Thatcher herself unleashed (a point calmly if indirectly admitted by Melvyn King in his “We let it slip” speech to the TUC).

The idea that a steely and tough assault on domestic welfare is going to repeat Thatcher’s success (if you regard it as such) is bonkers, therefore. Because her solution is now the source of the problem. Worse, the UK no longer benefits from a surplus of black gold.

But there is also something deeply unhealthy about the idea that “sheer will power” and “nerves are steel” are what are needed, as opposed to intelligent process, accountable and honest government. This is not an argument for confusion, flip-flops and ill-concieved compromises. On the contrary, the first thing that is needed is good judgement – based upon a grounded and persuasive understanding of what the problem is.

There is something infantile that reproduces rather than resolves the ‘British disease’, in thinking that all that is needed is strength of will to slash and burn.

I have no doubt that we will hear more of the cult of Thatcher. But after making all the anthropological allowances possible for the validity of voodoo in its own tribal time and place that once gave it its resonance,  the cult is today simply round the bend.

—
cross-posted from ourKingdom

She must be part of Labour’s front bench even if she doesn’t lead it.

David Miliband is the candidate to beat, the most committed to power and appealing, therefore, to the Labour councilors and its machines. He represents continuity with Blair in his air and appeal.

His brother, by contrast, whose answers on Iraq were powerful, is the closest to a change candidate, wanting to “turn the page” on Blair and Brown. While Diane is the most different, she is also, as she said, a long-time Labour traditionalist. Ed Miliband was the least tribal and seemed to have best grasped that the world has changed.

Andy Burnam apparently looked good on television but is floundering, out of his depth and appeals to the worst kind of Labourism. His holding out still for the invasion and conquest of Iraq is, apart from anything else (ie the fundamental issues), absurd and amateurish – how would he tell President Obama that he was wrong to have opposed the war!

Ed Balls was a mixture of the bullying and the reasonable. He makes much of listening but it doesn’t feel as if it would be a pleasure talking to him. Yet he can make practical arguments that are compelling. I liked the way he said if we were going to have all the democratic reforms the Miliband brothers were talking about, why not go for a written constitution so there wouldn’t be all the confusions that accompany reforms in Britain.

There was no discussion of the expenses crisis, the corruption of politics on their patch and of their colleagues (see Gerry Hassan’s post, below) let alone the possibility that David Miliband covered up British involvement in torture.

In his concluding remarks the hopeless Burnham praised the fact there had been no recriminations or introspection! But the media and the Coalition will ensure that Labour’s failure as a government is going to be a big feature of the new five years. Taking a credible measure of what indeed went wrong as well as what was good will be essential for any chance of electoral recovery.

Above all there was no engagement with the fact that if Labour wants to use the state and government to improve peoples lives, they are handling something that is very dangerous and potentially oppressive and open to misuse even if (big if) your own intentions are faultless.

Thirteen years in office has created a generation of Labour politicians who are serious about achieving and know something about doing so, or failing to do so.

If the fifty planned hustings become repetitions of fixed positions, as they are all too likely to be, the candidates will die of boredom and the chance of renwal will be replaced by a banal fight for power over a party that faces ten years of opposition.

A longer version of this article is at OurKingdom

If only Labour could have achieved the same – as it had every opportunity to do.

The longer term success of the Coalition will be defined by two things, its economic policy and by its reform of our democracy. I don’t say anything about the cuts, partly because I don’t perceive much difference between the parties.

I do think the political culture that will shape the way they are implemented will be different however.

To be re-elected in the future Cameron has to remove his party’s profoundly unpopular identification with Thatcherism. The Coalition enables him to do this, in terms of Scotland and the Union, Europe and domestically with respect to minority groups.

Some of the comments and tweets suggest that I must be wrong because the government will impose cuts, preserve capitalism and be right-wing. All too true of course, but this misses my point. When Thatcher scythed jobs across the UK this was accompanied by a violent assault on Trade Unions and a moralistic contempt for those who did not ‘get on their bike’ to find another job.

At the same time, by lauding the market and encouraging people to cash in on privatization (selling off British Gas with a huge “Tell Sid” campaign), her government encouraged a spiv culture which, a dark irony this, permitted the very ‘welfare scrounging’ she moralistically assaulted. All of this was funded by the surpluses of North Sea Oil.

The cuts that are about to be unleashed on us at the end of the epoch of neoliberalism will now be accompanied by a quite different political culture. This time the Conservative government will want to be seen as seeking to mitigate the impact on the poor: it will be sad not triumphant, inclusive not racist, understanding not contemptuous.

In this way Cameron aims to transform the Tory Party back into being a Whig party representing of one-nation Toryism (think Churchill who also first became PM when he headed a coalition, think Macmillan who also ran a Cabinet of Etonians and who the Thatcherites despised).

By making its sweeping offer of coalition to the Liberal Democrats, the right-wing of the British political elite has thus demonstrated that it has not lost its skill, pragmatism and ductility and it may well recover its long-term electability.

The big question is whether the Lib Dems can get genuine political reform. The agreement says not. It says there will be a referendum, but only on AV. It proposes the replacement of the Lords, but in a way that is hardly democratic.

The end of Thatcherism is a defeat for Murdoch and the Sun. But what we are seeing is the political class seeking to retain control of high politics under a welter of words about change and pluralism.

The important thing is not to sit back, watch and be cynical, indulging in the age-old vanity of the left that proclaims it has seen it all before and nothing ever changes (why this should be regarded as a revolutionary cast of mind beats me).

An opening has occurred now that Cameron who is an overt system conservative and Clegg who proclaims the need to replace a “rotten system” are locked together. Intelligent, popular pressure is needed, with everything to play for.

We need to build “infrastructure” as Sunny has argued and for this we need to get off our butts and take to the streets tomorrow, Saturday, in Parliament Square at 2pm and across the country.

But its article on the relection of Speaker John Bercow is: Election 2010: Speaker John Bercow beats Nigel Farage

But the main challenger to Bercow was the independent candidate John Stevens who was backed by the network of independent candidates and supported by Martin Bell.

Stevens was also the candidate selected by Hang ‘em as the one to vote for.

Bercow got 22,000 votes, Stevens got 10,000 and Farage only 8,000. Had Farage not parachuted in but supported the local man, Bercow might even have been defeated, so if anything Farage helped re-elect him by splitting the vote.

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.

Sunny says there is too much opinion around. Conservative Home and TPM are his models, aggregating voices as LibCon does but more important, setting the agenda through persistent reporting, exposés, campaigning for their perspective and throwing digital stones at the opposition. They create a field of force by the organisation of strategic stories, discovering facts, revealing hypocrisy and mendacity in their opponents, to build the foundations of wider opinion. Sunny calls this “infrastructure”. It’s larger than just a platform.

Sunny also thinks that we have to see ourselves as a movement of the majority that nonetheless has to form an “insurgency” against the establishment. Because, while we may have the numbers, they have the power. Think of the popular dislike of the database state and yet its relentless ongoing construction. So we have to force them to listen otherwise we won’t get what the progressive majority wants and the country needs. Call it democracy or fairness – the point is that it doesn’t belong to ‘Labour’ or ‘the Unions’, or ‘the Lib Dems’ or ‘Green’. It isn’t owned.

In short Sunny is seeking to lead the liberal left in a new direction. And he is sure right about this: for opinion to count it has to be organized, especially if it is against the current. It’s influence we want not flatulence.

At OurKingdom I hope we’ll absorb what Sunny is arguing and more important doing – and that we’ll be part of the new network. He says he’s going to add blogs about activism, the media, trade unions and Westminster, without restraining ourselves from these topics we’ll focus on the UK constitution (the nature of our government, the state, the nations, the law, the media, liberty, rights, freedom and power and the stories, histories and culture that form them).

In doing this there are three aspects that I’d add. First, because OK’s focus is the whole area of the nature of the state in the UK and the future of our democracy, liberty and human rights, this means we are open to, can learn from and engage with sections on the right, in a way Liberal Conspiracy does not, and have even bigger problems with the authoritarian left.

Second, Sunny is spot on about the need for an infrastructure that supports spirited and informed combat; web-journalism that generates new stories that others have to respond to. For OK the big story is the broken and dangerous state of the British constitution. We will try and report this in a way people can grasp, makes sense of their experience and accumulates into a critique that reshapes politics and prevents each scandal from being lost in the torrent. But also, as we try and fill our sails with influence, we have to work on the sails themselves. These are woven from argument, analysis and opinion. These too have to be strong and tested. We have got to have theory, analysis, ideas and debates that stand up to the storms – or the stories will just become part of an updated political routine absorbed by the status quo. This goes further than Sunny’s description of ‘analysis’.

Third, there is how we reach agreement. I was invited to a conference in India in January and it changed the way I think about democracy, what I think democracy is about and how it should be analysed. It was a very enjoyable experience, Reimagining Democracy which I wrote about in openDemocracy. In the comments Rosemary Bechler, who is part of the OK team, wrote:

” In the discussion one of the speakers said of Rajeev that he demonstrated a belief in the power of reason to achieve ‘moderation’. Rather than, as I was taught to believe, the whole point of reason being to win arguments.”

This is such a disarming little en passant sentence, but I don’t think it should be allowed to pass by unnoticed. What it points towards, as a movement towards pluralist thinking, is momentous. Moderation, if it is not compromise of the self-defeating, unsatisfactory kind, is surely a win-win situation but winning of a different kind – precisely winning because someone else isn’t losing!… What we need is not reason as restraint, or as a boring middle ground, but reason as creativity – a going beyond winners and losers, enemy images, false binary oppositions, dogmatic notions of the truth and the notion that one can possess it and not let anyone else have a look in…. Perhaps science and philosophy have more to learn from classical rhetoric and persuasion than they have sometimes assumed….??

This points to a tension in what we aim to do. On the one hand OurKingdom will relentlessly seek to demonstrate in newsworthy terms and prove by its analysis that the supporters of the status quo are plain wrong. Sunny’s argument is definitive here.

But at the same time, we want to build a different kind of political discourse to the adolescent crap that starts at Prime Minister’s Question Time and inhabits British blogland. This needs to include holding out a hand not just throwing stones.

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.

In London, Labour’s Prime Minister is currently positioning himself as yet another a “war leader”. In Athens, even though Turks are in occupation of Northern Cyprus, Papandreou does the opposite declaring, “We must free Cyprus of the walls which have no place in the European Union… If we are successful, this will be a sign for the whole world, a sign for peace.”

Here, our Minister for the Environment adopts draconian powers that destroy the final element of local democracy in this country, over planning, and he announces a massive programme of nuclear power. In Greece, sustainable development is seen as a democratic priority.

In Westminster, tut-tutting about corruption protects the prevailing cronyism without any reform of the Lords or any change to a sordid and undemocratic electoral system. PASOK, by contrast, has launched a programme to democratise and open up politics having held an open election of Papandreou himself as party leader in 2007.

Three fronts, then, summarise George Papandreou’s strategy:

• ‘Green development’ for sustainable growth
• Open and accountable politics that build in deliberation and other direct forms of participation
• A foreign policy that involves civil society, rather than its traditional exclusion.

The emergence of a concept of ‘green development’ is seen as an alternative both to neo-liberalism and the old statist left and may offer a way of overcoming the current economic crisis. Crucially it is local and decentralised even though it requires both state intervention and markets.

For if there is one thing that unites the entire approach of PASOK under Papandreou’s leadership it is that his policies are built on the involvement of civil society, seeking to engage public trust through participation. The contrast with the narrow, spin-driven control freakery of the creators of the database state in Britain could hardly be greater.

I don’t know if PASOK and Papandreou will succeed. But I do know how serious, determined and prepared they are, and how they are open to a wide range of progressive views. For I have been privileged to participate in the Symi seminars that have helped lay the ground over the last decade for the policies now been attempted. Mary Kaldor and I set out briefly how this happened in an article in openDemocracy.

If you are thinking about what Labour needs to do as it prepares for opposition, read it if you dare. No debate about the way forward for the Britain can afford to ignore the Greek experiment, or pretend that a similar, very committed, open-minded effort is not going to be needed here, to turn the Labour from being the party of war and surveillance to the party of peace and democracy – if it can now be done at all.

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.

Many are working on how to prevent such an outcome, including a new network around Real Change of which I am member. I am writing this post to share the challenge of what approach to take to best unlock this energy – and light the positive fuse of popular discontent in a way that can be effective.

The question is how. People are asking, ‘what can I do?’ Everyone wants something that could work and not another protest. We don’t need wake up calls any more! We need a way of delivering change. Here is an overview of the suggestions already being put forward.

1. Take a single issue like electoral reform and demand a referendum on it at the same time as the election, as the key issue that will open up change. This is the approach of Vote for Change. The attraction is simplicity and audacity. If such a referendum is held, won and implemented then at a stroke the old party system is broken and voters will be counted fairly – what could be more important for democracy? The drawbacks with such a call is that it is aimed at a Labour government which seems to lack the credibility to pass the legislation. Also, an incoming Conservative government may not feel bound by the outcome of the referendum and is likely to be committed to David Cameron’s ideas of non-proportional changes to the electoral system. If a referendum succeeds and PR is introduced it will create a more pluralist and representative Commons, but on its own will it be enough and can it attract enough public support?
2. Generate a set of basic pledges for change that are then taken to all candidates to create a reforming parliament.
   The basic thinking here is that we know the changes we want, the main issue is how to make them happen. Such pledges will draw in a wide alliance, as they could include a referendum on Europe, local government that has financial power, open primaries and more direct participation. The candidates then commit and voters will know who to choose. A drawback is that to be short and appealing the pledges can mean different things to different politicians. It’s not clear how delivery is ensured even if candidates are elected. How will all the commitments translate into the necessary parliament majorities given how the system ‘works’?
3. Meet, Deliberate, have a convention, Decide, Influence, Elect and hold to account starting with 1,000 meetings around the UK in pubs or living rooms or as part of discussions in existing networks. This is the original Real Change proposal. It’s very ambitious. Its advantage is the hope of considerable popular deliberation, wide public argument, a growing movement and the intellectual excitement of building a novel ‘open politics network’. Its drawbacks are how to deliver the influence it seeks. The pledge policy suffers from the same drawbacks as No 2. In this case it risks being seen as prejudging the outcome of what is declared to be an open, deliberative process.
4. Get Parliament to pass an Act empowering a citizens deliberative convention to decide on a set of major reforms. A Bill exists to do this created by Unlock Democracy with support at the moment of just over 100 MPs, half a dozen of them Tories. Its strength is that parliament is too tribal and self-interested to change the system and this takes reform out of its hands, into those of regular people. It is also simple. But without popular support from outside parliament any such process will be still-born. And how can public support be inspired for the creation of something which then takes all the interesting decisions? Also, lobbying for such a proposal reproduces dependency on MPs.
5. Launch a campaign to “Take back our parliament” This would focus on how it represents us (proportionality, open primaries), its honesty (transparency), defending our liberties (independence), its funding (no corruption). All the big themes thread through this approach including the role of Europe and the need for real local government so that MPs have the time to scrutinise legislation rather than be welfare officers for their constituents. Its advantage is a simple ‘cry’ and an appeal to our traditional form of democracy. A disadvantage is that such a call is unlikely to appeal to those, many of whom are under 30, who are engaged by issues of our democracy, rights and liberty but find parliament as an institution remote and uninteresting.
6. Bring about a network of independent candidates committed to implementing a reform agenda. If this was combined with a strong Liberal Democrat presence it could produce a hung parliament and forge a reforming administration. But if the independent candidates are not a new political party they will need to be locally based. How can this be organised? The financial costs are also considerable. The odd thing here is why the Lib Dems are seen so widely as part of the system rather than a force for fundamental change.
7. Organise an on-line force for change on the lines of MoveOn in the US. This is the approach adopted by 38 degrees who launched conveniently into the expenses scandal and found themselves somewhat to their surprise calling for changes in the way we are governed as their first campaign. The advantages of this modern and fast approach is that it can grow very fast. A disadvantage is the risk of being seen as chasing urgent issues and being very centralised. We know it can work when those involved by it represent something inside a large party. But can it work to change a very large country?

The prospect of an imminent election next year definitely makes things urgent. What is needed now is to build a demand for change in a way that is inventive captures the imagination of wide sections of the public, encourages open self-organising protest, and brings in the very large civil society associations and faith groups whose members are appalled at what is going on.

At the height of the expenses scandal the Independent carried a spread in which the three main party leaders competed with each other to say they were the ones who would lead a huge democratic change in the system.

Gordon Brown said he was a longtime supporter of Charter 88 and wants a written constitution. David Cameron pledged to give “power to the powerless”. Nick Clegg, who has always called for the system to be replaced but backed the view that it was not a priority for voters, suddenly declared that everything had to be done in 100 days.

Each in their way was aware that what was once a mighty Establishment rooted in British institutions and supported by mass parties, had shrivelled into a narrow political class. You could smell their fear of losing their claim to leadership as the populace howled with derision. Yet they also played for time: we are on your side they said, like all good therapists. Now go back to your “real lives”.

The starting point, we suggest, is as simple and as modest as talking to someone else about what needs to happen in a way that adds up across the country and is connected to profound and well-thought out arguments.

It is up to us to start the democratic process, both in terms of leadership and public participation, that parliament has failed to deliver. How can this best be done? We must make a beginning and find out fast. If you believe you have a stake in this, please join Real Change.

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.

The Colour was trooped annually with pomp and well drilled display to demonstrate the special relationship between the Crown and our armed might – a relationship  being assiduously cultivated with William and Harry. We also, of course, have Rememberance Sunday. Without undue modesty, therefore, we were ‘quiety proud’ and all the more deeply military in our attitude because of this.

Not for us, up until this weekend, the boastful mobilisations of state force down 200 high streets (and the risk of protest that might politicise them and break the spell of monarchy – and Republican protest there was in Strathclyde, described by Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy aa a “sickening
spectacle“.)

But at the request of Gordon Brown, the one-time Tory MP Quentin Davis recommended that veterans day be turned into a ‘national’ event as part of the Prime Minister’s Britishness programme. The Queen boycotted all the “main events” according to the Times.

Claims that the Queen and the Prince were both invited to Saturday’s event were denied by both royal sources and the Ministry of Defence

…
Phil Cooper, the father of Britain’s youngest soldier to be wounded in Iraq, Jamie Cooper, told the Daily Mail:
“When you sign up, you take an oath to serve the Queen and country, laying down your life for the monarchy if necessary. Surely it’s not too much to ask for a senior royal to be bothered to turn up and take the salute.”

But perhaps the Queen knew what she was doing as the real tradition has been cast aside. Perhaps this too should added to Peter Oborne’s list of New Labour’s shredding of the constitution.

Meanwhile a most peculiar chopped off version of the Union Jack has been created to ‘brand’ the event, with attractive service girls holding it aloft on its Flickr page. The website also has a button you can click to show your support. So far there are 61,152 impressions, considerably less than the armed forces themselves, not to speak of their family members.

Maybe the real question is why so many events have taken place at all – given hat they are blatently a New Labour ploy. I suspect there is a slightly subversive defiance taking place. Everyone knows that the Iraq deployment was a military humiliation born of mendacity, while Afghanistan is  serving US strategy not the UK’s.

For the first time while they are serving, soldiers are publically percieved as the victims of government policy. If so, the cheerful applause for them is also an expression of patriotic opposition to the government.

Nonetheless, a battle over Britain has been declared if this usurpation of vetrans day continues to be claimed as a “national” celebration of the UK.

Cross-posted from OurKingdom

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.

They have a post setting out the idea here on OurKingdom. I’m joining them. We need you to as well if you have a moment – on your own terms and in your own way and whatever your political affiliations if you are a democrat concerned with how we’re governed.

Here are six problems they set out:
1. The corruption and suborning of parliament as a check on the executive, which accelerated after the Iraq invasion.
2. The rise of a surveillance society: from the blanket logging of all our electronic communications to CCTV to travel scrutiny
3. The sharing of personal information on official and commercial databases: the rise of the so-called database state.
4. Growing police autonomy, both nationally – the Association of Chief Police Officers, for example, is an independent corporate entity not a public body – and internationally, especially within the EU.
5. Exploitation of the threats of crime and terrorism to excessively enhance state power and undermine our fundamental rights often accompanied by encouraging populist fears and alarms
6. The exercise of arbitrary and unaccountable power by government agencies and quangos.

Here is what we want to do about it: launch Magna Carta 2.0 on Sunday 14 June at Runnymede, or at a place near you, on the anniversary of its signing. Then, take the issues to candidates everywhere and draw up a Parties and Candidates Audit across the whole civil liberties and human rights agenda before the end of the year, not by questionnaire but by meetings, public and private, in pubs, tea rooms and bars. Then, hold a convention of some kind in June 2010, face to face with the incoming government.

And then? The point is to start as we need to carry on: in an open, cooperative fashion, sharing concerns, building energy, learning not lecturing, facing the big issues, being cross-party not tribalist, confronting the big picture.

I want to emphasise two things. From climate change to the digitalisation of our identities we are facing huge changes. These create inadvertent as well as deliberate dangers. It is right to be very suspicious of who is doing what. But not to be totally paranoid.

Indeed a big part of the problem is the weakness of government, as a civil culture of honest public service and public values has vaporised. We need to research, investigate, debate and map what is happening. As Calvino once said, we need an open frame of reference as there is no longer a well-proven system or working tradition we can link to. Also this is not just about government. Corporate power, including big media, gain as parliament crumbles.

MC2 is about what we do now and how we govern ourselves. But it goes wider than the political system as we have known it. It isn’t exclusive, on the contrary it’s about linking up organisations, campaigns and blogs.

It’s a chance to make a little history the way you’d like it to be. We’ll launch on June 14th. Add your sword!

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.

It did so because it was the thinking magazine that opposed colonialism. It thus engaged in a radical argument about the British state while remaining committed to high culture and way of life. When I bid for the editorship in 1986 my argument was that the issue of a democratic British state was the way to rebuild that alliance of readers. Neil Kinnock intervened to ensure that John Lloyd got the job. But this returned the magazine to the position of being a loyal (however critical) part of the Labour movement. Not good for readership.

Meanwhile, the Guardian skillfully positioned itself across the territory that NS had occupied, as the UK’s educated readership grew. This cast the NS into a more niche position. Then there is socialism which has become increasingly ideal for niches.

Unlike capitalism and its showy culture of exhibitionism, socialism tends to be statist and this tends to stifle open debate and surprising changes of perspective, especially when associated either a) with the Labour Party or, b) against it and its never ending betrayals. This also is not good for readership.

Now there is a brand new problem, if you will excuse the pun: ‘New Labour’. Suzanne Moore’s furious denunciation of a casual Alastair Campbell guest editoriship which filled the issues with pictures of himself and gave Tony Blair the platform to launch his ‘Abrahamic’ venture (which with the typical piety of a tart he declares will be open to people of all faiths and none) draws a line.

Suzanne’s point that it is intolerable to pretend that the Iraq war was ‘yesterday’ is spot on, deserved by Campbell and welcome to people like me. There needs to be a break from the Blair legacy and its collaboration with Bush both militarily and neoliberally if the magazine is to gain a readership that can enjoy the company of others.

The sooner the better if it is to prepare its Labour readership for opposition and give liberals and intelligent Tories a reason to read it. Cleverness and its associated publicity is no substitute for enlightment.

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?

My sense is that the Convention generated its positive energy because it brought at least four things together in different ways:

1. It joined up the widest range of issues linked to liberties and rights, connecting arguments already being made by the fantastic organisations working in the field. At the heart of this is the aim of stopping New Labour’s hi-tech authoritarian state and its corporate backers now ominously recasting the whole relationship between the state and citizen. But it went much wider, looking at the range of threats we face – from the criminialisation of protest to Britain’s pernicious libel laws. Separately, these may get media coverage as stories. But the overall implication does not.

2. It linked up with a surprising and wide range of organisations, partners, campaigns, magazines and blogs – and already new alliances are forming.

3. It was cross-party and open-minded in its engagement with the issues

4. It combined web, video, meetings across the UK (special thanks NO2ID!) and this gave it a sense of public outreach, youth and seriousness

Can we build on this achievement, or, as Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy put it, “start an insurgency that wins our rights back from the state”?

Two things are needed. A really wide, creative response that researches the issues, debates and blogs the different points of view, encourages festivals, class presentations, student networks – you name it. I think video testimony and clips of debate tagged from all quarters could be very attractive. But this is too diffused.

We also need an immediate aim that will help give some focus to the energy. This has to be negative in this sense: we have an opportunity to stop the core threats of a hi-tech authoritarian state now, before the election.

The Great Repeal Bill
So here’s an idea. We draw up a Great Repeal Bill written in accessible language that sets out all the things we want to stop and we ask people to take it to all elected politicians and candidates in public meetings and ask which parts they agree should be repealed.

We want the process to have a definite beginning, middle and end: it’ll only work if enough networks, organisations and people like the idea and commit to making it happen well before November.

The idea of a repeal bill is developed (OK, stolen) from the Liberal Democrat Freedom Bill but would be different in: a) language, b) the way it is written, and c) by not being presented as a piece of all-or-nothing politics. Neither individuals nor organisations would have to endorse all of it to engage with politicians and public in a wide educational campaign that asks for discriminating responses.

The aim is to create a talking point that links the issues, deepens Conservative commitments, seeks a Labour U-turn and ensures that the positive arguments are not confined to the Lib Dems and Greens.

We should draw it up in an open way. For example, we could ask the UCL Student Human Right network to write a draft. We put this on the web and get input. You only get good participation on the web if people know what will happen to it.

One suggestion is that we create in advance a ‘jury’ combining well-known and representative figures to assess all the suggestions and decide the version that is taken to the country by June. (People can always propose their additions after that).

At the same time we see how many people round the country want to volunteer to create temporary groups or networks and how they want to engage people – through local media, the web, town meetings, pub discussions. Maybe it should also be reinforced by a celebrity battlebus!

How would we run this? The website could be registered in the hands of the funders whose trusts, foundations and generosity made the Convention possible and whose aim will be to ensure a process that is open to all and privileges none. This should also help ensure that it is temporary. Like all would-be movements however large or small, we are the expression of a moment not an institution.

The outcomes? A map of what candidates, Tories especially, agree should be repealed. A deepened public and media sense of the threatening new role of the state. A mobilisation that will help to defeat this by the next election.

If we do stop the state’s authoritarian momentum all sorts of interesting debates will then open up about what next. By their nature these won’t be consensual. They are bound to take on competing organisational forms, certainly across the blogosphere, and not least within the Labour Party and the trade unions if Labour loses the election and has to figure out why and what to do.

We want to influence this debate too. The earlier the better. Personally, I don’t have huge trust that a Cameron government will not be seduced by the attractions of central power. Even if it does abolish ID cards I want it to have an opposition that demands more of the same, not less.

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.

Now, on election day many will be fifty miles away for the close of the 150th Great Yorkshire Show of agriculture and country life at Harrogate rather than mobilising turnout. While some of the Conservative voters are enthusiastic for his call many others don’t think it is a Tory issue. But then, there are non-voters who have pricked up their ears and admire Davis as much for his demonstration of integrity as out of concern for the issue.

I also attended a packed and perfect lunchtime meeting, a small rally with quiche. Bob Marshall-Andrews opened with a wonderfully funny short speech, in part drawn from a great piece he wrote for the Yorkshire Post that Tom has already blogged. I hope Bob will publish his list of Labour’s iniquities in OK. He laid special emphasis on how regular forms of protest, for example against GM crops, are now being defined as acts of terrorism.

Rachel North followed, her presentation was quite exceptional. Starting from the experience in a carriage of 7/7 she said the terrorists want us to “lash out”. Their outreach is our panic, their aim to spread fear, sow division, and “turn our nightmares against us”. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” she concluded to great applause. It was hard for Shami to follow, but she did a great job, projecting the need to be firm on principle but practical. One of her many strengths as a campaigner is unique: she makes the audience feel safe in her hands (usually charismatic leaders make one feel slight nervous as well as elevated and inspired).

In the questions, Rachel was asked if the victims of 7/7 had been consulted. “NO”, she said, but she was glad. “It is not appropriate to make law on the basis of feelings”

Davis was asked why he had not resigned over the Lisbon Treaty, surely this was a much greater threat to our way of life (a point, indeed, made by one of the citizens we canvassed as his explanation of why he would not vote). DD replied that while he was very happy with the Irish vote there was nothing he could do as an individual to change Brown’s policy on the EU. Whereas, even if 42 days is defeated in the Lords it would come back to the Commons. But if everyone in Westminster still believed that 69 per cent of the public supported 42 days it would go through, with much else sucked behind it. Whereas now, he argued, his action had already sparked a wide debate. One that seems already to be shifting opinion (he had read out the Rowntree ICM poll result at the start of the meeting).

This is quite a difficult argument to communicate especially because it has an unstated, implicit criticism of his own leader’s potential for backsliding. DD’s action has these justifications:

1. Parliament is suborned it now cannot stop 42 days
2. The Lords isn’t and may force parliament to vote again
3. This vote CAN be won, but only by public support
4. This can’t happen without DD’s knight’s move

But this is a hard argument to get across. It is, as Davis said at the meeting, the start of a ten year effort.

So, my three memories of canvassing for freedom: Fine, tall trees, hedges, bushes and greenery (a good omen); drizzle, damp and overcast skys (a bad omen); hairy letterboxes (unspeakable!).