“The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” George Burns

Over the next few weeks, my MP (a newly-elected Tory) will go through the parliamentary lobby in support of a range of bills that he knows little about.

@tom_watson - a pin-up for networked politics? (click for pic credit)

Sure. He may have a few reflexive opinions on the general subject matter, but beyond that, like most MPs, he’ll focus upon a handful of issues that he stays on top of: Personal bugbears, issues raised my his more persistent constituents, areas in which he’s been allocated a Parliamentary or Party role.

And however he casts his vote, the letters pages of the local newspapers will regularly castigate him. He’ll often respond by topping-and-tailing cut-and-paste letters provided by someone else in his party.

In this respect, my MP is quite like Tom Watson – the pin-up of the networked politics. I’m sure Tom toes The Party Line when he’s not sure. In other words, my MP and Tom conspire in the fakery that sustains Party politics.

I say that my local MP quite like Tom. But he’s also not quite the same. Earlier this summer, for instance, Tom attained a status that very few politicians have ever held. He could have walked into a bi-partisan pub and had drinks bought for him from all sides because he behaved in a way that most people think good MPs should.

But was Tom really a one-man force of nature – a campaigning multi-tasking up-all-night political polymath, on top of the details with carefully phrased rapier-like questions?

I yield to no-one in my admiration for him, but I really don’t think he was this superman. I say this because he did something a bit cleverer than that: He rode the network into battle. His 3,225 Facebook friends and 51,984 Twitter followers gave him extra eyes, ears, hands and brains. They allowed him to stretch his Parliamentary Allowance and give him all kinds of resources that he won’t need to claim for on annoying IPSA forms.

Sure – he worked hard and picked his fights well. But his real talent was in finding help – and not just of a material kind.

Where his followers weren’t slipping him data, they were chewing over the evidence, road-testing a few ways of describing developments giving him phrases that were useful when the cameras were on. When they were doing none of those things, he got feedback – encouragement and reassurance.

When you know you’re onto something, it gives you that extra bounce. His self-image here didn’t need to develop that self-loathing edge that sustains fake indignation. A politician as exposed as Tom would never get away with that these days.

By embedding himself in the network, he had little choice but to apply high standards of self-criticism. Either be a genuinely good guy, or act his socks off every day.

Now contrast Tom with Sir Stuart Bell – the unobtainable member for Middlesbrough.

Sir Stuart hasn’t held a constituency surgery for 14 years. He is made even harder to contact by the fact he doesn’t have a constituency office.

According to the paper, his response to questions about this has been to point out that he meets with members of the public by appointment instead, and people can reach him by telephone at any time.

So reporter Neil Macfarlane set about trying to find out how easy or otherwise it was to get in contact with the MP. Over several months, the Gazette rang Sir Stuart’s Westminster office and his home number over 100 times. No-one ever answered. That’s despite claiming staffing costs of £82,896 last year. Contrast that with Teesside’s four other MPs, all of who have their phones answered at the first attempt.

Sir Stuart isn’t on Facebook or Twitter either as far as I can see. And – when we find out what he thinks – I doubt if it’s ever as nuanced or road-tested as Tom’s positions. The contrast in self-awareness as well as political competence will be eye-watering.

So there’s a heirarchy here: On the top, Tom Watson, the go-to example of the networked politician.

Somewhat below him is my MP (no slouch with social media by the way, but as guarded as most MPs) who is in a marginal seat and is accordingly, visibly, busy.

Then, a long way further down, there’s Sir Stuart, who has managed to hide way for 14 years without hosting a surgery because, in Middlesbrough, they’d probably elect a Donkey if was wearing a red rosette (Tory equivalents are undoubtely available folks!).

I’m sorry it’s taken me to get to it, but here’s my question:

If you’re good at networking, are political parties as important to you as they were? Does Tom need to get his cut-and-paste replies from Labour HQ as often? Does he need to rely upon the whips to guide him through issues he doesn’t understand as often? Does he need to scour local committee rooms get find local canvassers who will knock on doors for him at the next election?

And most importantly, Tom has created a situation where he has to behave publically like an honest human being. In being well networked, has he redefined what representation is?

And should we be voting for people on the basis of their personal network more than their party rosette?

Update: More on lazy politicians here.

It’s a good question that tells us a lot about some of the bigger issues in local government.

The London Borough of Havering are doing it, and the argument for this is that it will cut printing costs. The good people at one of my favourite blogs We Love Local Government have done some sums:

“…over that four month period, on average, the Council spent £398.48 per month to provide 17 printed copies of the Cabinet Agenda to the Councillors. This, I think, means that in a year the Council could be spending £4383.28 on Cabinet agendas”

So. For the sake of argument, with no bulk discounts, 17 iPads at £400 a pop (the lowest priced option with only WiFi & no 3G – lets assume that there’s one or two WiFi signals available in the Council chamber!) comes to £6,800. The £500 option (with 3G)? No problem – that’s £8500 for 17.

So assuming they don’t all lose or break them, and assuming they can all actually get them to work in the first place, we’re looking at an idea that will be in the black after six months or so.

This also assumes no productivity savings and no efficiency gains. It assumes that there is going to be no positive cultural shift and that using a new medium will add nothing to the capacity of councillors to use a new medium in new ways – to improve their representative skills. I’ve spent long periods of time working with Councillors on their use of online communications tools and the two biggest obstacles we kept hitting were this utilitarian approach to kit and training, and (or course) the outdated rules on use of communications tools for political purposes.

For me, it’s a slam-dunk. Place the order now! However, WLLG still aren’t totally comfortable with the idea and have four observations at the end of the post:

• These tools should never become a perk of being a Councillor. So to ensure they are tools, a business case for why Councillors need them should be put forward that shows how they can be used as tools to further the Councillor’s work.
• Use some procurement sense. As with a contract, work out your options and find the model that offers value for money for the Council.  So would another tablet Computer be able to do the required job, instead of the fancy and fashionable I-pad?
• If the Councillor breaks it, through misuse by them, then they cover the costs. At the end of the day its the Council’s property not theirs.
• This one is not a rule, more a suggestion/question. I’m not sure it would work but could the Council do a similar thing with I-pads that the Cycle to work scheme does? So the Council buys the I-pad and slowly the Councillor buys off the Council, if they want it.  Though I suppose it wouldn’t be tax-free like the cycle scheme.

I’d suggest that this represents a triumph of a grumpy anti-politics that ultimately diminishes the legitimacy of local government itself. It’s a populist starting point that negates so many other important considerations. It’s almost as though we can’t clear our throats without acknowledging the Tax Payers Alliance agenda.

I’m not blaming the good bloggers at WLLG here – it is, after all, endemic. It’s largely unchallenged by any of the main political parties that all claim ownership of the term ‘localism’.

There’s a two way compact between us voters and Councillors (as with all elected representatives): They strive for the highest standards in terms of civic representation (the stuff this blog bores on about all the time) and, in return, we give them a high social status and reasonable compensation to cover the opportunity cost of being a Councillor.

I don’t think either side of this compact is being met – I’d be interested to see how many councillors would be able to write a half-decent A-Level essay on what good representation entails – but I do think it’s time to put a bit of dignity back into local government. Someone has to make the first move.

Where I live, the council is no longer based in a granite monument to municipal values (the Town Hall), it’s on some campus in a part of the borough that’s awkward to get to without a car. I’m sure there’s an excellent business case for this, but there’s no way you can build a case for political decentralisation on the back of an institution that has a purely utilitarian approach to it’s democratic and administrative functions.

Decentralisation doesn’t happen because of some localism agenda that is dreamed up in the the think-tanks of That London. It happens because the core tensions that diminish the legitimacy of local democracy are being addressed. I see no sign of this happening any time soon.

George Monbiot is here writing about the Tea Party movement in the US. He argues that the European left could learn a thing or two from the US right.

It’s an odd article. It contains this sentence….

“They have been promoted by Fox News – owned by that champion of the underdog Rupert Murdoch – and lavishly funded by other billionaires.”

… yet if you were to delete that sentence and then read the rest of the article, there’s no evidence that he understands that the Tea Party movement have been…

“…promoted by Fox News – owned by that champion of the underdog Rupert Murdoch – and lavishly funded by other billionaires.”

Apologies for the very light posting here. Normal service will be resumed shortly – hopefully.

In the meantime, can I direct you over to this post over at Left Foot Forward – well worth a read:

“The election results show a total fragmentation of the political landscape. They produced, what we might call, a horrific Coalition Sudoku. There are at least four coalition options, involving more than four parties. But none of these options will be an easy representation of the will of the electorate, nor a simple ticket for stable government in times of financial crisis and populist revolt.”

I’ve tried to boil down the killer argument in the whole ‘blogger v journalist’ debate, and it runs something like this:

Take the best article you’ve read in a newspaper recently. The one that was well-written and argued and the one that met a particular need that you have personally. You can be almost certain that a better article was written somewhere on the blogosphere. The only problem is finding it. As social bookmarking and ‘collaborative filtering’ improves, you will increasingly be able to access a personalised stream of these articles that will partly negate your need for a newspaper.

To illustrate the point, here’s a great post by James Cridland on how you can weave your own personalised radio station together. That’s the sort of innovation I’ve been awaiting for years (more in ‘innovation’ below). And then, to add a bit of flavour to the argument, here’s something on how journalists can build their own reader-communities. And while we’re on the question of the media, here’s some breaking news; Murdoch’s paywall idea isn’t suicidal after all. Murdoch isn’t stupid and isn’t afraid to think differently and take on big beasts. Who knew?

So. Great blogging: take the last couple of days as an example. I’m interested in how far politics is about the clash of social forces rather than the public discourse around the ishoos. Here, Peter Hetherington (admittedly, writing for the evil MSM) has a post on how local v central is a cross-cutting issue. Ingrid has a very perceptive question: Hang on, isn’t there a local election happening at the moment as well? And wasn’t teh Hinterwebs supposed to create a space that allowed the local to re-emerge? My only quibble with Ingrid is buried in the notion of the availability bias.Surely well-targeted local coverage is only seen by local people? It reminds me of the popular misconception among politicians about Facebook. It looks like a mirror – after all, you only see your friends – people who wish you well. So for Labour politicians, it looks like The Guardian and for Tories, it looks like The Telegraph. But, it’s actually a two-way mirror with all of those vindictive Express and Mail readers behind it – rubbing shoulders with … well, the list that Fremania has draw up (see below).

Hugh Flouch of the verygood Harringay Online will be partially addressing this question on these very pages shortly.

The other day, Chris Dillow highlighed David ‘Two-Brains’ Willetts really fascinating-looking book on an inter-generational conflict of interests. Chris’s concluding question ….

“Isn’t there an unavoidable tension between intergenerational justice and democratic politics?”

… is, I suspect the mask for a much much bigger question. Insert ‘long termism on climate change’, ‘global social justice’ or any one of a dozen other issues to see what I mean.

Oh – and in my highly-cultivated collaboratively-filtered stream of bloggery and journalism, I’ve noticed that there is an inverse relationship between the focus on Climate Change and the nearness of the election. What does that tell us (apart from something about the failings of my own filters)?

What else? Oh yes: The Power 2010 campaign. I have no words the express my irritation at the quality of demagogic simplification that underpins this whole campaign. Think Martin Bell in his white suit tied to Esther Rantzen and times it by ten. Thankfully Sadie – a returning exile from the blogosphere – has dug into the whole question. Warning: There’s wit as well as wisdom in that one.

Not content with a brief return, Sadie is also on Left Foot Forward here writing the post that this blog should have carried about the objectively anti-democratic nature of the superficial Tory appeal to invite us all into government. Freemania goes one step further and lists the specific individuals within Cameron’s proposed new government that he specifically objects to. Again, funny and perceptive stuff. It includes…

My boss

My boss’s boss

Kerry Katona

Piers Morgan

Cab drivers

Estate agents

Bankers

Disgraced former MPs

Nick Griffin

My weird neighbour

That kid I hated at school

Those bastards who still haven’t been convicted of Stephen Lawrence’s murder

People who find the ITV early evening news too complicated to follow

People who apply for all those incomprehensibly-titled public sector jobs in the Guardian but get turned down because they’re too petty-minded

The tenor in the Gocompare ads

… and many more.

What else? Oh yes – there’s a couple of good points about the impact that social media is having on public debate – one from 21cfix and one from Hopi (again) – that last link is on the diminishing power of journalists.

Changing the subject, here’s a great report my Martin of Currybet on what people really want from the word ‘innovation’:

“People don’t actually want innovation ….. everyone thinks they want a hover board, but actually they want the same thing they had before but actually works.”

Read it all though.

Back to the MSM (just to prove that I have lingering doubts about my own arguments here) Jenni Russell has an excellent article on Ed Balls’ disgraceful treatment of Sharon Shoesmith in Haringey. This raises a massive question for me: If Balls had refused to respond to the tabloid witchhunt, would Shoesmith still be in her job? Would Balls? What are the implications for the whole ‘politics should be about ishoos and not personalities’ question?

And there’s loads more that I’ve not included, but that I have read and enjoyed. I’ve spent the last couple of days traveling without the need to buy a newspaper. You can see what I read and shared on my phone on these two feeds.

Confused? You will be! Stay tuned to the next exciting episode from the bloggers. Better than the newspapers since people started using Google Reader properly….

Here’s a reminder of how it works if you’ve not tried it:

… or ‘we get the politicians we deserve, pt1′:

Via Mick, this is worth a look over at the Daily Mail for people who recycle The Independent.

Pic: Click for credit

“Academics …. found that “not giving straight answers to questions” scored an average of 8.45 when people were asked how much of a problem it was on a scale of zero to 10. “Making promises they know they can’t keep” scored 8.13, the same rating as “misusing official expenses and allowances”, while “accepting bribes” scored 6.43.”

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry about this. It ignores the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance in a way that no-one with an ounce of sense should do.

For me, perhaps the dominant theme for this election – as with many previous elections – will be the Prisoner’s Dilemma – or the BF, as outlined in this slightly homophobic post.

As Colonel Nathan R. Jessep puts it here, “the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

Both of the UK’s main parties knew that the expenses scandal damaged politics and lost them votes. Both stoked it by shopping each other. A duck-house? I’ll see that and raise you a porno channel!

Both of the two main parties are privately committed to a nasty combination of tax rises and spending cuts shortly after polling day. Both refuse to detail where the cuts and rises will land.

In both cases, this is the Prisoner’s Dilemma at work. On the tax-and-cuts question, the voters will punish honesty without an ounce of mercy. In both cases, the media is the ultimate beneficiary. All but the most idiotic of journalists fully understand this dynamic. It is what puts bread on their tables.

Yet like a lawyer that fails to advise a client of the quick painless way to settle a case, the media refuse to frame the debate in this  way.

And this is where my inner Marxist comes peeping out. Politics is not about niceness, presentation or honesty. It’s about the clash of material interests. Politicians, commentators, pressure-groups, lobbyists, newspaper proprietors and political funders are all avatars in that conflict.

When we compare the performance of those players, in recent years, the people that we elect have been very significantly weakened.

That Matthew Taylor is so, like, out of touch. Here’s what he’s got to say about ‘Britain Thinks‘:

“My slightly elitist concern that BritainThinks doesn’t encourage its participants to ask themselves whether their opinion is wanted, useful or soundly based is reinforced by the site’s slogan….

‘if you’ve got an opinion, here’s where to stick it”

Like Matthew, I’ve no idea how such a plainly stupid project has attracted the investment or energy that it has obviously used up in getting off the ground. Looking at it, you do wonder if it’s some clever campaign designed to illustrate Matthew’s point.

Don Paskini has a post up here that I’d like to be able to agree with. I’m very comfortable with his logic but remain to be convinced about the details of his arguments.

Do 'Dog Whistle Politics' really work? (Click for pic credit)

He’s picking up on the popularity of banker-bashing and placing it beside the short-term popularity that politicians believe that they get by being tough on immigration.

Some commentators, like Danny Finkelstein for the Tories or David Aaronovitch for Labour, would argue that it is still the case that occupying the “centre ground” of British politics means steering clear of taxing the rich like Foot and Kinnock or banging on about immigration like Hague or Howard. They point to David Cameron’s emphasis on ‘detoxifying’ the Tory ‘brand’, following in the footsteps of Tony Blair and New Labour.

I think that in fact the centre ground has shifted, particularly since 2007, and that Labour and the Tories have in practice agreed a new and more populist consensus which is much tougher on immigration and in favour of higher taxes on the rich.

Now I don’t have any evidence to back up what I’m about to argue – this post is all conjecture – please bear with me here?

This reminds me of the debate on capital punishment. I understand (can’t remember where I read this) that 2008 was the first year that general opinion polling recorded a small majority of people who didn’t want capital punishment reintroduced. One can’t help wondering if the timing of such a poll makes a difference – would one conducted during the Ian Huntley trial have had a different result?

Hanging was effectively formally abandoned in 1965, so for over 40 years, the public have been hangers themselves, but have not voted for hangers.

You can’t do opinion polls retrospectively, but I wonder if the public would have changed it’s assent to the following statement over recent years:

“I have my own views, but I would prefer to vote for people who take a more considered view on big issues.”

Surely the widely touted ‘decline of deference’  would suggest that agreement with that statement would have fallen? In Don’s post, Finkelstein and Aaronovitch are arguing for a model of politics where politicians garner votes for their statesmanlike stance rather than their position on key questions.

But did the Tories really lose the election in 2005 because they came across as a bunch of Alf Garnets?

I would suggest that the ‘dog whistle’ politics may have slightly ameliorated a terrible situation for the Tories. It may not have had the desired impact because it didn’t make the difference in the key marginals. It’s targeting rather than it’s ability to swing individual votes may have been faulty.

A few weeks ago, I put this observation in a post on this blog, and I’ll repeat it now:

The media focus upon general concerns. My newspaper is always full of the coverage of international football and the big clubs- England, Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool. Never the coverage of Nottingham Forest, D*rby County and Fester Leicester City that every cell in my being yearns to read.

Similarly, the mediated politics that dominates public life focuses on abstractions and issues that people actually hold relatively lightly in their own scheme of things. If politicians were dealing with us more directly – understanding our real interests and being able to challenge and respond to us in a direct way – surely a new set of political contours would emerge quite rapidly?

Are issues like immigration / banker bashing very visible to the media and politicians without actually being the key concerns of the public in aggregate? Do we care about immigration in the same way that we care about international football? Listen to the national noise after a controversial international and you’d believe that international football is important to us. But find a way of tuning into the lower level buzz around football, and I’m certain that you’d find that local teams benefit from a much higher aggregate level of concern.

Was the 2005 election decided by people who weren’t convinced – for a variety of reasons ranging from bad memories of the 1980s-90s through to the conduct of the party leadership – that the Tories were up to running the country? Did the dog-whistle populism compound this problem or did it ameliorate it.

It’s a question that seems to me to be a key one. It’s also one that I’ve not seen answered properly anywhere. Purely on instinct though, I suspect that Don Paskini is on shaky ground discounting it.

Click for picture credit

I meant to pick this up a few days ago – I’ve been too busy to blog as diligently as I’d like to.

In the Times, Greenpeace’s Joss Garman says:

“Imagine if, instead of 60 years ago, the Labour Party was trying to create a National Health Service today. The right-wing campaign to scupper the formation of an NHS would be run against the backdrop of UK media coverage of America’s simultaneous healthcare debate. Every “death panel” and “compulsory abortion” myth concocted on K Street would soon be digested by British correspondents in Washington before being tailored for a UK audience as an insight into the fallout from the introduction of “socialised medicine”.

….you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Over the coming months climate legislation will be discussed before the Senate. A vote is expected next year and a hurricane of hysteria is already forming, with Britain’s climate debate likely to be caught in the vicious tailwinds.”

I’d be interested to know how Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell would see this issue being dealt with in the fantasy direct democracy that they would like lead us into. Everyone with a political bone in their body likes to foist the ‘worse than Hitler’ charge upon their political opponents. It’s usually inadvisable and rash.

But if the worst fears of climate change scientists come to pass, our grandchildren may well have the advocates of populism and direct democracy right up there with the brownshirts in their demonology.

Just a thought….

A sketch of anti-healthcare reform protests in the US – from Rolling Stone magazine:

“The threat of violence was thinly veiled: One agitator held aloft a tombstone with the name Doggett. Screaming, “Just say no!” the mob chased Doggett through the parking lot to an aide’s car — roaring with approval as he fled the scene.

Conservatives were quick to insist that the near-riot — the first of many town-hall mobs that would dominate the headlines in August — was completely spontaneous. The protesters didn’t show up “because of some organized group,” Rick Scott, the head of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, told reporters…..

In fact, Scott’s own group had played an integral role in mobilizing the protesters. According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights had been working closely for weeks as a “coalition partner” with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings just like Doggett’s. Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry.”

Here’s the question that’s being asked over at the Personal Democracy Forum:

Let’s see what answers we get here.