Gordomania?

There’s a short report in the Evening Standard tonight about Gordon Brown giving his stamp of authority to proposals the Labour Party is considering which are designed to usher in a new era of party politics. With party membership in long term decline (although there has been a slight blip upwards for the Tories since David Cameron became leader) parties are considering new ways of connecting to supporters who may help out with campaigning.

According to the paper:

‘Mr Brown has penned a foreword to a new book which will later this month call for sweeping change to Labour’s hierarchical structure, including allowing more dissent and removing “barriers to participation” to the YouTube generation of younger voters.

During his run for President, Mr Obama generated an email list of 13 million supporters and raised most of this £500 million funds online. The campaign was driven by young people using Facebook and other “two-way” internet innovations.

Senior Labour officials have already held secret talks with David Plouffe and David Axelrod, the political strategists behind Mr Obama’s victory.

Both have had extensive private meetings with David Muir, Downing Street’s director of political strategy, at which Mr Axelrod and Mr Plouffe are said to have “opened the books” and promised to do what they can to assist Labour.

The Prime Minister is understood to have expressed admiration for the “people-powered politics” of Mr Obama’s campaign, which he has compared to Labour’s own origins as a “bottom-up” party built from friendly societies and unions.

One Labour source said: “Nearly 500 people went out to the United States to work for Obama. They have all come back enthused by the way the campaign trusted volunteers and voters as grown-ups.”’

I have to confess that I’m not entrirely convinced that this could usher in a new form of politics. Obama took a leaf out of failed Democrat nominee Howard Dean’s copybook in utilising the internet, but the incumbent President is in many ways an exception. He has a level of charisma that transcends politics. He has been in many ways a personality of tremendous magnetism and popular appeal.

I’m not sure that whatever way the current UK party leaders contact us that it would drum up much enthusiasm. During the last London elections I signed up for email updates from the candidates from the three main parties, now the Tories think I’m a supporter of some sort and I frequently get emails that are supposedly from David Cameron (even if they are personally penned by him, what difference would it make?) encouraging me to support this or that daft initiative - that will most likely be quietly dropped should they assume the reins of power at the next election. Frankly it turns me off the Tories more than ever. I know they are going to criticise the government: I read papers and watch the news. I don’t need them to Twitter me to let me know.

Never mind that, imagine if UK political types copied another Obama technique of placing ads in computer games? How would you feel, say, if in the fourth season Football Manager, where you had guided Swindon Town to a Champions League spot only to find that the Liberal Democrats were your new kit sponsors, or shiny new stadium was christened the Muesli eater’s arena. Nightmare scenario.

Anyway, much tripe has been written about Obama’s ability to energise as if in some way it was uniform. Bear in mind that turnout in California, for instance, actually fell at the last election. As was the case in election USA 2008, so will it ineviyably prove in UK election 2010, the key marginal voters will be the most important targets and almost everyone else will be ignored.