Power to the people

A new online campaign has been launched allowing members of the public to submit their own ideas on reform of the political system. The project, Power2010, has set itself the seemingly arduous task of addressing public disenchantment with British politics in the run up to the next general election.

Directed by Pam Giddy, the project offers everyone the chance to contribute their personal solution to bring about more transparency. Ultimately, these ideas will be collated, debated, refined and honed by groups comprising members of the public across the country.

After being whittled down to around thirty, these pledges will go before an online public vote lasting around one to two months. The top five pledges will be labelled the Power2010 pledges and election candidates at the forthcoming general election will be put under pressure to commit to the pledge.

Pam Giddy spoke to The Journal: “The key objective is to motivate people, to get people together, to get distinctive ideas, to get them to feel as though they are feeding into something that actually can have a positive change.”

Ms Giddy said that the idea was influenced through findings of the original Power Inquiry, which recommended around 30 reforms when it was published in 2006.

What makes this initiative unique is that, unlike those before, it is demanding that the reforms come from the public and not a parliamentary committee. The gathered pledges will be put before a "Deliberative Assembly" – a group of volunteers who meet around the country to discuss the pledges and amend or discard them depending on feedback from the public.

“The deliberation gives people a chance to really assess and to trade off ideas and to put forward their short list. This gives people ownership and it means that a sensible brain is used to put pledges together,” said Ms Giddy.

Activists in each constituency will sign up to support the pledge, and it is those individual activists who will take the finished pledge to their parliamentary candidate to lobby them. These individuals will drive local movements and they will continue to hold the members of parliament to account, once elected.

“It has to feel like it is owned by people,” said Ms Giddy. “We could sit in the office and say we did the Power Inquiry report and say these are the top five pledges, but that feels very top down to us.”

The project sprouted from the 2005 Power Inquiry, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy, which led the biggest ever assessment of British democracy.

Earlier this year The Daily Telegraph lent its hand, quite popularly, to the campaign for political reform when it published a complete disclosure of MP’s expenses.

Baroness Shirley Williams, a Liberal Democrat peer, spoke to The Journal about the likelihood of reform: “There is a mood out there, that can be brought together which might not be as ambitious as Power2010 but it might go in that direction. On issues such as the size of the commons, scrutiny of powers, the question of reform of the lords, reform of expenses, perhaps, even conceivably talk of electoral reform, these are all on the table.”

Reform of the latter—a more representative electoral system—would benefit the Lib Dems the most, as in the last election they won almost a quarter of the votes, compared with only a tenth of the seats in parliament.

“It's a broken system. I think it's something like it takes 140,000 voters to elect a Lib Dem MP, 80,000 for Conservatives, 50,000 to elect Labour,” said Baroness Williams.

Anthony Barnett, founder, former editor and frequent contributor to openDemocracy.net, published his pledge almost immediately.

“No More Lords – no more peers appointed to the Lords. None. Busta!” In his contribution Mr Barnett said that people saw the Lords as the “main source of corruption in British politics” and warned that “unless we stop them now” there would be demands for compensation from the “tranche of Blairite riff raff”.

Those who followed the online success of Barack Obama's US electoral campaign will be familiar with some of the social organising that Power2010 aims to undertake.

Blue Sky Digital, who championed Obama's innovative campaign using social media and viral advertising to find people as they worked, networked or were simply grazing the net have been hired to extend the reach of the British project.

Ms Giddy said that the key to success was not the internet: “The technology is just a means through which we can contact people and people can talk to each other and we can put people in the constituencies together but it is the offline campaigning and meeting people which will make this work.”