Did Darling Deliver?

Poor Darling. What a crap hand he was dealt. Thanks, Gordon.

A few days ago, when talking about the then forthcoming Pre-Budget Report, I confidently predicted…

I fully expect Alistair Darling to be fairly specific. After all, it makes no sense to be about to legislate for a halving of the deficit if you have no real plans to save money. If they don’t, it’s tantamout to sticking yet another “Kick Me” post-it note on the back of Gordon Brown’s head.

Well, it seems Mr Darling has done just that. Perhaps he is looking forward to the Labour government going down in flames at the next election, and wants to be the one that finally does for Gordon Brown.

Yesterday’s PBR was an exercise in procrastination. Lots of tinkering at the edges, lots of remarkable statistics – such as Darling only apparently being £3bn wrong on this year’s borrowing figure despite the economy falling 1 percentage point more than he thought it would – but the key issue was avoided.

The country’s current spending window runs to the end of 2010/11. This is most fortunate for the Labour government, as it means the overall spending limits for the next financial year are already known to government departments. As a consequence, it means Alistair Darling can dodge the issue.

Clever. Labour, seeing that the Tories are ascending to government without telling anyone what they actually want to do with it, are wanting a slice of the action.

Rather than being a responsible government, and trying to claim the mantle of honesty and fairness for themselves, they have instead deferred. The hot potato has been thrown up in the air, and it will land in someone’s lap some time after May 2010. I’d be utterly amazed, though somewhat delighted, if the possibility of a March 25 election actually happened, but I don’t think it will.

Too clever by half, in fact. But that’s politicians for you. There have to be cuts. It’s simply not possible to sustain such enormous and continued borrowing without eventually upsetting the markets. If Britain loses its top-tier credit rating, which may happen, the cost of further borrowing will rise even more, making cuts have to go deeper still.

But once again, what are the political alternatives on offer? Can we credibly believe George Osborne, who will not spell out his spending plans, even though we will be getting an emergency budget within weeks of a Cameron victory? He must have some idea where the axe is going to fall.

Does this leave scope for Vince Cable to come up with a gigantic masterplan, outlining in great detail what the country needs to do to relieve this burden? Or will doing so be just too much honesty for the British public to take?

We are in danger of having one great enormous lie as our election campaign. More so than usual! Politicians will be afraid of being too negative, for fear of scaring the country half to death.

We need them to be honest, however, or we’ll never face up to the terrible mess this country is in.

Take Responsibility, Politicians

I wonder whether Dubya will be mocked for many generations to come...

Something I’ve moaned about before, and again yesterday, is the likelihood of politicians these days farming decisions out to an external body so they don’t have to take the flak when something goes wrong.

There are many examples in modern political debate, from quangos in regional development agencies, to NICE – which now effectively decides which drugs should be available on the NHS. All decisions which, in the past, were made by democratically accountable ministers, or even councillors.

And the Tories will be no different. Witness George Osborne’s creation of an Office for Budget Responsibility to “hold a Conservative government to account”.  What’s the betting these independent people will give him cover for his budget agenda?

There are two sides to this tale, however. First is that some of these bodies are useful. NICE, for instance, focus on the evidence. Which, in an area of science, is very useful indeed. But the very fact that their final decisions have no political involvement at all can be argued both ways. On the one hand, it is good that delicate issues are dealt with on their own merits, rather than seen through a prism of politicking. But on the other, it almost negates the point of democracy if our elected representatives have their hands tied from day one.

It’s a debate that will run and run because of its complexity. My instinct is to say that the more decisions politicians make, the better our quality of democracy will be. And then I end up arguing against myself, because the natural consequence of that is populist decision-making in search of good headlines. See the farce over the classification of cannabis.

But really my worry on this topic today is one that emerges from the wars we have become embroiled in. As the years go by, it is becoming increasingly apparent that politicians, having got us into this mess, are looking for someone else to carry the can.

Step forward General McChrystal.

Politicians are wimps at the best of times, but when the issue of war comes along now, the first instinct is to ask the generals for their advice. And for that, read buck-passing.

Once it became obvious that Obama’s main man in Afghanistan was recommending lots more troops, it was a sure fire winner that that was what Obama was going to do. Why swim against the flow?

What worries me is when did we start having our strategy decided by the people on the ground? Military generals should be implementing the policy decided by our accountable politicians. Not the other way around. If this plan all goes belly-up, are we supposed to sack McChrystal? You bet Obama would, but it wouldn’t matter, since Obama would get the blame, even though all he did was follow the recommendations of the guy we all previously thought was an expert.

This is why people tire of politics and politicians. There is no leadership any more. There is no bravery. It is all an exercise in trying to make it look like your ideas are backed by an independent authority, and just say you’re merely following orders.

And now we have McChrystal telling us that what we really need to do is take down bin Laden.

Well, thanks.

It’s time for military figures to disappear into the background once more. No more interviews. No more briefings. No more rent-a-quotes.

Let’s make the politicians more responsible for the mess they’ve got us into.

Have The Climate Change Doom Merchants Blinked?

Our old friend, the hockey stick. Al Gore will be pleased.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a very distinct changing of the emphasis in the discussion on climate change lately.

Before I begin, though, a declaration of interest. I am one of those climate change doom merchants. I believe man is making a significant impact on the planet. In fact, I believe we’re already past the point of no return, and humanity is too complacent and set-in-their-ways to do anything about it now anyway.

But even I have been tested lately.

We have been told for some time that the science is unquestionable. I believe it mostly still is. I’m no scientist, but even I understand that science very rarely gives a definite answer. So the science is not and has never been unquestionable. There are no real scientists on this planet who would ever be blinkered enough to say that their work has proved the climate change thesis and all discussion is over.

That’s why we should not fall for the climate change deniers who constantly harp on about them being ostracised and victimised. That there is – somehow – this big conspiracy stopping them from getting over the truth that climate change doesn’t exist. That they are going to save you from nasty governments who just want to use it all as an excuse to tax you more or inspect your rubbish bin.

No. The science is a debate going on between people far more intelligent than me, and usually involving stuff that I haven’t a clue about.

Like most things, then, it’s a question of trust. Do you trust the UN panel, the IPCC, made up of the works of thousands of scientists, but with the involvements of governments and maybe other vested interests, who say that there is a 90% chance that humanity is responsible for climate change? Or do you go with the much smaller body of science which believes the complete opposite?

I’m getting the sense, however, that those of us on the IPCC’s side are beginning to squirm a little. We no longer talk in imminent dangers. We talk in probabilities. That we ought to act because even if we’re wrong, it is a gamble that we should not take with our stewardship of the planet.

But the real noticeable change is a sudden shift in emphasis.

We are talking less now about climate change but about the elephant in the room. At last.

We are getting to the heart of the actual issue that’s wrong with Western world humanity.

Sustainability.

I’ve written about this before, how we are avoiding the really important issues by focusing on minor ‘green’ things like recycling.

Because there is one fact that even the climate change sceptics cannot deny.

Fossil fuels are finite. Coal, oil and gas will not go on forever. And our society, utterly dependent on plastic, utterly fixated on production and endless consumption with perpetual growth, no matter the cost, is not sustainable.

This is what we should be talking about. It just so happens that tackling most of these will co-incidentally reduce our carbon emissions. A win-win, perhaps.

But this agenda needs the politicians to be even braver. Who dares stand up to Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP et al?

Oh well. At least the talk sounds good.

Banks: What Is To Be Done?

A Google Images search for "banks" produced a rather unexpected - and pleasing - outcome

There is a festering wound at the heart of British political discourse these days, and it all stems from one thing: the banking bail out.

The banks – all of them – appear not to accept the reality of the situation, that without the enormous levels of support from the taxpayer, and without the unprecedented levels of monetary stimulus provided by the Bank of England in the forms of historically low interest rates, and quantitative easing, they would not still exist today.

It seems unfair that banks like HSBC, Barclays, Abbey and the biggest building society Nationwide have benefited from the fact that government backing of RBS, Lloyds and HBOS stopped the entire collapse of the banking sector. It is obvious now in hindsight that that was going to happen. These surviving banks have seen their profits fall a little, but are broadly unscathed, and are able to continue purely because of the vast amounts of cash sunk into those that failed.

And yet, the net effect of the financial crisis is to see the taxpayer owning a minor player – Northern Rock – and with large stakes in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. While these three still represent a significant chunk of the sector, it is clearly unacceptable that in return for stopping the failure of all the banks, we only appear to have extracted a minor level of influence in the sector, and all proposals for reform – and even a modicum of pay restraint – are being bitterly opposed by the same old, same old in The City, who, despite bringing the world to its knees, now want to carry on as if nothing happened.

And yet, what can we do about it?

The ideal solution would be to extract a little gratitude from them. And that gratitude could be in the form of a bailout tax – a small levy on banking profits for the next few years as a way of saying “thank you” to the nation for propping them up during the worst of the crisis.

There is just one problem. The problem that got us into this mess in the first place.

Unregulated global capitalism.

There is nothing to stop these banks from announcing, tomorrow, that they will soon be moving their headquarters and their entire administrative operations from Britain to a country with a more welcoming tax regime, all the while still continuing business here. The profits would flow out of the country, even more so than usual.

That constant threat is why governments across the world have little choice but to cosy up to big business in any form. Say the wrong thing, institute the wrong policy, and millions of jobs, as well as the entire economy, could go kaput.

It is the ultimate triumph of the free market. And it is exactly why governments have so little power and control these days. Regulations are frequently pointless.

Let me revise that. National regulations are pointless.

The clue there is that whatever we want to do to the banks, we are wasting our time if we can’t do it on a wider level.

Step forward the EU. The WTO.

People wonder why supranational levels of governance have emerged. The true reason should now be obvious: it is the only way national governments can remain relevant in a multinational era.

The moral of the tale: while we may all wish to extract our pound of flesh from the bankers, we’re probably wasting our time, and any national regulations will invariably end up backfiring.

Instead, we have to co-ordinate a response globally.

Which – of course – will never happen.

So carry on, bankers. It’s nice to be too big to fail, isn’t it?

No World Cup In North Korea? Let’s Invade Them

I wouldn't mess with him either

The news breaks this morning that, apparently, the North Korean regime is going to ensure that it’s long suffering residents will only be able to see their national team play if they are fortunate enough to achieve yet another Glorious Victory.

Denial of the facts and rearrangement of them to prove otherwise is as old as humanity itself. Repressive regimes certainly don’t have a monopoly on it. After all, its what our politicians attempt to do on a daily basis. Spin is the name of the game.

The real difference is that rather than sitting back and taking such arrant nonsense from our politicians, we are, for now, allowed to hit back. Well, I say we, but most of us just sit back and let the media do it on our behalf. That’s not always a good thing, but it’s better than nothing. And it keeps those dastardly pols on their toes.

But what intrigues me most is that we like to forget about North Korea. OK, we’re a bit worried about the crackpot in charge of the country, and whether he has or hasn’t got nuclear weapons. But otherwise, we don’t really have anything to say about the fact that the vast majority of the country are living in great poverty, and the regime doesn’t tolerate any dissent.

Over here in the West, we call those human rights abuses. Sometimes we use terms like “crimes against humanity” or even “genocide”.

When it suits us (which is definitely not when anyone talks about China), we like to use such positions to sit atop a high horse of moral superiority. And, perhaps, rightly so. After all, in a direct matchup between state-sponsored murder of trouble-makers we really ought to come out much lower than they do.

Some years ago, some of you may remember a small conflict that occurred in the Middle East. It involved a country called Iraq. There was an exchange of gunfire, and a small handful of military largesse, and soon enough we’d got rid of the blighters. Our justification at the time was that the country was posing a grave threat to the West. “45 minutes from destruction”, some fella quipped. That convinced everybody.

As the years passed, we realised we’d been duped a little. It seems, in fact, that the leader of the country was playing us along, hoping we’d believe he did have weapons of mass destruction and so would leave him alone just in case he was crazy enough (and he was) to use them against us.

But just like politicians, they cannot be trusted. All of a sudden the war was never about WMDs. No. It was because the leader of Iraq was an “evil dictator”. A brutal repressor of human rights. Stock footage of the man firing shotguns off balconies and ordering people to be executed soon rolled on the airwaves. Apparently, without us even knowing it, the war was actually fought to liberate the Iraqi people of such tyranny. And who could disagree? The man was batshit, after all.

Yet there remained troubling questions to those who were sceptical all along. “Why Iraq? Why now?” was what they used to say, before they would get shouted down by some Blair character for daring to have no compassion for the suffering of their fellow humans in Iraq.

It was classic memory hole stuff. The original pretexts for war were shuffled into the fire, and an ex post facto justification emerged.

The unfortunate consequence of such a doctrine can be seen in the headline to this post. A little facetious, yeah, but I’ve gotta get your attention somehow.

Got a repressive regime? Genocidal tendencies? Feeling the need to butcher a few of those people with the wrong skin colour or religion?

Well watch out, cos the World Police will soon be knocking on your door. Maybe. If they can be bothered.

And you aren’t China, or one of their chums.

Here’s to realpolitik!

Probably The Most Important Political News In A While

A remarkable photo of our new Hero of Parliamentary Reform. When he had more hair.

Forget the Iraq War inquiry today. It begins taking evidence. So what? The damn thing is going to take years, and will probably still not tell us what most of us already know: it was criminally negligent, illegal and strategically the dumbest thing we could have ever done. Oh, and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Nice one, George.

The problem though is that this little event is going to outdo the most important bit of political news there has been for some time.

Today, a parliamentary committee, chaired by one of the Commons’ most ardent reformists, Tony Wright, will deliver its damning verdict on what’s wrong with the Commons and what can be done about it.

Those of us who’ve been following politics since we were in short trousers, and even younger, know most of these arguments inside out. Debates are poorly attended. MPs parliamentary duties could be fit neatly into two days at most. Whips have too much control. The government shouldn’t have complete control of the Commons’ agenda. Backbenchers need more powers of scrutiny and alternative career paths. And so on, and on and on…

And so the Wright committee have come up with a range of solutions, all of which sound pretty good to me. Stronger, more independent select committees. More time for petitions. A business committee with no government control. More topical relevance.

We’ve heard them all before, and most of them were even in new Speaker John Bercow’s manifesto. So we know he’ll be fighting for them. That’s a good start, but there is one critical part of this equation…

“Never allow a crisis to go to waste”
– Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff

The big question is time.

The response from the government has hardly been very welcoming. Harriet Harman has said they will “consider” it, before going on to praise the wonderful reforms they’ve already done, in typical Labour-drone fashion.

Unsurprisingly, the response from the Tories has been to say, “it’s marvellous and must be done immediately”. Paraphrased, of course. And no doubt the Lib Dems will love it, but say it should go much further.

But so what, you might say. The Tories are going to win, and they will implement reforms even if Labour don’t.

Not so fast. The list of governments being elected with huge promises of parliamentary reform is long and boring. The list of governments that have actually carried out these plans can be scribbled on the back of a postage stamp.

Yes. Power corrupts. New governments soon realise that it really would be rather inconvenient for them to be subject to the kind of scrutiny powers they once desired in opposition.

And so they get kicked into the long grass.

We can but hope that this time is different. That enough MPs realise that these long overdue reforms must be implemented quickly before the appetite for reform from the public drops off the agenda.

This time, I would like to be pleasantly surprised by our politicians.

But I suspect most of them will be more concerned about preparing for a nice, long, happy retirement.

God bless Labour MPs!

Pollwatching: The Del Amitri Way

Were they Tory voters too?

Nearly two weeks after our last look at the polls, in which nothing happened, it may surprise you to learn that…

• Conservatives: 40% (N/C)
• Labour: 23% (N/C)
• Lib Dems: 23% (N/C)

Nothing has happened. Nothing ever happens. Nothing happens at all.

I would continue now to assert that the needle does return to the start of the song, but I think that would be too obvious.

Instead, I would merely remind you that the election clock continues to tick against Labour, and these continued anaemic ratings are just a sign of how impossible the task is for them.

And yet… the most frustrating part about any of this is that we will soon be living under a Conservative government that haven’t had to do anything. OK, Cameron has cleaned up the image of the party, detoxified the brand, as the marketing consultants have told us.

But what will be the actual difference his government will make? We don’t really know, as Labour’s complete implosion has meant Cameron hasn’t had to tell us. The people are so fed up with Labour that any old alternative would do. Except maybe Iain Duncan Smith. That would be pushing it.

It would be nice to think that Cameron might soon deem us worthy of hearing what his big plans are for Britain. You know, the specifics. How many schools, hospitals, etc will have to close. How much will be cut from the budgets. Including the defence one. How many public sector workers will inevitably lose their jobs.

Not that I’m disagreeing about the need for cuts; I’ve made that case myself before. But at least the Lib Dems have made some headway in describing where the axe will fall, though, naturally, even our plans are way short of what’s necessary.

But the fact is that Cameron has been obfuscating since December 2005. Four years of practice makes him an expert at dodging the issues. Why break the habit of a lifetime, when that habit has brought you a solid 40% median poll rating for almost the whole year pre-election?

In truth, what the public are probably missing is that such behaviour makes Cameron a politician. A politician just like the many others British political life has always produced.

He won’t be anything special. He won’t change all that much.

But he’s not Labour. And he certainly isn’t Gordon Brown.

And, apparently, that’s what the British public want.

Here’s to many more wasted years.

Why The Afghanistan War Will Continue

Perhaps we need more white poppies this year...

The question I’m beginning to wonder is simple. How much longer can the political class go on supporting the deaths of British troops in the face of public opposition?

The answer is nuanced and requires a combination of all the following factors:

While opposition is merely “opposition” and not being demonstrated extremely and forcefully, they could conceivably go on for a long time. After all, millions made their feelings known on the Iraq War, and that made no difference. Right now, people may say they oppose the war, but do they have a place to go to express it?

While the main Opposition party supports the war, that too will ensure little changes. When the two main parties are both agreed on a course of action, there is almost nothing stopping it. The Tories support the war as much, if not more, than Labour. Perhaps when Labour are in opposition they may elect a new leader who takes a populist stance on Afghanistan. For governments to be truly put under pressure, it is essential that the Opposition is the articulate voice of the nation’s feelings. That isn’t happening now.

While there is a relatively convincing and wonderfully rhetoric-laced riposte to all opponents of the Afghanistan war. It’s very easy for me to get into a debate with someone and tell them the war must end, but I have to admit I am always put on the back foot if they respond by saying we must remain there or the country will collapse, and then tens or hundreds of thousands will have died in vain. Then there are arguments about terrorism, which, while mostly bogus, give easy soundbites for the warmongers.

While there is a government at utter rock-bottom which knows it really doesn’t matter that it’s backing an unpopular war. Labour couldn’t sink any lower if they tried, and so the party leadership is free to ignore populist demands. Perhaps when the Tories are in government, and it soon becomes “their war” and the poll ratings start to slip… maybe that will encourage a change in direction.

While there is nowhere to go. None of the three major parties are outlining a case for withdrawal. That makes such a view extreme, espoused only by cranks from Stop The War or loony lefties. As such, the only people who appear in the media news cycles to say we need to pull out are figures that don’t look, sound or feel like they represent Britain. Paul Flynn MP made a superb case on Newsnight for pulling out immediately, but until such voices are heard consistently and forcefully across all media, opinions will not harden.

While not enough people refuse to make the issue the number one priority for how they will vote. In the end, it is down to the electorate to make their feelings fully heard.

While politicians don’t have the bottle to say “Enough is enough”. We’ve got into this bizarre situation now where no one wants to be the first to back down or they will be accused either of being unpatriotic or overseeing a defeat for “our boys”.

While tabloid media are not opposed. The government doesn’t necessarily listen to the tabloids, but if it’s being remorselessly attacked by this group as well as other media and the public at large, it all builds up a convincing case.

While Obama refuses to take the lead. It would be rather odd if the world’s policy on Afghanistan was set by the fact that Obama doesn’t want to lose face against the rhetoric of the Republican Party, but that is what’s happening. I get the sense that he’s not prepared to take them on on this issue. In any case, I don’t think he opposes the war anyway. Which is a mistake; this will be his very own Vietnam.

Conclusion

Afghanistan is a total mess, and the sooner we’re out, the better. There is nothing more we can achieve there. Our efforts have succeeded in putting in place a corrupt administration in Kabul, while the rest of the country is run by local warlords. Meanwhile, we allegedly defeated the Taleban in 2002, yet we’re still fighting them seven years later. That is not a good enough return for the deaths of thousands of soldiers and huge, untold numbers of civilians.

The bloodshed, and the madness, must stop.

If it doesn’t, the corrosive effect of politicians failing to appreciate or understand their electorate will continue.

And then maybe our own country will need to be invaded in order to restore “democracy”.

The Problem With The Kelly Report

Rumours that the report contained one of these appeared to be exaggerated.

Yesterday’s release of the Kelly Report into MPs expenses was largely overshadowed by the fact that it had been leaked horrendously in the week before. Worse, it was then pushed for airtime by the nonsense that is Cameron’s new EU policy, which has made Dan Hannan even more of a muppet than before, and which will completely isolate us within it.

But there was a gaping hole in the middle of the Kelly Report. For those who thought it might lead to a brigher era, with new spiffy MPs that are respected because of their hair-shirtedness, it is something of a disappointment.

The big problem is that the report says absolutely nothing about what MPs ought to be paid. Bear in mind that MPs pay is the elephant in the room, and that Kelly’s recommendation to farm it out to an independent body is merely buck-passing.

It’s far more important because the MPs expenses and allowance system got so grotesque because MPs pay was being artificially kept low. It’s the classic con-trick. Watch my hand as I only raise MPs pay by small amounts per year, while my other hand is furiously filling in expense claims, to which I attach no receipts, and simultaneously speculate on the property market…

A number of MPs and organisations made submissions to the Kelly inquiry hoping that MPs pay would be front and central of his recommendations. Instead, the issue has been dodged. Maybe by some miracle the new independent regime to handle expenses will finally come to the right conclusion and recognise MPs genuinely do deserve a pay rise…

But the right time, surely, was now. While the issue is live and the public are keen to see reforms. While the media are paying close attention is the honest time to have this debate. Not in a couple of year’s time when the expenses affair, nullified by a general election and a new system, has died a death. That would only be seen as, yet again, greedy, grasping MPs trying to claw back what they’ve lost.

Worse, it would start to bring down the reputation of the newly elected Parliament, something we could avoid entirely by doing it now. After all, the reputation of the current lot could hardly be any worse. Why not utilise the lame-duck status of it to deal with this issue once and for all?

The Kelly Report is otherwise a useful step. It stops all the obvious outrages. That’s what we expected it would do, and MPs would be foolish to try to derail it; that really would push the reputation of politics over the edge.

But maybe we could have convinced them by sweetening the deal a little.

Politics should be fair to everyone. Even politicians.

Why There’ll Never Be A British Kos

Kos, Greece. Can you tell I struggled for a picture to illustrate this post?

In my last post I went into some detail as to why the American liberal activist site Daily Kos has been such a success. It was a combination of good fortune, good timing, beneficial political environment and something that hadn’t previously been possible without power of the Internet to bring people together.

Many people have wondered why British political blogging has not taken off in the same way it has in America. Over there, blogs are now an accepted part of the debate. There is, naturally, some tension between the mainstream media and the blogosphere, but they are now a critical part of the discourse. So much so that blogging is looking ever more institutionalised when compared to Twitter.

In the UK, the picture is very different. Blogs are rising in importance, and have had plenty of moments in the sun. We saw it very recently with the Trafigura debacle. But blogs are generally only important because politicians and the media read them, who in turn relay the information they read. There is no widespread culture of activism on the net; no recognition that great swathes of people keep politically in tune by using internet sources. Far from it. British political culture is as full of armchair warriors as ever.

This is very different to America, where there is now a whole generation who have grown up using and trusting blogs as their only connection with the political world. And, in addition to that, using blogs as a community mechanism. Which British political blogs can boast a community in the sense of Daily Kos? The comments section of Guido Fawkes is filled with bile and invective, smear after smear and rumour. It works for him, but in no way can it be seen as a community.

Blogs appear to have different functions across the Atlantic to here. This is primarily down to the bottom-up nature of American politics, and the requirement to do a lot of fundraising on a personal level, with no party involvement. Though blogs aren’t just about raising money in the States, they do a fine job of it, of bringing people together to fight for a common cause.

Here, blogs behave differently: more like journalists and pundits than community organisers. That’s because the top-down, centralised nature of British politics means there is no variety across the country. Our political communities are already fully formed and extremely unlikely to change, and so there is no need for a bottom-up built community. Instead, we have parties that are much more coherent, and a common policy framework has almost always existed, in contrast to America. In this respect, the parties here have been doing what the likes of Daily Kos has only achieved in the past few years. The key difference, of course, being that top-down structures are generally not all that conducive to fulfilling party debates and engagement.

Kos succeeded because it was started by an outsider, and has always held that mentality. People are rightly suspicious of sites like MyConservatives because they see it as another tool via which the central party can monitor their minions. Conservative Home has been successful because of its staunch independent streak – but there can be no doubting that such a site is broadly for those already politically engaged and aware – at times feeling more like a news aggregator… and there is just the suspicion that as power gets ever closer, the site gets more and more on message…

British political culture has no heritage of grassroots activism. We consider a grassroots protest to be a rally organised by a local councillor or council candidate outside a post office. There are no great movements started up in Britain these days that are fundamentally about policy. It’s all about petitions and letterbox stuffing. It’s just not real engagement. We’re just too cynical to care about politics and politicians any more.

There is no doubt that there is a gap in the market for a British equivalent of a Kos. Nature might abhor a vacuum, but sometimes they exist for a reason.  Such a site would not succeed in the same way because we just don’t see politics as being interesting or worthwhile. We know we’re going to fail. We see political activity as being a little geeky if it’s any more than casting a ballot in an election, and even then we only really care about the General Election.

Our cynicism is a natural barrier to entry; and that’s before even considering that the centralised nature of British politics doesn’t really require a British Kos to debate and formulate policy, co-ordinate action, motivate activists and fundraise for candidates. We’re totally reliant on our parties to do that already. We pretty much know where we stand and we’re happy to let our parties do the thinking for us.

Maybe that’s not a healthy trend for British democracy. Maybe we’re more in need of a British Kos now than ever.

The tragedy is that it will never work.