You can find the ideas, all nicely categorised, on this Writeboard. It’s free-for-all time, so the password you will need is ‘cendeavour‘. Please feel free to add, modify, and replace;  or to leave comments if you prefer; but I’m trusting you to play nicely!

To let you get a feel for what’s up there, and what’s up for discussion, here’s a quick introduction. For starters, we’re talking about:

• Issue-related political blogging: from philosophy down to policy tweaks. Aimed at policy-makers.
• Outcome-related political blogging: social activism and campaigning. Aimed at individuals and groups.

Current problems with political blogging:

• The yawning gap between posting and policy-making.
• General lack of connectedness, and especially interaction between bloggers: efforts are duplicated, arguments are missed.
• The need to encourage greater responsibility among bloggers and readers, closing the gap between the two. Conversations and collaboration, rather than assertions and ‘feedback’ via the (anonymous?) comment box.
• Resolving issues is difficult: how can we encourage people to accept alternate views, or admit they have been wrong?
• Consequent lack of respect for bloggers among policy-makers, and alienation among bloggers.
• The crudity of mainstream blogging platforms, and the lack of specific tools for political bloggers.
• The difficulty in effectively mining political blogs (in bulk) for relevant information – Google is hopeless here.
• The need to be able to hold all involved with political blogging (politicians, bloggers, readers) to account for their views, and to make it easier to track their views over time.
• For each politician (or ‘political actor’), to increase scrutiny by leveraging all publicly accessible sources, not just their own blog.

If you’d like to see our proposals, and what we hope to actually produce, look in at the Writeboard and make your own contribution!

I haven’t made it publicly available yet, but if you’d like to try it yourself, just drop me a line or leave a comment here.

Basically, it’s a single .php file you need to install, and then a line to add to your Theme (Appearance > Editor on your Dashboard). In theory you can add the line anywhere you like, but it’s unlikely to look good squeezed into a narrow column (no, it’s not officially a ‘Widget’).

It looks good to me – I’m using it here myself in exactly the same way you would. To the best of my knowledge it won’t do any of the following bad things: (a) interfere with your styles, or (b) stop your blog from loading, or slow it down, and there are no funky frames.

The other noteworthy development was the publication by the Office for National Statistics of new productivity estimates for the public sector. These showed that, despite a small improvement lately, productivity has fallen most years in the past decade. Calculating output is not easy, but the ONS thinks the average public-sector worker’s output in 2007 was 3.2% lower than in 1998.

Contrast that with the private or “market” sector. Over the same period, again according to the ONS, market-sector productivity rose 22.8%. The difference between the two sectors is striking.

OK, preamble: some jobs are productive in the sense that they feed directly into outputs; some are collective in the sense that they (hopefully) feed into the outputs of others (but at what cost?); and some are essentially unproductive but essential for compliance, meeting external obligations, etc. The balance of these three categories inevitably impacts on an organisation’s productivity.

Inefficiency is everywhere. A consequence of: large and bureaucratic organisations; old, unreformed, or monopolistic organisations; inappropriate managerial and production ideologies; poor leadership; rogue managers; rogue clients with their own inappropriate ideologies (especially Government agencies?).

As Nigel says, it’s not good enough for the left or for unions to pretend public sector productivity doesn’t matter, just because it isn’t always immediately obvious how it should be measured. At the same time, it’s not good enough for others to pretend that private sector productivity is inherently higher, and that privatisation is a solution in itself. Any organisational change has the potential to improve productivity, as well as to damage it, and the higher the level at which the change is initiated (e.g. by Government), the greater the risks, and the smaller the chance that individual workers’ concerns will have been met.

Productivity does matter – it means doing more for your client (whether another company, or the taxpayer, your pupils, or patients), at less cost, or in less time, or with less pollution – and it should matter to everyone involved in the organisation. After all, that’s doing your job as a professional, rather than ticking a box. It’s worth taking the time to find a measure that both staff and managers agree is a fair reflection of their outputs, against which they’re prepared to be held to account in public.

This is what any really useful measure of productivity should reflect. It should also reflect the interdependence of companies, producers, and clients: rather than aggregating company productivity up to industry level, and then up to the great, false public-private divide, there should be one great calculation, rather than one great summation.

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Productivity tells us something about the health and efficiency of our economy, but we shouldn’t be confused by international comparisons. It might be the UK’s choice to have an economy dominated by healthcare provision, and another’s to be dominated by manufacturing. Productivity – accurately measured – may be similar, but perhaps only the manufactured goods can be exported for enough profit to raise that country’s standard of living significantly. Ultimately, productivity is a minor consideration when it comes to the kind of economy and society we want to have.

Here’s a nice bit:

I am a Socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, Socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality, not because it wants people to be the same but because only through equality in our economic circumstances can our individuality develop properly. British democracy rests ultimately on the shared perception by all the people that they participate in the benefits of the common weal. This Bill, with its celebration of inequality, is destructive of that perception. It is because of a fear that the Government seem indifferent to such considerations that I and my colleagues oppose the Bill and will continue to oppose it.

[...] if we don’t want to turn back to the old political economy of market fundamentalism then we need a conversation with individuals and groups who want to build a better society: not just the Labour movement but NGOs, faith groups, Liberal Democrats, Greens and others. It’s no good having a conversation with a dwindling number of ourselves about ourselves.

OK, let’s get a few things out the way:

Scare terms like “market fundamentalism” don’t resonate with me. Free markets strikes me as perfectly compatible with – if not an essential part of – a future socialist society. Unfortunately, as we’ve said so many times before, the British left (still!) has a statist bias, and a suspicion towards/ignorance of economics.

Next we have “individuals and groups who want to build a better society” – vague, very vague. Don’t today’s Conservatives want (or say they want) to do this too? Are they allowed to take part, or is this strictly for “progressives” only (whatever that means)?

The Labour Party was founded in a society built on the work of faith groups, where ‘community’ was taken as read: many healthy, though many deeply polarised. Having tried to establish secularism across the UK polity, and the principle that individuals have equal treatment before the law, irrespective of their ‘faith’ or ‘tradition’, it would be tragic to undermine this by offering concessions to faith groups – often more militant and much less representative than those of the 19th Century – in return for building this ‘progressive’ coalition. It would be a betrayal of liberalism and of socialism.

Ultimately, faith groups are interest groups, just as think tanks, NGOs, and the smaller political parties are. In return for ‘advice’, they want influence, legitimacy, and the prospect of more money, more supporters, and political power. While interest groups are in favour, they will be prepared to shamelessly and self-interestedly back their patron – the ailing Labour Party. When out of favour, they will do whatever they can to restore their position, equally shamelessly condemning the policies their former patron developed without their help.

As it happens, there’s already a global market (sorry) for ideas and policies, from which any party can borrow, and that obviates the need for the secretive and vindictive world of coalitions and interest groups. Ideas and policies can be evaluated on their merits, rather than on the basis of the persuasiveness of the group promoting them, and their (often dubious) claims to be ‘progressive’, popular, and ‘representative’.

So when Joe argues:

We understand this is challenging and even uncomfortable territory for some Labour Party members but if we are to renew our Party into something more pluralist (and less tribalist), more open, and more democratic – that goes beyond ‘better communication’ – then it is a fundamental necessity.

Let’s achieve that by being genuinely open to all ideas – but ideas that don’t breach the rationalist and secularist principles of the Labour Party – and by shunning interest groups, and smaller political parties, which – more often than not – are small for a very good reason. That’s the democratic way.

It’s probably fair that I update you on my current thinking, though. Much of my aim with this blog is to solve political (and other) problems, to explain things better, or to highlight things/arguments/ideas I hadn’t thought of. Any help much appreciated. If, however, your stock-in-trade is:

[Party X] don’t do Manifesto commitments.

… or:

Oh sorry . . .I forgot that Labour Blogs feel the need for censorship of comments . [...] Funny . . . they don’t do that on most Tory blogs. [...] I suppose it’s dependent on how broad the political shoulders are. LOL

… that helps nobody. I won’t feel guilty about deleting this kind of crap before it ever reaches your eyes.

Quit fighting the blog-wars of the past; try to be constructive; and think of your audience, rather than your own ego. This definitely the future of political blogging.

The job of politicians is to do what they can – by hand or by brain – to help develop the most empowering political culture for the population as possible. Liking or disliking the British electorate’s beliefs and choices is not necessary. We don’t have to like voters, and they don’t have to like us, which is why it’s somehow inappropriate for politicians to feel personally pleased at being elected, or bitter/vengeful/slighted when they’re rejected. It’s far more important for politicians (as a whole) to try to ensure the overall health of the political system.

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The BNP might not be a mainstream party, but many of its views are mainstream – by which I mean, well-known by anyone who reads a popular newspaper, and well-established among the public, however unpalatable most people find them.

That intolerance, illiberalism, nationalism, and anti-system views exist should not be a surprise – though the current anti-political culture among the public, and fostered by the mainstream media is making matters worse. What is new is that a party of the extreme ‘Fascist’ right has captured the votes of the malcontents and bigots who were once strong on the Conservative right, and who were buried amongst the Labour and other left-wing parties. Also that the BNP has been able to hold itself together, which former far-right breakthroughs haven’t.

The BNP are a problem in their own right insofar as they gain a political base (though this creates its own internal problems for the party), but the real problem are their voters, and they’ll be a problem for the political system even if/when the BNP does implode and they drift back into the major parties. Better that we accept these views exist, have done, are likely to continue to do so, and to try to address them, than count on the suppressing of the BNP itself – however good that would make us feel.

So, I think the possibilities are:

• We try to suppress the BNP, and hope that the 5% drifts away elsewhere.
• We decide that 5% of the electorate having hard-right political views (I’ll leave aside the many within UKIP who might very well have better-concealed hard-right views), within the context of a wider crisis of political legitimacy, is manageable, and perhaps no more than what you’d expect in a country like ours. That is, we stop fussing about our liberal constitution, and move on.
• We investigate ways by which that 5% can be won back, while making sure we don’t compromise majority views for (very much) minority ones, and remembering that moderate and liberal views (on the left and on the right) are the ultimate defence against ‘Fascism’. Labour have been trying to do this, but with limited success, and have taken a lot of flak for doing so – some deserved, some not.

Note that I’ve placed ‘Fascism’ in scare-quotes. It’s not a helpful term: it’s a debate-ender rather than an enabler, it’s too widely used and abused, and it’s clearly not the deterrent it might have been for voters. The BNP’s policies are bad and unhealthy for so many other reasons that we can all argue about.

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See also: “Who voted BNP and why?”

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UPDATE: Looks like I wrote a much better post about the BNP back in 2007…

Well, it’s 8 months since I’ve last posted a serious political post back at Bloggers4Labour. The main reasons being:

• Publishing to a self-hosted Blogger blog (especially one hosted on a site that runs a real-time feed-handler) had become a nightmare. Hopefully WordPress will fix that.
• I had become estranged from mainstream politics. But then, who isn’t?
• I cared too much about what other bloggers thought – or rather, what certain other bloggers thought. I think, though, that 6 months of intensive (and often political) Twitter usage has cured that.

I see this as a stage in the process of improving the overall Bloggers4Labour experience. Expunging Blogger’s presence will be a big step.

Now, as it happens, I still have my doubts about the potential of political blogging, but creating a next-generation political blogging platform is out of scope at the moment. For now, though, you can find my thoughts here – drop me a line if you’d like the password.

The tumultuous times at Westminster at the moment are quite frightening – foreboding even. But as the saying goes, never waste a good crisis. We need to use this period for long-awaited constitutional reform.

OK, great, but when has the problem been “the time isn’t right” rather than “we haven’t decided what we want to do, or indeed whether it’s worth doing”? Which of the arguments in favour have been strengthened, and which of the counter-arguments weakened? And who’s this ‘we’?

One thing we need to change is the voting system. It is not a panacea to solving all the problems in our democracy at the moment, but it is a necessary step. [...] At the moment, we have the ridiculous situation in which about 100,000 voters in a few marginal seats decide the outcome of an election.

The situation is bound to look ridiculous if you don’t mention the counter-arguments.
Besides, one single voter can decide the outcome of an election: elections have to have results, and as we don’t know in advance who the voter will be, what’s the problem?

As we’ve seen so clearly this week, even the safest seat will become a marginal if its electorate feels hard done-by. The more difficult it becomes to predict what the marginal seats are, the harder it is to focus campaigning resources, and the harder it is to focus policies towards those areas (is anyone claiming this does happen?).

As it happens, I would like to see more experimentation with alternative voting systems (though largely because it will fracture the two main parties, exposing the true ideological divisions within each), but all voting systems have their advantages and disadvantages. So to simply single out First Past The Post’s disadvantages is no kind of contribution to the debate.

It also means that the whole of our political discourse has become dominated by a battle for the decisive centre ground.

What does this actually mean? That it’s wrong for political parties, the mainstream media, bloggers, and individuals, to concentrate on mainstream political issues? That there’s a lack of debate about less mainstream issues? Perhaps this is because they have less resonance with people’s lives…?

Back in 2003, about a million people marched in London to mark their opposition to the Iraq war, yet Britain’s two main parties both supported the military action. What could better exemplify the lack of different voices in politics?

One million is a very small proportion of the electorate, and it was far from a representative one. Secondly, both main parties had their own arguments for supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, which were shared by a very sizeable proportion of the electorate, were developed before the march, and they were under no obligation to change those views to accommodate a much smaller minority.

There was – and remains to this day – no shortage of political parties, newspapers, bloggers who continue to keep these alternate voices very much alive. Is that not enough, or must there be an obligation not just to hear, but to accept them too?

Labour does have a lot of thinking to do: and that requires clear heads, not woolliness; proper analysis rather than rhetoric; and the reconciling of many opposing arguments, rather than assertion.

UPDATE:

Oh, I see, the reason Labour should abandon FPP is because that system is starting to penalise us and help the Conservatives. Awfully quiet about that in 1996, weren’t we? FPP was no more unfair before Thursday than it is today.

You didn’t ask but you’re getting it anyway: my advice? The left – or at least some of it should a) calm down a bit b) stop conflating issues. I won’t link them all because no doubt you’ve come across the sort of thing I’m referring to: this bank crisis is the end of “kamikaze capitalism”, “the end of the neo-liberal world order”, the refutation of the “unbridled free-market”, it represents the nadir of the “Hayekian/Friedman axis of evil”… Ok, the last one was made up but you know what I mean. Naomi Klein – admittedly not one of the left’s most subtle thinkers, to say no more than that – even went as far as to suggest that this financial crisis is for neo-liberalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism. Correction: she said it should be. Very silly, I hope you agree.

Meanwhile, here’s Stumbling and Mumbling on Markets as public goods:

The financial crisis is a failure of markets which shows the need for state intervention. The crisis exists because markets are insufficiently developed.These two statements seem contradictory. But they are not. They are consistent. Markets are themselves public goods. And public goods can be under-supplied by the market.

It’s along the same lines as the debate I had (well, I left a comment; still waiting for a reply…) at the LRC’s Left Economics Advisory Panel blog, over their “Markets are stupid” post. Virtually nobody – even in the best of economic climates – accepts the straw-man that markets are entirely self-regulating – that they can work without any legal framework, regulation, or intervention at all:

[...] the market is incapable of producing rational outcomes even when its own life depends on it. Judged by society’s goals it fails further still and it does so because it is the perfect breeding ground for social traps, because it prevents co-operation and because society’s values cannot be represented in monetary exchanges directed by selfish individualism and the profit motive.

That markets can work should be obvious to almost anyone who wears clothes, has food in their kitchen, or who has traded something they didn’t want for something they did. That these markets have somehow to be created, and sometimes need rules and interventions doesn’t seem to me to represent any fatal flaw in that kind of system.

Economists are generally concerned with enabling the existing economic system to work better: by identifying areas where individual markets fail, and promoting policies that their models and analyses suggest will enable them to work better. They might also seek to create markets where economic activity was previously absent or seized-up. They aim to do all this in the most unobtrusive way; the simplest way; the way least likely to have unforeseen, and possibly unwelcome or contradictory, consequences).

Saying that markets cannot ever work, and that much greater state intervention is the alternative (or, indeed, vice versa), is a bit like a mechanic suggesting that instead of him looking at your transmission, you should buy a tank instead.

It’s an attitude that distinguishes social scientists from propagandists.