By Ed Miliband
More than any other time in my political lifetime, I am conscious that the future is not yet written. The economic downturn is affecting millions of people. But eventually the storm clouds will pass. At this point the Labour Party must be ready with a vision of the kind of society we want to see.
As the Labour Party's Manifesto Co-ordinator I will ensure that our vision is reflective of the differing needs of the British people. In the last ten years I know that as a party we have delivered real help to people from all walks of life.
But how many parents regret that they missed their kids' upbringing because they still feel they couldn't leave work?
How many of us know older people, our parents, our grandparents, our neighbours who are leading longer lives, who are worried about being isolated and the costs and burdens of being cared for?
How many of us know young people who don't have their voice heard and feel that society has nothing to offer them?
The politics and the institutions we build must speak to their lives. We've made real progress in these areas, but there is more to be done.
That's why today I am launching Labourspace.com - the Labour Party's campaign social networking site. I hope it will provide a unique home for organisations and people to host and promote their campaigns - and to bring their ideas to the attention of Labour ministers and the wider Party.
The idea behind Labourspace.com is really simple. You get your own webpage within the Labourspace network where you can tell us why you think Labour should be implementing your campaign ideas.
I will be regularly checking out the site which I expect will become a lively forum for discussion and debate. I hope people will use it to let us know what their priorities are for a better, fairer Britain under Labour in the future.
Labourspace.com opens up a dialogue on the internet precisely designed to stimulate ideas on how Labour can build on the progress we have made. Between now and our next manifesto it will be canvassing the best ideas, and, I hope, fostering a two way dialogue between you and me.
So log on, post your ideas, talk to me and let's build a manifesto that speaks to lives of people throughout this country. Together we can make change happen.
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You are Secretary of State for Climate Change. It is the singular, most important issue of our lifetime.
The above issues are really of no consequence unless you wholeheartedly commit to the battle of global warming.
Define your role with passion,authority,integrity and a real understanding of your singular task....then you may earn your following. Just where exactly are we in saving the planet? Together we can make change happen. Really? Convince us.
Ivor Dunmoanin
http//wannabepm.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-search-of-puff-and-magic.html
PS Immediacy is key...still waiting for a reply to my email.
short and long term goals are being met......then let us know, openly, honestly just what is going on.
Is the new LabourSpace.com a replacement for the 'partnership in power' process? If not, will it just dilute the existing membership participation process as it would cause confusion as to whether to use LabourSpace.com or use the traditional route.
Another approach would be a truly 'bottom up' process where new policy ideas could be presented or 'pitched' almost in a 'Dragons Den' style and CLPs could give their backing to promote the idea. When an idea/policy had a strong enough backing it would perhaps then be a case for the leadership to argue why a idea couldn't be adopted.
I have done stuff with the Young Fabians from time to time. We had policy commissions and created detailed submissions to put forward, even though this was completely unofficial. The point is in getting the ideas there, rather than winning the argument for them, I guess...
The dragons den model you suggest already seems to be happening over at Compass - http://www.howtoliveinthe21stcentury.org.uk/ Perhaps Labour should be talking to them about what they've done.
Some constructive comments on the site so far:
-Brilliant idea!
-The red title bars make reading the text a little difficult.
-I'd prefer the labour.org background (or similar) instead of just white
-The pop up comment box is a bit annoying, it should be in-page like this site
-Having to click 'more' to see each comment is also an annoyance
-I like the "Ed says" bit, if you get a politician to react to one of the campaigns each week, that would be a great incentive for people to try and get their campaigns noticed.
-I would like to see unity between this site and labourspace.com
-I like how it isn't overtly pro-labour, but is more a way of getting our ideas across. I think that is very important.
Overall, I really like the look of it and I'm extremely pleased that you're learning lessons from the Obama campaign.
The online political battle lines are starting to be drawn.
Dividing effort makes the individual sites (Labourlist.org, Labourhome.org, Labourspace.com) look weaker and less significant.
It would also be nice to see a "best of breed" approach being taken - there are reasons why certain social networking and blogging platforms are successful (and others are commercial!).
'Let a thousand flowers bloom.'
What I would like is a more consistent look and feel between Labour.org, Labourlist.org, and Labourspace.org. A feel of unity and that all the sites are part of the Labour Party online presence, as opposed to 3 sites all doing their own thing.
I'm sure its technically possible to have the same background, a heading bar, and fonts on all three. The heading bar could have: Home|Labourlist|Labourspace|Support|Join etc, so its easy to flip between them.
As all three sites are maintained by the same company, I'm sure it could be done.
Also bears saying the Labourspace.com potentially lowers the barrier for entry - people don't need to get their faces in the column on the left if they can just launch forth on Labourspace.com.
Really struggling to see how this helps in the long run - if these were all completely independent open-source projects it would be one thing, but the degree of de facto interconnection makes cannibalism a certainty.
Even giving Derek the benefit of the doubt and allowing that he has editorial independence from Labour HQ - and despite some loud assertions to the contrary there's currently no evidence otherwise - the fact remains that just about all of Labour's "online presence" is coming out of their official marketing agency - Tangent plc / Tangent Labs.
(As a side note, a time when Labour faces a funding gap these sites are running - no doubt expensively - on proprietary Tangent platforms instead of the various better free examples.)
The impression from the outside is that Labour HQ is trying to get itself the same kind of grassroots online presence that the Tories enjoy, but thinks that can be done by HQ setting up the venues and initially populating them whilst they wait for people to arrive.
"If we host it, they will come..."
Remains to be seen if grassroots supporters will come and use these sites, and if the faces on the left will slowly be replaced by people you've never heard of before who build followings. If they don't, and they're not, these remain as (semi)official communications channels from the top down, the proliferation of which weakens each individual one.