And Another Thing…

‘I speculated about the scenario of every single candidate standing in all 646 seats in a general election each having a personal blog which they updated regularly throughout the campaign without interference from their parties’ HQs.’

any suggestions as to who would be the first to go ‘off message’?

One of the keys is to get more people to vote, particularly younger people. Maybe FB, twitter, Blogs, YoouTube will helkp?

Certainly, the opportunity to engage with polticians through blogs can only be a good thing for those MPs who have the ability, inclination and stamina to engage.

the Hannan viral does indicate the power of the net and Twitter is a surprisingly effective medium for comment, information and the usual amusing non sense and nonsense.

The Whips may have a hard time keeping matters on message though… mind you, democracy is all the healthier, I suspect, for informed debate and MPs should, after all, know what is happening – so the influence of the political commentator may also change?

Its interesting and poses structural questions about the Party system established, initially, by Peel in the Conservative Party. There the goal was to create centralised control of local constituencies and, ideally, their MPs. Similar things are going on today in UKIP (don’t dwell on the fact that puts it about 170 odd years off the pace…).

The idea of returning voices to candidates or constituencies is directly opposed to this centralisation. I’d welcome it, coincidently. To be successful on the web, as you know Tom, you need to be free from government or party restrictions. This is why this blog isn’t paid for with an allowance, right? So what this means is that central control has to be replaced with trust – the party hierarchies have to trust their members and loses the ability to squash debate and dissent.

This is inherently healthy, in my view, as whipped drones deliver shoddy legislation, from Dangerous Dogs to constant and often poorly drafted Terrorism legislation.

Additionally I think that platforms like this, or John Redwood’s blog, or Prescott’s for that matter, are fantastic ways for politicians to speak to interested people and puncture that ‘Westminster bubble’ we here so much about. To me it is a rebalancing of MPs ‘remoteness’ – behind police cordons and shielded from demonstrations near Parliament, I had been wondering how often they met with ‘real’ people – not just the desperate who rock up at a Surgery.

The technology is less important, and more predictable, than these subtle effects. While parties harp on about localism and devolving power down, they have too long clung on to centralisation in their own organisation but now are finding that if the future of politics is on the web, then they’re going to have to learn to let go…

Having all candidates using new media to communicate with voters would undermine the party system, and diminish the power of the whips. Issues would be more likely to be voted on according to merit rather than the assignation of whatever-line whip. Parties would be more like US parties, confederacies rather than uniting around a single banner, though both parties of cours already have their various wings.

I think I like this. It’d get away from the presidential power of the PM and make the individual MPs more accountable: got to be good things.

In Britain the news has been led by the left wing BBC. Blogging has given people that do not follow the BBCs line to express ourselves. What the left are concerned about is that middle of the road people are having another point of view.
The left must be thinking of how they can restrict it, but its to late.
Blogging is freedom of speech that we used to have in this country.

I think that every candidate standing as an individual would be the ideal democracy. The party system (line) stifles the real talent in any democracy, the requirement to be a clone in the labour party, upper class in the torries or dull in the liberals seems to prevent outsiders either breaking in or wanting to break in. Maybe being able to express yourself would allow the free thinkers, who will be only ones to get us out of this mess, to become involved.

I’m sure that your stint at Transport was cut short not because of any failing, indeed I hear nothing but good from all sides during your leadership, but because your face didn’t fit ….aaargh. I want to vote for good people not a clique. I would rather have 646 individuals reach a consensus than have 646 sheep herded through the lobbies by apparatchiks.

What about webcams in MPs’ surgeries?

MPs being mystery shopped?

‘A Year in the Life of…’ documentaries?

I think it can work in a politicians favour with the voters to be honest. Ask most people who read your blog Tom and you are one of the most respected Labour MP’s out there because you are prepared to put your head on the block to argue what you believe in.

If a constituency can have an MP who blogs and is honest it can allow the local voters to be in regular contact with their MP and likewise bring forward the MP’s agenda of what they are doing for their local area as opposed to a figure like my MP who you only hear from every four or five years.

I have noticed that MPs seem to have fallen into three categories at this stage in relation to blogs, social networks and youtube. A very small number, such as yourself, have used it to express themselves politically and/or socially, with two way opinion, humour and banter.
Then there are a fair number, particularly those with a ministerial status, who are cautious, wary, possibly frightened by it’s potential power. Whether they understand it or not, (ie how it works technologically), I think it is clear that if some had their way, it would become a criminal offense to blog, interract or go on youtube.
Finally, there are many MPs who I am sure do not even understand what these things are in the first place.
I caught the last few minutes of a politics show on TV a few months ago. I cannot remember who the MPs were. The presenter was talking about blogs as a little ‘ender’ to the show. She looked at one of the MPs and asked him which blogs he had seen lately. He had that blank look on his face, a bit like when Homer Simpson was being told how a lie detector works.

“That kind of development would radically change the whole nature of the party system.”

Good. The party system represents a good deal of what is wrong with politics in this country; it is why so many people do not vote and it has rotted the core of Parliament.

If someone were to ask me what one law I would enact to improve politics in this country (and I were not a libertarian), it would be to make political parties illegal.

“Who would want to be a general election co-ordinator when most, if not all, of your candidates were uploading their daily thoughts onto YouTube?”

Yes, good lord! Who would possiby want to know the actual views of the candidate who they vote for? Can you imagine anything more silly?

Seriously, Tom, you seem to be losing your mind.

DK

Depends how they approach it. If there are limited opportunities for feedback, and they confine their blog to little more than press releases or notes from the campaign, then Party HQ would still be able to keep a fairly tight lid on things. If they venture into wider spheres but keep the comments turned off, there’d be an opportunity to go off message but again, there could still be an element of control (say an election agent/press officer handling posts).

When comments get turned on, that when things get murky: a post could potentially have a wave of hostile comments ater it and it’s possibly that the candidate could get into hot water for something that someone else has posted (the Alex Hilton incident springs to mind). Even with comment moderation, hostile responses could appear elsewher if the main justification for not publishing a comment appears to be dissent, or the moderation policy seems less than consistent.

And if the candidate responds in the comments, then that’s when things can get ugly: anyone who has follwed Terry Kelly’s blog will see where that leads.

The problem is this: the more controlled, less responsive approach gets the message out but won’t engage people as much as the freer way of doing things. But the more open, less restricted approach may result in engaging more potential opponents than supporters.

So I don’t think things would change all that much: partisanship and party machines would, if anything, be more evident rather than less.

Well, it could be a way to shrug off at least partly the not-terribly-democratic party system, and have you all making your own pitches and standing on your own merits again, like it’s supposed to be. You can address your electors and interact with them. Scary stuff eh?

The Hannan Phenom should be exciting for politicians regardless of your view of Dan’s views. There can be nothing better than the breaking of the media hegemony. We are now in a situation in which people can make news, and what becomes news is more of a democratic vote as to a piece’s “virality”. The consolidated news is an artifact of news gathering having traditionally been very expensive, with the technologies and communicatons beyond ordinary peoples’ reach; so a system of newspapers, and reporters arose. But now a protest group can film their own protest and whatever they think is e.g. repression by the police. And the police can release their video too. An ordinary person can release opinion, rather than opinion being in the gift of a few newspaper columnists. And MPs can release their points of view without having to go through a party machine and the media filter.

We may well see a reduction in the ability of a consolidated media to make and destroy people. Who decided that a tenner on fruity videos was the most important news this week? For many of us, the big news was Dan Hannan’s speech, not the risible prurient attention to a politician’s private life.

A world in which we, the people, decide on the news agenda for ourselves is an exciting prospect. It can’t be worse than having it decided by media magnates and spin doctors.

The important thing of course to ensure “peoples’ news” would be for the government not to pass any silly repressive laws stopping people taking photographs, or to try to impose victorian “taste and decency” censorship on the internet, or to restrict freedom of expression. Nobody would do silly things like that, would they Mr Harris?