The politics of a hung parliament

ConservativeHome today argues that the Tory party needs to draw up a contingency plan for a hung parliament.

The plans, it believes, should cover the constitutional implications, the approach to take with the Liberal Democrats and the smaller parties and a media strategy.

One wonders if Labour and the Liberal Democrats are thinking the same thing.

If all three parties end up with a working strategy it is bound to leak to the media and that will lead to even more speculation about what the parties will do, the accusation of secret deals and will distract from the general election campaign.

If they don't do it, they just might find they are caught without a coherent plan.

Like ConservativeHome I am not convinced there will be a hung parliament but you never can tell.

The politics of crowdsourcing

On the BBC's tech blog, Rory Cellan-Jones takes a look at the use of crowdsourcing techniques by the UK political parties.

Mark Pack, former head of new media at the Liberal Democrats, reviews the piece and asks 'crowd sourcing: the political future or a load of hype?'

Crowdsourcing, or harnessing the wisdom of the crowd, is simply how much of the World Wide Web works. It is the spontaneous order that Hayek talked about.

The UK political parties may not be getting it right, may be in a transition or may have hit it. We can't know just yet.

The real point about crowdsourcing is that it is a tool that is being used and reflects the ideas found in classical liberalism and to some extent in anarchism.

As for the general election, I suspect that someone who doesn't work for one of the political parties will launch a piece of viral web marketing that will impact on the fortunes of one of the parties at some point.

Faisal Islam takes us into the spin room

In his blog, Faisal Islam provides a fascinating insight into what happened in the spin room after the Channel 4 News Chancellor's debate.

Read it here.

Blair attacks Obama

Well okay, he didn't.

But in his speech today he did say that change was a vacuous term.

This line of attack was directed at David Cameron. Of course, as Guido Fawkes points out, it was the campaign theme Labour used in 1997.

Famously, it was part of the Obama narrative during his presidential campaign: change you can believe in.

What to make of all this?

Well, the use of language merely reflects where people are in the political cycle.

Liberal Democrats embrace the web

It has taken a bit of time but today the Liberal Democrats launched a campaign that gets the web and how viral marketing works.

Even Guido Fawkes is impressed.

Their Labservative website is here and below is the YouTube video.

Paying for online content

In June, the Times and its sister publication the Sunday Times will charge visitors to their website.

I would normally hyperlink to the site but once we reach June there is little point in encouraging people to go to a website for which they will have to pay...

This rather makes one wonder if this is the right strategy.

Jeff Jervis looks at the issue in the Guardian.

You can read his critique of the strategy here, for free.

Cameron on the Politics Show

In the last of a series, David Cameron faced questions from the undecided voters of Stourbridge on today's Politics Show.

If you haven't seen the format, Jon Sopel leads and the voters ask the questions. Then there is a segment from the region you live in and a return to Sopel et al at the end.

Each time they have done this, with Brown and Clegg, the debate is continuing. This time there was a slight difference.

Cameron was standing up and had walked over to his questioners, engaging with them directly.

The Tory political campaign is launched

Yesterday, I suggested that perhaps the problem the Tories were having with their poll numbers was that they were running a brand campaign and not a political campaign.

As I said, they realised they just couldn't go on like this and brought in M&C Saatchi to produce some new posters.

Here is a link to one of them.

The political campaign has been launched.

Conservatives polling numbers: all down to the brand?

Everyone knows that the great triumph of David Cameron's leadership has been to detoxify the Tory brand.

Despite this, the last two months has seen the Conservative party lead shrink in the polls.

The party has taken to heart their ad poster campaign message, 'we can't go on like this' and brought in M&C Saatchi to reinvigorate their campaign.

Being an outsider, I have not seen the Conservative communication plan that was devised by the legendary Steve Hilton.

That being the case, what I am about to write may well be wrong and is only a theory. However, it could explain why things have not gone according to plan for Cameron.

Hilton's strategy was clearly working incredibly well until the financial crisis happened. This leaves pundits and everyone interested in politics wondering what went wrong.

Could it be that Hilton's plan was a brand campaign and not a political one?

Branding is vital to any organisation, including a political party. But setting out your communication messages via a brand prism could have certain limitations.

Branding is about identity, values, behaviour and much more. It tends not to be about ideas. It won't help you develop scenario plans for political or economic change and your opponent upping their game.

No doubt, Hilton is a brilliant strategist but was it the right strategy?

It may well have been for a good while but at some point, a political communication campaign also needed to be developed and implemented.

Spontaneous order in the 21st century

I know that isn't the most exciting title but bear with me.

There are many ways to describe the twentieth century but one that brings together how we did business, ran politics and thought about life seemed to be systems theory.

From the way that factories built things to how we constructed our welfare system, the general principle was built on theories that stemmed from management experts.

These theories were developed to address how to manage large workforces, get the most out of the production process and deal with employees.

Of course, it wasn't just systems theory. There were political ideas too but they appeared to reflect or find inspiration from the idea that there was a rational system for everything as long as you found the right process or procedure.

The combination of European rationalism, which began a century before by Rousseau and made flesh by Robespierre, with systems theory proved to be, at its worst, deathly and at its best stifling.

It's grip on how we think is strong. It tells us that we can design models to predict behaviour and to some extent events. It tells us that we can identify our sub-conscious impulses and eradicate them and it tells us that if we don't conform to certain definitions of humanity, we cannot possibly be human.

Management theory and rationalism still hold sway but there is evidence that we are seeing a shift.

John Kay's book Obliquity looks at the flaws of thinking that you know everything.

Steven Johnson's book Emergence, Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and Jeff Howe's Crowdsourcing all illustrate how the wisdom of the crowd works.

These ideas are not new.

Over half a century ago, Hayek wrote about spontaneous order.

He was in favour of people running their lives and organising themselves as they wished.

This approach is very different from the belief that you can use management or systems theory to order society.

If the twentieth century was the century of process and systems, perhaps this century will be one of spontaneous order?

After all, we now have a technological infrastructure that allows us to organise how we do things without a central planning unit to direct our efforts.

But the final bit of the jigsaw would be to embrace Hayek's rejection of macro thinking.

Review - Michael Portillo: Power to the People

Michael Portillo's Power to the People swept across Britain, and parts of the question, to ask the question: how can politics reconnect with people?

The answer was in the title of the programme.

Portillo, in his easy, television-friendly way, spoke to different people who had got involved in their local community and took control.

From the people who took over a local shop that was going to be closed down to the parents who want a local secondary school, the point was made over and over again.

His conclusion was that people will do things when there is an urgent need, there is a clear link to them acting and holding a politician to account and if the local authority or directly-elected mayor can raise funds.

The shape of UK political ads?

The New York Times reports on what is happening in the US as campaign ads go viral on the web.

Advice from Malcolm Tucker

In the Guardian today...

For one blog post only: Charlotte Gore is back

The humour of Ms Gore.

The danger of rational theory

Last April, I speculated that rationalism was more to blame for the financial crisis than the operation of the market.

In an article in the Financial Times, John Kay discusses his new book Obliquity.

He argues that the problems that led to the financial crisis and the mistakes of the Iraq War all relied on people believing they knew more than they did. These belief stem from a faith in rational behaviour models, not I should point out the idea that being rational is somehow bad.

What rational behaviour models fail to cope with is that what seems rational to one person isn't to another.

Liberalism: an emerging consensus

It is no secret that I am interested in liberalism and liberal ideas.

I write about these topics a lot and have asked the question, how does one shift the debate towards liberalism?

I try and avoid being party political on this blog and point out that there are liberals in all three parties.

But I have frequently linked to bloggers who are pushing liberal arguments or exploring ways to make society more liberal.

I hope I am contributing to creating a space where people can think about these things without entering into partisan warfare.

Jock Coats is one those bloggers I have linked to and in this post he reports that other bloggers see the Liberal Democrats, and Nick Clegg, as the party to champion liberalism of the classical variety.

Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of a liberal consensus.

Sorting out the financial system

Our financial system needs a radical overhaul according to Lord Turner and Jock Coats.

Jock's solution is rather different to Lord Turner's.

UK Libertarian party blog post supports regulation

The UK Libertarian party likes to declare that it is different from the three mainstream parties and it particularly enjoys calling the Liberal Democrats the Social Democrats.

The party's blog posts throw up some interesting ideas and are nothing if not consistent.

Today though, Tim Carpenter has made the case for regulation.

It is regulation as opposed to banning something but nevertheless it is regulation.

Whatever next?

David Cameron's liberal conservatism

When David Cameron described himself as a liberal conservative commentators and opponents weren't sure what to make of it.

I have wondered if he is a one-nation Tory with a libertarian streak or perhaps more a Whig with a touch of conservatism.

But listening to and reading comments by the Cameroon faction of the Conservative party makes me think I now understand what he means.

My suspicion is that Cameron and his cabinet, if they become the next government, will want to govern as classical liberals. By that, I mean they intend to be fairly hands off and let things happen. However, they will set a direction of travel that is conservative, according to their light, and once set stand back and watch.

They may be more liberal or more conservative on certain issues but that is to miss the point of how Cameron, Gove, Osborne and others are approaching policy.

For them, the challenge will be when things emerge that they don't much like. Will they step in and try and change things or hold to their liberal commitment not to interfere too much?

Iain Martin takes issue with public announcements

Iain Martin is the Wall Street Journal blogger-in-residence.

Here he takes issue with unnecessary public announcements.

Note the two comments, so far, that don't entirely agree with his argument.

Perhaps it is age and the grumpiness that comes with it, but I have noticed more and more public announcements over the last few years.

When you travel the underground, they never tire of telling you what to do.

How authoritarian is your MP?

Lib Dem Voice has produced an analysis of the voting records of our parliamentarian representatives.

Based on criteria that reflect civil liberty issues they have a ranked MPs out of a hundred on how authoritarian or liberal they are.

You can look at the ranking here and the criteria they have used here.

This is not an independent study so one needs to look at the criteria and ranking on that basis. But still it is a fascinating list and many Conservatives are listed alongside Lib Dems.

Of course, how you judge the list will also depend on your political views. If you are naturally authoritarian or reject the notion that ID cards are authoritarian you will applaud the MPs who support these measures.

Steps to a more liberal society

Once or twice on this blog, I have asked what one should do if you want to get to a more liberal society. Should you join a political party that you think will move society that way or do things that don't rely on the State?

Here are some things people can do if they want to do things that champion a non-statist, voluntary approach. They are in no particular order.

• Bank with the Co-op
• Use the Phone Co-op
• Make a point in using partnerships like John Lewis
• Join a political party that you think will push for policies that are non-statist or at least rely less on the State
• Get involved in a local project
• Join a credit union

I should declare one interest. I have shares in the Phone Co-op.

Liberalism or libertarianism?

Last month, David Chiverton looked at the difference between classical liberalism and libertarianism.

He had decided to join the UK Libertarian party and explained why.

To a certain extent these things come down to interpretation. There are libertarians who are members of the Liberal Democrats and classical liberals in the Conservative party.

The one thing that David failed to address is why some libertarians like to swear so much when they write blog posts.

The Conservatives and their poll ratings

Many people have been speculating on why the Conservatives have lost their edge in the opinion polls.

One element has to be the way their messages are being communicated. This has lessons for all three parties and anyone interested in politics.

As Peter Bingle pointed out, in his now famously reported email by Channel 4 News, one of the problems is that the party is using political language. That means it is talking to the political community.

Most voters don't think about politics. As Peter said, the Tories should be talking about debt and not the deficit.

That of course isn't the only reason that the Conservatives are struggling but it is an important part of the explanation.

A lot of people seem not to have really made up their minds. They are more likely to give the election more serious thought when it is called. Then, and only then, are the polls going to give us a clearer indication of who might be walking into No. 10 after the election.