The centre left has had a difficult few years. Decimated across Europe and marginalised within the Labour party in the UK. It’s traditional operating model has found it hard to breakthrough in an era of anti-politics and mass mobilisation. More broadly it feels our part of the Labour movement is out of ideas.

Some feel that a new party is the answer - but a perfect storm of lack of finance, no set piece elections like President to build momentum, FPTP and loyalty to the Labour brand makes this a non-starter. (Also personally I wouldn't want to but yeah worth saying why it wont work as well as some people keep boring on about it)

For me the answer lies in institutions like Progress. Politics may be driven by personality and ego but institutions help make it effective. The lack of an institutional infrastructure has meant the many small victories and policies that could have built a vibrant movement have dissipated.

The centre left has tried to win with top down MP led campaigns, by finding loopholes and lawyering processes — all have failed. It is now time to think longer than the next news cycle and build the institutions that can have a real impact on the Labour party and importantly the country.

Challenges centre left organisations face

There are currently five main challenges faced by organisations like Progress:

1. Lack of relevance both in the Labour party and the country. The centre left feels like a Star Trek convention where people too young to remember why the original series was popular at the time cosplay in campy caricatures of Balirism and Brownism. In a world of anti-politics, stagnant wages and shrinking budgets, Progress and the centre left seems out of step with the current mood.

2. Unable to scale their expertise. Matt Faulding and Stephanie Lloyd (former and current Deputy Directors) are some of the best organisers in our movement, and they have had some great victories in the past couple of years. However they lack the infrastructure to scale their campaigning knowledge that would make national change possible.

3. Diminished brand. Progress (like many centre left organisations) have great name recognition but many within our movement are sceptical of its impact or worse down right hostile to its existence.

4. Brexit has pulled the focus of activists and donors — meaning there are very few people creating the ideas and organisations to help the left win on issues other than Brexit or plan for what happens after Brexit.

5. There is just so much to do. The centre left is intellectually and organisationally nowhere. This has led to mission creep with well meaning organisations scrabbling around trying to do everything, rather than concentrating on specific areas they can have a positive impact.

So what should Progress’ strategy be?

The objective of an organisation like Progress — be that Momentum or Fabians — is simple:

1. Have a positive impact on the direction of the Labour party

2. Make it easy for anybody to get involved in all levels of the Labour movement

But that is easier said than done. There will be no silver bullet for the challenges they face.

Progress’ strategy needs to be to get people to look again at Progress by (1) building a useful platform to make it easy for people to get involved in Labour politics and (2) saying interesting things about the future of the Labour movement.

What should Progress stand for?

Right now it is almost impossible to say clearly what Progress stands for. You could probably work it out on specific issues by looking at the personalities who support an idea but currently it seems relatively ad-hoc.

To cut through in a contested political environment they need a clear point of view — a prism to see the world through. To be effective that prism needs to:

1. Link with the history of the Labour movement

2. Be future looking and broad enough to remain interesting over a number of years

3. Fit with the current political mood of anti politics and mistrust in institutions

For me this means Progress should stand for “giving working people more power in their day to day lives”

This links with the Labour founding mission of giving working people a voice in politics whilst also hinting to Progress’ more individualist history, it also puts the public in the driving seat not institutions and especially not politicians — which should help it chime with the public mood.

On a day to day level what does this mean as a policy platform? I have no idea and it doesn’t matter. We are the opposition wing of the opposition party. We have the time and space to think up solutions. We don’t need a thirty point plan for government. It’s just a direction of travel.

If something gives working people more power it’s probably good if it gives them less it will likely be bad. Sometimes the mechanism for giving that power will be government in other places it may be trade unions or civil society and in others it will be business. Progress is lucky in that it has in Editor Conor Pope one of the great writers/thinkers on the left at the moment who can flesh out the detail with help from contributors in the coming months/years. For me they should start with something counter intuitive for Progress to help get peoples attention like radical thinking to increase trade union density in the private sector or a big intervention in the housing market.

In the long run this viewpoint could also flow through to the visual brand — which is at the moment polite and relatively corporate. By simplifying the Progress’ look and feel — taking visual cues from activist movements and historic leftist movements Progress could get people to look again at what they are saying. Also in the modern media landscape where people come to a site or article via social links rather than bookmarking the homepage a memorable brand is useful for building a relationship with readers/supporters.

Tactics to put Progress back at the centre of the Labour movement

This is a difficult time for the centre left, to be relevant we need to be bold. Progress should make a number of additions to their online presence, it’s editorial offer and the work it does offline.

Everything outlined below will either be useful to people in the Labour party or help support interesting editorial. If it is not supporting the strategy or if someone else is doing it already Progress should not do it — it is a waste of time and resource.

They are set out as products for two reasons; first to help with project management and second as products are a great way of encouraging fundraising (donors — either HNW or crowdfunding — like to point and say my money brought that thing).

Additions to the online platform

• User generated petition hub added to the site using the Control Shift Labs product. This would allow anyone within the Labour movement to set up a petition on their own and start a campaign. This not only gets people proactively campaigning in their community but also grows Progress’ data base, gives them a connection to the grassroots, will drive donations, can be linked into editorial easily (imagine an article on tory cuts with a petition at the bottom) and will help reveal great campaigners to build relationships with around the country.
• Crowd funder tool to make it easy for campaigners and candidates to set up online fundraising pages. There are some tools online that allow people to fundraise but they don’t have the campaign knowhow of Progress which can boost the amount raised and don’t always offer the correct access to data to report properly to the electoral commission. Not only would this tool put Progress at the heart of campaigns within the Labour movement they could also use the tip method (where donors are asked to tip the platform after their original donation) to drive revenue. Whilst a full bells and whistles version of this would be very resource intensive a simple but secure MVP could be put together relatively quickly.
• Automated email training courses on everything from “How to set up a Labour club in your uni in 4 weeks” to “How to run to be a Labour councillor” or the “New member challenge: Grow the Labour party in 5 weeks” These would split all the ways you can get involved in the Labour party into a series of steps which would be emailed to you over a period of time. What is great about these is that they can be automated and they aren’t time sensitive so they continue to be a useful resource to the movement and grow Progress’ email list. Progress could encourage people around the movement to tweet along with them. I have done something similar with a religious campaigns group and they worked a treat and Vox did them as well.

Editorial

• Daily action email which summarises the days events and gives people a single action to get involved. The daily round up email is fine and it will drive traffic but the email newsletter space is crowded and Progress’ is currently not shaping the debate. Making it focused on action gives the Progress email a purpose, helps shape the agenda and gets their members into a more active relationship with the organisation. The single action could be everything from tweeting at a minister, to donating to a campaign or signing a petition. You could even run partnership campaigns with organisations (it would be great to get members tweeting in support of strike action for example to really pile pressure on rogue businesses).
• Reduce the number of magazines a year and theme each issue around a societal problem to cut costs and increase quality. The quality of the magazine has skyrocketed since Conor has taken the rains. Theming issues has given them direction and could be built on by looking to find solutions to a problem that faces society. With the right mix of contributors, policy ideas, data and punchy opinions they could really help shape the media and political debate. It will also make it easier to sell adverts — opening up opportunities with people who may not be interested in politics in the abstract but are interested in their niche area. They could also be used as the bases for op-eds etc in traditional media outlets.
• Build a social advertising war chest using some of the money saved by reducing the number of magazines. Progress could use it to drive traffic, email sign-ups and votes for Labour in elections etc. Having a war chest allows it to be quickly deployed at important times or when content is working organically.
• Build a Facebook messenger chatbot to drive people to articles and encourage them to take action at key moments. ChatFuel makes it easy and cheap to build a bot which can suggest articles on a users interest or allow people to opt in for broadcast messages at big campaign moments. This will not only drive engagement but could also drive income through donations and new members.

Offline activity

• Young Labour/Labour Students/Campaign Day/etc in a box to make it easy for people to be proactive where they live. The box would give people everything they need to set up events plus some fun Progress branded merch. This is a great way to scale the Progress’ teams knowledge across the country and builds a relationship with activists in our movement. It has worked brilliantly for GiffGaff.
• Monthly informal meeting in Westminster where Progress brings three or four people doing things that are working from around our movement to present what they have learnt. The meeting would be pitched to MPs, staffers and policy wonks but would be open to anyone (digital collateral could accompany it to make it truly open). This helps share knowledge around our movement, breaks Westminster types out of the bubble (whilst not actually having to leave) and helps Progress build relationships with people making positive change around the UK. This works well for the Republican party in the US although Progress’ version would be less grubby.

All of this is easier said than done. This post is meant to be helpful — some of the stuff will work and some of the stuff might not. Progress and organisations like it are needed to make positive change. But they can only do that if they are bold — building useful tools for the Labour movement or saying interesting things to cut through in a contested campaign landscape.

If you like this then please do share on the apps and send it to friends etc

As we all know 2016 was the year for realising stuff. Here are some stuff I realised this year.

• Big Macs are quite nice
• I’m really like Grace from Grace and Frankie
• People in power/the media are just people like you
• Doing things is a lot easier than you think and a lot more fun than talking about them
• One voice shouting on its own might not change the world but it probably can change the news cycle
• Les Miserables is about a coup that failed
• Having a boring personal life makes it easier to fuck shit up in the real world
• Angry people on the Internet are tiresome
• Be nicer to journalists who get a lot of angry people in their mentions
• Your best content will get the least faves
• Inaction has consequences
• We all have power over our political system so we all have to take responsibility for its outcomes
• Chinese state media are really quite polite
• Im now too old for small talk
• It’s worth spending a bit extra to get a nice bottle of wine with diner
• Friends dates are great
• Politics matters
• The cinema has got really expensive
• Work there’s a lot of it
• Being selfish is good for your mental health
• There is nothing worse than a friend asking about your emotional wellbeing and nothing better
• Podcasts are awesome
• Being tall gets better with every year
• There is even more similarities than I thought between the gay experience and the British Muslim experience
• Almost everything interesting in my life is because of the Internet
• The Internet takes up too much of my time
• Getting the table by the door is best for people watching
• The NHS is not as great as we pretend
• It was always the people that made the Labour Party and that won’t change
• Berlin is still one of the best cities in the world
• Watching a friend become happy is one of the best things in the world
• And even when things are at there worst you can always take your top off and dance in a dark club to work things out

Hear all Root Cause interviews first by signing up to our email list here.

Hannah has been at the forefront of the mass mobilisation game from basically it’s start - she worked for Avaaz, was a founding campaigner at 38 Degrees and is now at SumOfUs.

In this interview she talks about her early life in Sheffield having a “strange” interest in political disputes of the time as well as her time at university.

She talks about starting her career doing policy for think tanks and how that effects the campaign she runs now. Moving to the founding of 38 degrees, how they thought about shaping an organisation to last, what they looked for in good campaigners, and the importance of participation.

Hannah now works with SumOfUs so we chat about the differences in campaigning to hold corporations to account rather than governmental bodies.

Finally we chat books, the next UK general election and what mass mobilisation looks like across the world.

It is a great interview and has really helped me think about modern campaign trends.

Please do share this with your friends and colleagues, it’s how we grow.

If you would like to respond to anything raised in the interview record a short voice memo and send it to mauchlinet [at] gmail [dot] com. We will share them next time

Thanks and enjoy.

Picture credit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FL2kwgHXmjA

1. Hannah Lownsbrough interview [Listen] was originally published in ROOT CAUSE on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A year and a half ago I left my job building campaigns and movements with Trade Unions, NFPs and political organisations to start working on more corporate clients. In the week I had between jobs I tried to collate what I had read, learnt and done to give it some order. Hopefully making it easier for me to apply that knowledge to the companies I would be working with.

It has sat in my medium account since then – I think it is still useful so I am posting now. Although in the last year and a half I have come to belive that institutions and the power they have are even more important than then.

Have a read and let me know what you think.

I have spent the last few years working with organisations who are the product of one hundred years of history but as their traditional membership base has decreased they have found that their old levers of power have become more and more ineffective.

This problem is being faced across the world. Political parties, Unions and civil society membership is nose diving and trust in institutions is crumbling.

People however are not disengaging, they are showing their support for causes, taking to the streets campaigning and contacting those in power more than ever.

But a single voice is easy to ignore.

So what is taking the place of old institutions are new grass-roots movements which bring people together and organise them without formalised power structures and leaders.

Whilst these movements vary in size, scope and objectives. There are 7 key elements which can be found in all of them and help them to thrive.

Some of these movements have toppled dictators, broken markets, sold underwear and built the idea of Lady GaGa. But whilst their aims are different their methods are remarkably similar.

1. Be inclusive

Building a movement takes people- lots of them. Whilst this may seem obvious we can all (campaigners especially) be exclusive in the tone of voice we use, the subjects we talk about and the images we choose.

The We are all Khaled Said Facebook page (one of the pages which built support against the Egyptian regime in the run up to the protests in Tahir Square – read Revolution 2.0 by Wael Ghonim for more details) is a perfect example of how being inclusive can help you grow a powerful movement. The admin used colloquial Egyptian Arabic spelling rather than formal scholarly Arabic that other groups were using. This made it easier for all members of Egyptian society to relate to, no matter what their background or education.

Also when they called for the mass protests on January 25th (#Jan25) which ultimately lead to the protests in Tahir square he didn’t just concentrate on abstract human rights which activists were passionate about. He made the event more broad, talking about the issues Egypt under Mubarak faced with jobs, growth and the cost of living.

Lady GaGa also shows the power of being inclusive. Her movement of little monsters was built on lyrics and performances championing everyone no matter what you looked like, who you loved or what you wore. In contrast as she has become more abstract and obviously arty her movement has fallen away to it’s core — causing her sales to decrease.

Campaigns can sometimes survive being exclusive. As super engaged supporters can give enough mass in the short term to extract gains from the powerful. However movements need to last longer, encompass more people and in the end make larger changes

2. Build an identity.

Movements have to weather the course. One way great movements keep people interested and committed over time is by building a shared identity. This can be done really simply and without feeling exclusive.

The Obama campaign in 2008 adopted the mantra “fired up and ready to go” for people out campaigning . This chant at the start of door knocking sessions was simple and had great story behind it which bound the movement together across the country. This simple chant made people feel part of something larger, which helps to keep people committed through out the campaign and into the Obama presidency through OFA. Also importantly it came from the movement itself and it was easy for new recruits to pick up keeping it authentic and inclusive.

Lady GaGa’s paws up symbol and the Tai protesters appropriation of the hunger games salute are other examples of symbols that can foster an identity and help people take the movement into their everyday lives and share it with friends.

Online versions can be just as effective such as the profile pic changes (such as the two red bars for gay marriage), unifying hashtags (such as hashtag labour doorstep) and memes (such as Yes All Men)

Campaigns are shorter lived and so don’t have to build an identity — the shorter lived excitement can sustain the campaign until demands are met. Movements though are larger — they need to weather the storm a shared identity helps draw people in the movement together making them stronger.

3. Show movement in your movement (Feedback Successes)

People love winning. Great movements use smaller wins to build momentum and support which can lead up to larger more far reaching demands for change.

The Egyptian revolution started in the months and years before the January 25th Demo. Smaller protests and acts of respectful civil disobedience starting with the April 6th youth movements and then the silent stands — where young Egyptians dressed in black stood in silence along the banks of the Nile and Alexandria cornucopia in protest of police brutality. This built media coverage and momentum.

Importantly though it helped to remove the fear barrier for regular members of society. These smaller protests allowed people on the streets — not just activists — to realise that they could take a stand, make a change and not be harmed in the process. Now the fear barrier might not be directly applicable to movements being built in Western democracies however the apathy felt by most people is just as incapacitating for a movement as the fear overcome in the run up to the Egyptian uprising. Showing small wins and building momentum shows people within and outside your movement that they can make a positive impact if they get involved.

The gay rights movement in both America and the UK has shown the power of building a movement on small wins. It has taken over a century but the gay rights movement has bit by bit built on it’s successes to gain near equality — in the UK at least.

A more concrete example of this movement building can be seen around the gay marriage debate in the US. After some initial defeats things were not looking great however after the victories in the four and a great movement building campaign by the sections of the community they proved the battle could be won. Galvanising the LGBTQ community and their allies meaning that more people came out to fight and donate in subsequent campaigns.

Note: A more recent example could be the way that Corbyn’s campaign used getting him onto the ballot in the first place to galvanise support and build momentum (both figuratively and literally)

4. Have many faces

Movements are about people. Successful ones remind people that the movement doesn't belong to one person or an organisation but is a living thing owned by everyone involved.

Showing the many different faces in a movement helps with recruitment. Potential new supporters can empathise with the people involved already and helps them imagine themselves taking part. Stopping activism as a spectator sport.

Andrew Christian the underwear label does this brilliantly with its “famous fan” pages and blog. They allow potential new customers to see the product on real people and not just models — convincing customers they will also look good if they buy the product. It turns committed customers into advocates — giving them a reason to share the brands content.

Bill de Blasio’s primary campaign did a similar thing but for political action. Cherry picking great photos of supporters phone banking or door knocking in a bid to get new people taking part.

Showing faces of the people in your movement allows you to bypass the or at least add context to boring structural arguments, and instead get to the heartfelt stories that are the real driving force for people, movements and change alike. The Syrian Campaign do this perfectly with the editorial content. Telling the stories behind the crisis — giving people on the ground a voice. Reminding people around the world the base reason to get involved and then offering them meaningful ways to do it.

5. Ask for help — get people involved

Movements contain thousands of people all with different skills and talents. The strongest movements understand this and so allow everyone who want to contribute to get involved.

In the run up to the Egyptian revolution the We are all Khaled Said facebook page reached out to its members to help out with designing artwork for events, editing videos of direct action as well as citizen reporting on the ground to create unbiased news sources. In addition to the practical “this needs to get done. Who can do it?” style of help, the page also fed back peoples ideas, artwork and poetry throughout the campaign. This helped foster a shared identity and common ownership of the movement — making it more powerful and harder to be stopped as the actions weren't being coordinated centrally . Also on a practical level it meant that the content produced by the movement was of better quality as people contributed their skills.

Lady GaGa’s littlemonster.com site has acted in quite the same way to cement the relationship with and between her fans. Fans can submit comments, artwork, remixes and videos to the community. The best ones are then fed back via “Moma Monster” encouraging other fans to submit their own.

Howard Dean’s insurgent primary campaign was one of the first to use this feed back method to encourage participation at the grass roots – in a political campaign. He used MeetUp to get supporters together — allowing them to build relationships with each other and share their experiences. He also asked supporters to bolster his emerging digital campaign — asking them to blog about the campaign and share their experiences on the campaign with friends.

6. Trust people to do their own thing

The most powerful movements are the ones where the people who start them are able to let go and allow everyone in the movement to contribute and act on their own ideas. The successful actions can then be woven into a larger movement story even though they are not choreographed from the centre.

The Jan25 protests in Egypt which lead to the toppling of Hosni Mubarack started out as the title of an event on Facebook — but soon after it was posted hundreds of different events started to pop up, all with slightly differing angels and meeting places; but the same key message; Mubarack must go. In addition to this people took to the streets, organically organising their communities, mosques and universities. This gave the movement a scale which would have been impossible if everything had been planned and controlled by the centre. Also when the original event admin was arrested it didn't matter because everyone was acting autonomously.

The independent coffee movement has shown the global power of this. Authentic artisanal coffee shops with black chalk boards and derelicte furniture have popped up on every street corner in major cities across the world. They have managed Starbucks levels of scale without the 40 years of growth that it took Starbucks to colonise the coffee landscape. Ideas travel faster than you can.

People who believe in good quality coffee with an authentic feel can get involved and set up on their own — without having to go through any bureaucracy. Great for speedy growth; granted not so great for owner salaries which are spread across the market rather than being centralised in chief executive or share holder's hands.

7. Listen to the movement

The most powerful movements are the ones which the people involved feel like they have ownership of it and input into it. To make sure your movement is bound together and doesn't fracture you are going to have to get to know the people within it; what they think, what they feel and importantly what they want to do. Then you are going to have to act on it.

Lady GaGa created littlemonster.com as she knew she had millions of fans across the globe and they were all talking amongst themselves, creating fan art and outfits, remixing her songs and suggesting material for future directions. She just couldn't hear any of it. Creating a hub for these conversations that also linked in with fans social networks meant that not only could she see the ideas, music and content that fans were creating but she could also map the relationships. Owning this data and getting involved with the conversations fans were having meant that she knew what they wanted and could use the great content they were creating . Giving them ownership of the movement.

Talking and listening to her movement allows her to see who her key fans/activists/stakeholders are. Meaning she can co-ordinate releases and action more effectively.

The We are all Khaled Said campaign got the opinions and input from supporters through Facebooks standard functionality. Polls let the admin ask people what they thought the campaigns next moves should be. They used statuses to ask more open ended questions and start discussions. Links were posted to let supporters give their opinions on news articles or videos. People chipped in ideas on the page's walls and shared artwork for others to see and comment on. This might all seem pretty rudimental but that's the point. Movements that listen get a full picture of what the people in them are thinking.

This era of new power and mobilisation doesn’t make old power structures or institutions irrelevant. But it does mean that power is shifting at a faster pace than before.

Whether this is good or bad in the long term I don’t know. Most of the non-hierarchical communes of the 60s/70s collapsed because of conflict, personalities and bullying. The positivity of the Arab spring movements were, it seems, easy to swat away as they lacked the robustness of the institutional power they were fighting.

But where Howard Dean failed Obama succeeded, the issues of the Occupy movement have been taken up by presidential candidates of both US parties and despite the unrelenting horror and monumental numbers of dead in a 5 year long conflict, Syrians have built an international movement which has forced open Europe's boarders, changed UN policy and raised awareness of the brutality of Assad and ISIS.

Bib

Bieber though started the year in a similar place to where Labour moderates stand now — he had a perception problem, no one doubted that he was creating great music but he was perceived as arrogant, cynical and uncaring of real people. He realised that this was unsustainable and so made a dramatic change to his entire output which meant he ended the year receiving headlines like this.

Bieber’s 2015 can act as a blueprint for Labour’s moderates. Like all integrated campaigns it has a lot of moving parts which deserve proper analysis but it can be boiled down into three main pillars.

1. Apologise and explain

Bieber spent the run up to his album launch doing a series of confessional interviews explaining how the pressure of fame had affected him, apologising for how he had hurt his fans and explaining that he had grown up and was making a change. This narrative culminated in two big tracks on the album “Sorry” and “I’ll Show You” which sets out a rationale for his behaviour but importantly charts a defiant, positive course for improvement in the future. It is quite possibly the greatest Chukka Umunna speech never given.

For moderates apologising for our actions is going to be hard but is necessary. Whilst arguably our behaviour towards our fellow members was warranted to secure electability and make so much positive change possible, we should not be under any doubt that moderates were dismissive and patronising to elements of the grassroots and that needs to be apologised for, whilst explaining the realities of governing and all the great things we achieved together. This should help take some of the heat and suspicion out of the current relationship amongst moderate MPs and the majority of the membership.

2. Show a return to values

Bieber understands that, in a news cycle dominated by social media, small positive acts which illustrate your values are the most effective way to gain positive coverage. The three most obvious examples of this are his support for the NHS Choir, the title of his album “Purpose” and the song “Children.”

For moderates that means reconnecting and creating content with the wider movement; filming videos talking to delegates at TUC conference, answering questions from CLPs and creating micro-campaigns about issues that Labour members care about but the public don’t.

Over 50% of Labour members say they get the majority of their news from social media. On social media people don’t think, they feel — big policy announcements and speeches won’t cut through here, however small and frequent actions which elicit positive emotions will. It’s how Corbyn won in the summer and it is how he retains the support of the membership even after a turbulent start.

3. Create a hopeful idea of the future

Bieber’s 2015 has been all about drawing a line under past indiscretions and creating a more positive view of where he is heading. He has been pretty vague on the specifics of this future saying in the song “Children” ‘Be a visionary for a change, We’re the generation’, and ‘Guess we’ll move on to better days, yeah’ in the song “Future.”

Moderates can also get away with being vague this early in the cycle, however we need to be more specific than simply screaming electability. This hasn’t and won’t move people to vote for us when the time comes. Blair in the foreword to the 2011 reprint of Phillip Gould’s epic “The Unfinished Revolution” said ‘Progressive folk don’t get motivated just by the thought of being in power. For them, rightly, there has to be a higher purpose.’ 2015 proved that this is still the case.

This should be the most simple, speak to anyone in and around the Labour party and they will be able to describe with passion what our country could be if we were in Government. But I have a suspicion our decade long habit of pointing to the sensible electorate and saying they won’t have it, rather than setting out and defending our idea of a Labour future, will be tough to kick.

Looking to Justin Bieber for a blueprint of a political campaign might seem strange but his was an emotional response to an emotional problem. Similar to the current issues facing Labour’s moderates — intellectual responses will not work here. Anyway the best campaigns have always borrowed from the commercial world. Gould was an ad exec and Mandelson a television producer after all.

As Bieber said ‘How did we throw it all away?
Guess we’ll move on to better days, yeah
Maybe there’s a future, such a great future
Maybe yes, next time, what if there’s no next time?
Maybe there’s a future, such a great future’

Click the heart now to show your support and increase the amount of people who see this.

The media stories about islam meant that I was genuinely a little nervous about moving in across the road to a mosque. What I have learnt in the four years since I moved is that the ridiculousness of British culture is universal. We all love tea, are really polite and tut rather than saying something, no matter our religion.

Click the heart at the bottom if you liked this article to show more people.

I’ve seen loads of other people doing it as well — so its not just me overcompensating for my usual flippancy.

It’s like a question mark isn’t enough. That you might think that me genuinely being interested in your opinion or wanting a bit more info is actually just a rhetorical device.

It’s illustrative of a wider phenomena on social media — no one gives each other the benefit of the doubt any more.

As our ability to express nuance has been capped at 140 characters we have, at the same time, become unforgiving of what people say.

Like having having a crush on someone you don’t know — projecting all your positivity and hope on a person — but in reverse.

It’s understandable, I suppose, there are some dicks on social media and the speed we all react means we never really picture the person before tapping out a response.

We don’t think, we feel.

But how many arse holes do you actually know? Like we all know some, sure. But most people are ace. Strange? Maybe. Socially awkward? Totally. But arse holes? Hardly ever.

We all need to be more understanding, sure, but actually the underlining infrastructure of the social web doesn’t have a mechanism to passively vent negative emotions.

If I get annoyed at you IRL I can tut or give you the side eye. You can see this and explain more or we depart company and get on with our lives. On social media I can’t do that — so I quickly call you out.

This is why Facebook’s trial of emotion buttons is so exciting. It could take the fire out interactions online.

So in conclusion, people are usually ace and when they aren’t tut.

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It’s useful because you realise that you can learn loads from everyone. You can’t know everything, every time, so you sit back and listen.

It’s why although ideologically we are on completely different poles of the Labour party, his politics are my politics.

I, like him, loathe the machine.

We are excited by modern technology which allows us to open up power and get real people involved in the day to day of parliament. Sourcing questions from party members is brilliant and helps a 60-something year old, white, male, professional politician stay connected to concerns of the grassroots.

However it is that definition of the grassroots which is where problems start.

Jeremy wants to democratise the party but seemingly ignores the vast majority of the public who it would appear disagree with him. This means that the pool of people who are supposed to keep him connected to the problems of the electorate start to cut him off from reality.

38 degrees has this problem. They democratically consult their membership on all their campaigns. But as their initial growth came via campaigns like “save BBC 6 music”, “stop the sell off of the UK’s forests” and “save our NHS” their membership ended up being old, white and middle class. So when they consult on campaigns they pick issues which matter to those demographics. This has, I am told, made it hard to run campaigns on childcare but made it easy to campaign for bees or against globalisation.

This can turn seemingly broad democratic movements into as much of a bubble as the Westminster one we were all trying to pop.

On the left we are suspicious of focus groups and polling but sometimes it is the only way to be confronted with the hard truth that people don’t agree with us. Lord Gould saw them as being an indispensable part of democracy, giving real people across the country a chance to talk to power. And as Jeremy and I learnt growing up it’s those conversations that in the end are the ones that make you smarter.