It looks like the government has taken notice of the trend for blogging and online community spaces. At least Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills has in a recent speech called Democracy and education; democracy in education.
So politicians need to recognise that, whilst people are not joining traditional institutions, activism is enjoying a renaissance. We should feed that trend and not try to deny it: with more emphasis on what local parties can do with community campaigning, and less on the centralised dictats of the past.
We also have to reach out to people in a more emotional way – as Mario Cuomo, the great American Democrat, said, the trouble with political parties is that they “campaign in poetry but govern in prose”. It’s not impossible for big organisations to touch people’s hearts.
We must also seize the full potential of modern technologies. Some of you might be amongst the 90 million people with sites on MySpace. Virtual communities are increasingly places people we go to make friends, have fun, do business or share knowledge. Something like 100,000 blog sites are created every day; and political blog sites now receive more hits than official party websites.
That's what PM Partner is about - sharing knowledge across the public, private and voluntary sector on how to make partnerships run more smoothly and deliver better outcomes locally.
(Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the tip)
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