Sharpe's Opinion

Charlotte Gore is proposing the Lib Dems put their policies to a public vote to decide, in advance of a general election, what policy platform their party will stand on.

See, the way I see it is that if you can pursuade people to vote for which ‘version’ of the Liberal Democrat party they would like in an open primary then they would almost certainly be more inclined to feel invested in the party should their side ‘win’ – and might vote for us again in a General Election. Who knows? No-one’s ever done anything like this.

Done right it could feel that our party was one that the public themselves had played a part in creating. You’d still have to be a member to vote on specific policies at conference but the direction of our policies would be mandated by the public, whether or not we’re in Government.

I’d go one step further (as I may have mentioned before) and turn the whole party into a ‘Wiki’ party – where normal people, whether party members or not, could write, research and debate policies – which then go to a central party authority for final approval. Where people who work on the front lines and people who hold a deep understanding of the issues involved are able to make positive contributions towards the policies which affect them.

The internet has become an incredible resource, with extremely knowledgeable people who are willing to share their knowledge for free. It’s become, in fact, the world’s first distributed think tank. The first party to take advantage of that, while keeping the system protected from special interest groups and single issue campaigns, will have great things coming to them. This ought to be the natural progression of the Conservative Party, since they were the first – with Webcameron – to invite the public to debate the issues with the party and with David Cameron on an ongoing basis. After creating the site, allowing it to grow, ironing out a large amount of the problems and creating something really new and interesting, they unceremoniously killed it and have never looked back.

In fact, if the Liberal Democrats did do something like this, the Conservative Party might see themselves lose a vote from me¹. I’ve been moaning about the Conservative Party’s woeful internet strategy for a lot longer than I’ve been blogging. I’d definitely show support for people who are innovative with the use of technology in decision making.

1. Of course, since I live in Margaret Beckett’s constituency in one of the safest Labour seats in the country, I’m not sure it’ll make much difference whether I vote for Lib Dems or Conservatives. But still. The principle is the important thing. [↩]