I put this idea into the 4iP call for ideas but they turned it down (maybe because I’m supposed to be running one of their portfolio investments ) so I thought I’d just put it out there to see if anybody was interested in taking it on or helping out…

PartyStarter.org

Starting a political party should be as easy as setting up a company. Innovation in politics is more likely to come from a new entrant than from the main established parties.

Needs and Benefits

Membership of the main UK political parties has steadily declined since the 1970s. Disaffection with parties and politicians is at an all time high. Yet despite this, the big parties have hardly changed their structure since being formed in the 19th and 20th centuries (see http://www.paulmiller.org/partypoopers.htm for background on the slow demise of political parties in the UK and internationally).

Rather than focusing on getting more people to join the existing parties, PartyStarter will encourage and help people to set up their own political parties. It is based on the belief that innovation in the way that parties organise and operate is more likely to come from new ’start-up’ parties than from existing parties.

While it’s unlikely that any of the parties it creates will win at the next general election, there are an increasing number of elections that are winnable by smaller parties in local, regional and European elections. And there is a small chance that PartyStarter might create a party that grows quickly and can seriously compete with the main parties at the general election after next.

PartyStarter satisfies the need of people who want to make a difference to the political system but don’t have faith in the main political parties. It will show that political apathy is because Westminster village politics is out-of-date and not because people don’t care about political issues.

Approach

It actually only costs £150 to register a political party with the Electoral Commission but the process is difficult to understand and the reporting burden grows in complexity as a party raises more money and has more candidates.

Inspired by sites that make company formation easy and understandable such as company-wizard.co.uk, PartyStarter.org will take you through the process step-by-step with help at each stage and automatically generate the official forms and paperwork needed for the Electoral Commission.

Once a party is registered, PartyStarter will then help you find digital tools to administer and organise your party. Whether that’s blogging or twitter, Meetup.com or Huddle.net, PartyStarter will introduce people who may not be familiar with the web to powerful but low-cost tools so that they can innovate in the way they campaign and organise.

We’re looking for £20,000 from 4iP to create a not-for-profit company, build the technology and hire a project co-ordinator/researcher/troublemaker for six months in the run up to the general election in 2010. This period will be a perfect time to launch as media interest in politics and public ‘apathy’ will be high.

Sustainability

Once the site is built, the costs of PartyStarter.org will be low. The code for the site will be open-sourced allowing volunteers to help improve it and people in other countries to adapt it for their own systems.

There is the opportunity to grow some affiliate relationships with the necessary services for a political party - legal, accounting and banking - with PartyStarter taking a share of the revenue (this is how company formation sites often make money). This could be part of a a paid package to cover all the administration of a political party.

Overall though, the strategy for sustainability will be to keep costs as low as possible.

Competition

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/guidance/candidates-agents/parties is currently the only site that offers help registering a political party in the UK. PartyStarter will offer a much simpler service cutting through the jargon of political administration.

Not entirely serious but somehow true:

Right now all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there’s nowhere left to put it. We need new institutions to believe in, and fast. Doesn’t matter what they’re made of. Knit them out of string, wool, anything. Quickly, quickly. Before we start worshipping insects.

- Charlie Brooker in the Guardian

This isn’t really about expenses. What’s going on has been brewing for a long time - it’s a more general disaffection with the structure of politics in the UK and a belief that politicians just aren’t up to the job of taking important decisions. It was only a matter of time before we found a touchpaper issue to really get things going. I’d focus on making Westminster a better decision making body. It’s going to take a long time for that to happen but there are some things that could be done quite quickly. So here’s what I’d do:

• Halve the number of MPs - randomise which neighbouring constituencies get merged so there’s no argument about it. Do this before the next election.
• Pay MPs 50% more.
• Have no expenses system.
• Don’t allow external employment. Being an MP should be a full time job.
• All benefits or gifts received externally should be declared as they are now.
• Have a mandatory 50% number of women candidates for all parties. If a party is to be represented in Westminster it must put up at least equal numbers of women to men.
• Give up on the idea of surgeries. MPs need to accept that they are employed to take decisions on national issues. Councils are for local issues.
• Ban donations of more than £5,000. Political donations should be tax deductible.
• Parliament should sit around the year, MPs should have normal working hours, holidays and sick pay.
• All votes should be free votes.

[This is a slightly adapted version of a short talk I gave at MASS LBP on 10 March 2009 in Toronto, Canada]

It feels a bit unfashionable in tumultuous times like these but there’s something you should know about me before we start. I’m an optimist - a practical optimist in that I like making things happen and changing things for the better. I’m a great believer that the direction of human progress is towards greater and greater ability to solve problems. People are getting more intelligent individually and groups of people are getting even smarter because of new tools for collaboration and new ways of co-ordinating activity.

This talk stems from some things I’ve learned over the last five years about what’s possible when you try to take ideas that could change the world and put them into action using web technologies. It’s also about a quote that I made in a film called Us Now that got me in a little bit of trouble with my political friends:

“Representative democracy is based on the assumption that people are thick. And that’s just not true.”

It was one of those things that just came out of my mouth without much thought beforehand. The advantage of saying it on film is that I’ve had to think about it afterwards. What I meant was that by putting decisions and the provision of public services in the hands of a small group of elected representatives we miss a massive opportunity to tap the power of people to solve their own problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

I went along to see Us Now on Wednesday and I like it a lot - and not just because it’s got me in it!

The funny thing about being on camera is that you sometimes come out with things you didn’t know you were going to say. In Us Now I surprised myself when I said, “Representative democracy was based on the idea that people are thick. That’s just not the case.”

Now I do believe exactly that, but I’d never thought about it in that way until I said it. To be a bit more nuanced, I don’t believe that representative democracy is going to disappear but I do think it will change. It was one of the things I was trying to get across in the piece I wrote with Tom for the FT Magazine. The infrastructure of representative democracy, which in the UK is really political parties, is struggling far more than people recognise. I don’t think it would take much for any of the political parties to collapse very quickly because alternative ways of organising and financing are very close to having the same efficiency as parties.

As I say in the film I think the really interesting stuff will happen around the edges of government where people use digital tools to organise themselves to deliver services better than institutional government can. The film is full of examples of people doing just that.

I’m not sure what the plan is for distribution of the film but if you get a chance to see it, it’s well worth a watch.

I haven’t seen it yet (first screening is tomorrow) but there are a few bits of me in a new documentary about government, democracy and technology called Us Now. Here’s the trailer.

What does “yes we can” really mean? Obama’s goal wasn’t simply to win an election, garner votes, or run a great campaign. It was larger and more urgent: to change the world.

Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.

And to do that, you must strive to change the world radically for the better - and always believe that yes, you can. You must maximize, stretch, and utterly explode your sense of purpose.

Read the rest here.

Thank you America. I think you might just have changed the way people think about politics.

I’m at BarCampUKGovWeb today about how Government could best use technology and set itself up so that other people can use their data too. Best thing I’ve found out about so far is Farmsubsidy.org. I’ve long thought the CAP is absolutely bonkers, but these guys prove just how crazy (and secretive) the system is.

The guys at Demos (where I used to work and remain an associate) have put together a great little video explaining the idea of ‘everyday democracy’.

I keep on meaning to post about the controversy about party funding. More soon…