In the closing plenary session of the conference, Helena Kennedy made an important announcement which underscores why some optimism is justified.
She announced the establishment of a new network: Real Change - the Open Politics Network. Real Change will launch fully in July. It aims to do at least three things.
First, to organize a series of local meetings - the aim is for a thousand - to discuss options for reform of the political system. These are to be held between July and September.
These meetings will then feed into a People's Convention which will be held in October. Deliberating in response to expert witnesses and evidence, the Convention will propose a set of reforms.
Third, the Open Politics Network will then seek to organize meetings in the run up to the next general election in which party candidates will be asked whether or not they endorse the proposed reforms. There are also plans for a follow-up event after the election to test how far the next government has progressed with reforms.
The underlying aim is to treat the current crisis surrounding the political system as a constructive opportunity for fundamental reform. The political parties have all responded to the crisis, or started to respond, with various proposals for reform. But none of them have clearly accepted the need to bring the citizenry itself into the reform process. Too many of the proposals, in my judgment, reflect narrow calculations of party advantage.
The Open Politics Network offers an opportunity for 'democratic republicanism' to come out of the seminar room and the blog post and to become a political reality. It is an optimistic politics precisely because it looks beyond the limits of any specific party's prospects and agenda and puts faith in the capacity of citizens themselves to lead reform.
Along with a wide range of other initiatives, from Climate Camp to Transition Towns to London Citizens, it represents a new politics of citizen activism which, in the long run, might breathe new life and purpose into political parties like Labour and into politics as a whole.
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‘Despite Labour’s present difficulties … optimism … might breathe new life and purpose into … Labour and politics as a whole’?
Crises aren’t a pretext for perceiving a half full glass. They are indeed an opportunity. But with two important dangers. Firstly, the danger of vapid reformism, fiddling with the deckchairs, seeing the world through Uncle Henry’s eyes (it will be good for Uncle Henry and therefore for the world) rather than through one’s own. And, secondly, that of setting up the conditions for something different but as bad.
One example of the latter is compelling: that of Italy during the Clean Hands period after ’92 and the birth of the Second Republic.
Craxi goes. The Socialists die. The Christian Democrats wither and then die. The Northern League becomes the strongest single party in the North. The fascist MSI (Neil Hamilton thought they were fun) weather the storm. (As the ‘post fascist’ AN, along with the Northern League, they are now, of course, part of government. But I digress.)
In 1993, backed by a popular referendum, Italy switches from a PR system to a majoritarian one. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (a sort of Italian Mervyn King) becomes the caretaker. Finally, in 1994, with the Left in disarray, Berlusconi (friend of Tony Blair and Mr Tessa Jowell and himself the subject of major corruption allegations then as now) enters politics and wins.
The rest I need not rehearse.
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