An e mail comes winging in from Peter Hain telling me the Labour Party is going to open up and close the gap between people and politics.

This is good news that makes me feel optimistic albeit in a “fingers-crossed” kind of way.

After all, political parties that are crushed in the polls have a habit of promising to reform themselves by listening and learning from mistakes.

But, too often, little of substance changes.

Maybe it will be different this time. I hope so. Broon was a spectacularly dysfunctional Prime Minister, leading Labour to its second worst defeat since 1918.

The cascade of memoirs from Jonathan Powell’s “The New Machiavelli” to Alistair Darling’s “Back from the Brink” show how temperamentally unsuited he was for the top job.

As for Blair, he saw himself as a swashbuckling visionary, taking on and defeating his own Party. This had inevitable consequences.

Policy making within the Party withered. The Partnership in Power process, initially promising, was hijacked by the leadership and soon became a joke. Bizarre policies began to surface. I recall being told how casinos were to be the favoured instrument to regenerate run down industrial towns. Where on earth did that lunacy come from? I still don’t know.

Under both Blair and Broon, Labour’s years in power were disfigured by cronyism, cabals and patronage.

So the promise of new, open and democratic policy making is very appealing.

Here in Canada, the Liberal Party is now going through a similar process of critical re-examination following its crushing defeat in the May 2011 Federal Elections.

The Liberals like to see themselves in the sensible dead centre of Canadian politics (yawn!) but their assessment of defeat, set out in the long version of their Roadmap to Renewal document (attached), is brutally candid: 

The Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) faces an unprecedented challenge. Reduced to third party status in the House of Commons for the first time since Confederation (1867) with the support of fewer than 20% of those voting and with a shrunken caucus of just 34 elected Members of Parliament, it is no exaggeration to note that the very survival of LPC may be at stake. The basic question confronting the Party today is not whether it has the possibility to rebuild and renew itself for the 21^st century, but whether its leadership and membership can marshal the will and the energy to ensure that it does.

Like Britain’s Labour Party, it wants to set up a register of supporters who can vote in elections for the Party leader.

But that, of itself, will not be enough to restore its fortunes. If people are interested enough to lend their name to a political party (even in the diluted form of “supporter”) I suspect they will want to help shape its policies in some modest way or, at the very least, not be repelled by them.

The Canadian Liberals say they will “maintain a permanent virtual and real-time policy development process accessible to all Members and Supporters of the Party through its website”.  (a good idea).

But they go on to say the process will be managed by volunteer expert working groups “organized, maintained and supported” by the Party’s frontbench MPs (or caucus critics as they are known here).

With this set up, I’m not entirely sure who calls the shots in the event of a disagreement. I suspect it won’t be the volunteer experts.

In any event, if political parties are serious about giving their members a greater say, they should spell out what it means in practice.

People need to know where the policy levers are located and what happens when you pull them.

Frozen Pensions

The Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners tells me there are 12.5 million British state pensioners of whom just over one million live outside the UK.

Half of those living overseas get their UK pensions uprated annually while the other half don’t. 

And a hefty 98% of those who lose out live in Commonwealth countries such as Canada which is home to 155,450 of “frozen” pensioners.

The issue has been around for over fifty years but seems no nearer resolution. (see attachment)

It seems a tad unfair to me that UK pensioners living in the United States, Barbados, Jamaica, Turkey, Serbia (to name a few) enjoy pensions uprating but those in, say, Canada, Australia and New Zealand don’t.

I’ve just added my name an e petition demanding equal treatment for overseas pensioners although you’ve got to be a bit soft in the head to believe this kind of initiative will make any difference.

If Commonwealth leaders can agree to change the rules of succession to the throne - as happened in Perth last month – why can’t they summon up the energy to address the frozen pensions issue?

The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is well placed to start the ball rolling.

Attachments:

A greater say for all members.pdf	[ ]	92 Kb
Building a network of Labour supporters.pdf	[Labour Party. Building a network]	237 Kb
Frozen pensions.pdf	[House of Commons Library. Frozen Pensions]	221 Kb
Increasing and valuing our members.pdf	[Labour Party. Valuing our members]	566 Kb
Liberal Roadmap. Long version.pdf	[Canadian Liberals. Roadmap to Renewal]	674 Kb