The Register echoes criticism among UK broadsheet newspapers and others about New Labour’s Big Conversation initiative
“Labour grandee Roy Hattersley, writing in The Guardian describes the idea as a “confidence trick in a good cause”. The Guardian’s line, reflected in Hattersley’s column, and in other editorials is that the whole exercise is not really a conversation but more a monologue designed to persuade voters that New Labour is taking the country in the correct direction. “
Others, such as Johnathan Briggs argue that we should take the opportunity to engage with the project in the way Tony Blair intends
“the tone of all of this [criticism] is wrong! It should not be about what Labour has or has not done or about what it can or cannot do. It should be about how all of us can participate to improve things.”
In a sense this debate comes down to a question of credibility: some people ask whether somebody who revels in “having no reverse gear” (à la Thatcher) is really serious about consultation, or whether this just another patronising PR stunt
We would generally support the idea of an open and accessible consultation supported by online technology such as this, and indeed we launched a consultation Weblog in support of the Department of Health’s “Delivering Race Equality” initiative last month, which has proved very successful so far
The key features of the DRE consultation Weblog that make it stand out, in our view are
- it is honest about the problems we face rather than couching them in aspirational terms
- it is open for comments with post-facto moderation as a last resort
- it seeks structured feedback on specific aspects of the framework document
- it also acts as a centre for recruiting committed people to take the strategy forward
The DRE consultation process ends in January, so we shall study the full results at that time and feed back on lessons learned
In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how people engage with the Big Conversation, and also whether their input can be fed into the policy making process.
