Inside conference

Liverpool is lovely. The Labour Party should be planning another conference in Liverpool again, very soon. Everywhere people have been talking more about how welcoming, friendly and revitalising the city has been. It has even provided ample opportunities for delegates and members to escape politics for a little cultural respite.

That’s not to say that the mood amongst the crowd isn’t febrile. We’re only half way through this year’s conference but it is clear that people are chomping the bit to discuss and debate the issues. This afternoon’s speech from Ed Miliband therefore has a high conference threshold to reach.

The pre-briefing points to a leader’s speech of big themes and populist rhetoric, which should play fairly well to the TV masses. But Miliband will no doubt find a more challenging audience in the conference hall.

Just take the debate at this morning’s Young Fabian fringe. Politicians should not discount the appetite for discussing our “squeezed youth” agenda and the challenges facing the next generation, it is obviously huge when an 8am fringe leads to an almost full room.

And, importantly, people are not content with just listening, they want proper dialogue.

I’m not sure what Andy Slaughter or John Woodcock were expecting but they were soon faced with a full on and vibrant debate covering the full gamut of issues our Next Generation policy development group has been looking at.

What is clear is that Labour’s policy development process needs to be geared towards continual engagement with people on these issues, consciously reassessing whether their thinking answers the concerns and hopes of the people we hope policies will affect. As John Woodcock put it, moving beyond “cut and paste policy”.

Maybe that’s not where the leadership is just now but there’s a feeling they need to show they are on that journey. Despite the need for the big picture, which Miliband’s senior advisor Lord Wood made a cogent argument for at our Institute for Government event before conference, we know that the public also wants to be convinced that we can deliver. They also want to see a credible route for the high aspirations we are espousing. On everything – from our response to the Big Society, our ideas about mobilising communities and creating a living, breathing industrial base that can lead us to growth – people want to know how we might get there and what it will mean for them in practice.

That points to more incrementalist policies in some areas and more action from Labour-led local government.

Finally there is a sense that Government cannot do it all; while state-led policy is a necessity, the state needs to find its groove as a mobilising force for business, communities and ordinary people want to lead better lives for themselves and their families.

Vincenzo Rampulla is Officer without Portfolio for the Young Fabians.

Making better policy

If I asked you to name the most successful policies of the last 20 years which ones would make your list?

Building schools for the future?

Smoking Ban?

Devolution?

Certainly a characteristic of the thirteen years of the last Labour Government was the numerous eye-catching initiatives coming out of Government. But not all of them could be described as successes.

So what makes ‘good’, i.e. successful, policy? Many can talk about evidence-based policy and the  different theoretical models for policy making. Yet none of this talks about making successful policy, which is obviously more valuable.

Earlier this year the Institute for Government published research with members of the UK Political Studies Association into what they thought the most successful policy interventions since 1980 were. It offers a fascinating insight into what policy makers think successful policy looks like.

The minimum wage came out head and shoulders above other policies spanning the 30 years in question. Although respondents had different criteria for success; social impact, successful implementation and economic impact were identified as the three main criteria against which to judge policies. Unfortunately for politicians, media approval was seen as a poor example of success.

And that is the challenge facing a party looking to get into power. If the political challenge for the Left is to rejuvenate its relationship with the electorate then that has got to be on the basis of good policy. Crucially if not every good political idea makes for good policy then the question remains: how do we make better policy?

If Labour is to create a viable programme for Government by 2015 then the onus is on getting into good policy-making habits now.

This is where the Institute for Government’s work into making policy better should be explored. They organised a number of policy reunions to identify what challenges and barriers to successful policy making exist in Government. The result is seven building blocks of good policy that are worth reflecting on:

1. Clarity on goals
2. Open idea generation and robust use of evidence
3. Rigorous policy design
4. Responsive external engagement
5. Thorough appraisal of options
6. Clarity on role of central government and accountabilities
7. Mechanisms for feedback and evaluation

Though much of this seems obvious, the implications for the way Government and political parties look to generate policy are sizable. For instance the report argues for a more open policy making process which engages outsiders and experts earlier and more directly. The contrasts are easy to make.

More importantly it points to a non-silver bullet approach to policy-making. The report and the Institute’s blogs on policy-making are necessary reading for those interested in coming up with something more than just eye catching ideas.

And for Young Fabians looking to add and influence the policy making arena there are useful ideas here that need to digested, especially if we want our ideas to have a chance to become reality.

Vincenzo Rampulla is Officer Without Portfolio on the Young Fabian Executive.

• The Young Fabians and the Institute for Government event on Making Better Policy: The Challenges of Opposition takes place on the 15 September in London. More details can be found here.
• The event will be webcast live from 6pm on the Young Fabians website: here

Why we can’t turn into ‘part-time Britain’

Young people need to show they care about the type of jobs that are being created and not just the numbers.

Yesterday’s labour market figures are truly depressing. 38,000 more people unemployed than the previous quarter, 2.49 million people without work.  It puts Eric Pickles’ trumpeting of the Government Enterprise Zones, with the promise of 30,000 jobs by 2015, into perspective.

As David Blanchflower predicted last month, the Prime Minster is going to have to do some nifty footwork given his assertion that unemployment will fall each year this Parliament; both the PM and the Chancellor have been given their come-uppance.

But policy makers and politicians need to be mindful of the longer term social effects of this economic pain. George Eaton has pointed out the five worrying trends in the published figures but there are two areas Young Fabians should be especially concerned about:

1) Youth unemployment continues to rise and it is lasting longer –

One in five economically active 16-24 year olds are not working. A massive 39 per cent of have been unemployed for over 12 months (up 2.5 percentage points on last year) and 95,000 have been waiting over two years for a job.

That means more  young people starting life out on benefits which is precisely what the Government says it doesn’t want.

More worryingly, the longer young people stay out of the workplace the deeper and longer-lasting the social and economic consequences (David Blanchflower lists 10 reasons why politicians should care).

So the question is: how is the Chancellor’s Office of Budget Responsibility going to cost these long-term social and economic effects? And what is this going to cost us in the long run?

2) There’s a deepening dependence on part-time and temporary work –

Both the number of people in temporary and part-time work are up (1.2 and 0.1 percentage points this quarter respectfully).

But it is the number who fall into this type of work because they couldn’t find permanent or full-time work that is most worrying: a 5.1 percentage point increase and a 7 percentage point increase respectfully.

Let’s not pretend a job is a job is a job. The Government should recognise the negative and perverse effects of long-term involuntary involvement in part-time and temporary employment. It can be a trap as well as a short-term solution.

If young people are starting their careers here it needs to be out of choice not desperation. And there needs to be a clear route into permanent, full-time work.

It is easy to just see numbers when we talk about jobs and the economy. Instead young people need to start championing the kind of job creation they want to see, not just what politicians think they can make do with.

Vincenzo Rampulla is Officer without Portfolio on the Young Fabian Executive.

What we need are “thinkers” and “do-ers”

On Tuesday last week the Young Fabians gathered in Parliament for our  ’new members reception’.  Membership has grown impressively this year but this year that we decided to take make this year’s event completely user friendly and help new members quickly convert membership into active involvement.

Hosted by Shadow Small Business Minister, Chuka Ummuna MP, and supported by A4e, our event was a chance for new members (as well as their friends) to mingle with Labour MPs and find out about getting involved with the Young Fabians’ current work.

That is why we said the reception was for “Thinkers and Do-ers”. The theme was deliberate.

Fabians and Young Fabians always hear the criticism that they are more focused on ‘pamphlet Labour’ than ‘leaflet Labour’. We don’t challenge that view enough. But there is an important challenge there too. The Labour movement, now more than ever, faces a generation that wants the opportunity to be both – thinkers and do-ers.

The rise of community blogs like Labourlist, Left Foot Forward, and our own Young Fabian Blog have shown just how broad the appetite for public policy discussion and debate is. Yet turning policy into practice, at every level finding ways to put ideas into effect, is a bigger challenge that needs tackling.

So new members who came to our reception came ready not just to hear about the events they can attend in the coming months, but to sign up to be involved in the various work that was showcased in the room:

• Our Health, Science and Society work involving our Technology and Society Network;
• Our Economy and Employment policy develop group and our Future of Finance Network;
• Our International policy work and our Middle East Programme;
• Our work looking at issues facing the Next Generation;
• Our developing work with schools;  and
• Ways to involve more members in our Anticipations magazine and this blog.

Many of these are already member-led initiatives and we’re eager to see that grow and develop.

Importantly new members also brought with them a flood of exciting new ideas which we should help new members realise in the coming months.

Special thanks should go to Young Fabians member Mark Hornsey for all his help in putting together the reception this year.

Vincenzo Rampulla is Executive Officer without Portfolio on the Young Fabian Executive.

• If you have ideas, want more information or want to get involved in any of the above then please get in touch or use the comment section below.

Can charities learn from online innovation when it comes to raising money?

We’ve become so used to charities being funded through Government grants that we are in danger, now the Government has closed off streams of funding, of ignoring their demise. If we value these organisations and the work they do then perhaps we need to look at innovative ways of funding them?

Last month the Poppy Project, a charity which pioneered  specialist support services for the victims of sex trafficking, found out that the Government was immediately cutting its funding. It is now faced with a need of £450,000 in donations by the end of June to continue. TimeBank, on the face of it an excellent example of David Cameron’s vision of the Big Society, faced a similar situation when it found the Government cutting a quarter of its funding by refusing a £500k Office of Civil Society grant.

With hundreds of charities facing the same grim reality it is becoming increasingly important for charities to find better ways of raising money and showing that they are valuable enough to merit attention. Big Society in Austerity Britain seems to mean a begging-bowl dependent Third Sector.

The obvious stumbling block is that in most cases charities aren’t able to ‘sell’ what they do to the people who benefit from what they do – frequently their ‘customers’ have no hope of affording these services. This either leaves charities having to cultivate philanthropic supporters with deep pockets (who are few and far between… The most wealthy 10% account for about half of all individual giving in the USA; in Britain it is only a fifth) or fundraising through the public. [There's an interesting table, table 4 on page 9, of this Charity Commission report which looks at just how important different forms of funding are to different sized charities.]

Justgiving (though it is worth mentioning that Virgin Money Giving doesn’t take a commission) is a typical experience for those seeking to raise or donate to charity. People tend to ask their friends and associates to pledge money to their favourite charity in return for them doing something – running some sort of race, jumping out of an aeroplane or dyeing their body magenta. Hopefully people realise their fundraising targets and charities are suitably grateful. But, a controversial view perhaps,  are we learning to care less about the charities and their work, and focus more on the fun and exciting challenges we get to take part in to support them?

But is there a better way to achieve the same aim of raising money and raise interest in charity projects?

I happened to read this article from the Harvard Business Review on pay-what-you-want experiments online, some people will remember the less successful experiments:

• Steven King’s aborted attempt to get people to pay for his book, The Plant, chapter by chapter – it was never finished; and
• Radiohead fans will remember the band’s attempt at ‘honesty box’ music distribution with the digital album In Rainbows – people paid on average £2.60 per album.

Of course the failures are easier to remember than the successes,  but Prof Gans highlighting of Kickstarter should make UK charities think seriously about what they can learn from online innovations in money raising.  These tech start ups are embracing the sort of democratic low-value, large-base crowd source fundraising that political campaigning, like Obama’s 2008 campaign, has taken on and showing a more business/value ingenuity.

Crucially they don’t depend on Mr Cameron’s largesse.

Is Maurice Glasman more radical than the nation’s youth?

God knows if the House of Lords is ready for Dr Maurice Glasman. The newly-ennobled community organiser/academic/guru left the Fabian Conference on Saturday entertained by his brilliance and agitated by his bluntness in equal measure. None more so than the Young Fabians who had invited him to be part of the lunchtime panel discussion looking at the “Squeezed Youth”.

The clunkiness of the term mirrors the fact that 11 million-plus 15-30 year olds in the UK don’t fit into any neat political box. So whilst the left’s political narrative focuses on the vague, yet compelling idea of the “squeezed middle”, it is the ‘lost generation’ being squeezed the hardest and left with the long-term bill for the future.

Take youth unemployment. According to the Centre of Economic and Social Inclusion, long-term youth unemployment grew by 22,000 last month and now stands 4.5 per cent. That is more than the adult figure.

Yet the Future Jobs Fund has been cut with no substitute being proposed. In housing, too, the Government will cut housing benefit for single young people under 35 by an extra £215 million each year, entitling them to only shared accommodation – because young people are expected to live in shared accommodation.

The idea was simple: ask young people to what they they feel ‘squeezed’ about and let them use their own voice. Lo-fi video-editing aside, the voices in the video were honest and real:

YouTube Direkt

Jobs, housing, transport, workplace representation – the video responses show young people care deeply about more things than they get credit for. Young people like 19-year-old Richard Serunjogi are not interested in just being limited to talking about ‘youth issues’. On Saturday, his emphasis was that young people have a stake in all the decisions being taken to shape Britain’s future, since that future is the one young people will eventually be responsible for.

So the lunchtime session at the conference was billed as exploring how Labour can reconnect with the young people behind these voices.

That was until Dr Glasman turned up. The largest round of applause during the session followed Glasman’s appeal against the “dispiriting, meaningless, interminable atmosphere” that follows many Labour party meetings, like the one he was currently sitting in. He remarked that the panel discussion managed to invoke old memories of a young Maurice-the-academic attending a conference in the Soviet Union. Brutally this was exactly the kind of meeting that community organising tells you not to have.

The worst thing: Maurice has a point.

As Jessica Studdert, who wrote a chapter on Labour party reform in last year’s Young Fabian pamphlet ‘The New Generation’, acknowledged engagement in Labour was often “in spite of, not because of” the way many local Labour parties involve young people. Yet new MPs, like Rushanara Ali, already know the importance of a more open engagement with young people. She emphasised that Labour MPs and the party as a whole needs to change the way it tries to interact with young people.

So young people leaving that session were left pondering: how did we allow ourselves to become less radical than Maurice?

This post was originally posted at Leftfootforward.

Ed, take your time and don’t be hurried

PMQs is a pantomime but it’s one that needs to be entertaining for the right reasons.

With poll results coming in showing Labour on 40 per cent and, amongst students, 42 per cent the question has to be weather difficult PMQ episodes like today’s really matter? Some say yes, some say no. It is no good claiming piously that PMQs is a Westminster oddity that plays badly to the country – we all know it is one of the worst public excesses Westminster allows itself. Nor is it a case of simply taking it on the chin as a ‘bad week’ which won’t happen again. Irrespective of your view, a British political leader needs to show their ability to command PMQs.

Sweden’s engaged, it can be won back again

Strong political engagement means that the Social Democrats are well placed to lead a fight back according to Young Fabian member Joseph Ruuso / @jrusso84.

The result of the Swedish General election and with it the election of the far right into the Riksdag with 20 seats has cast a dark cloud over European Politics. This cloud grew even darker yesterday as it became clear that the far right Dutch PVV, led by Geert Wilders would be asked to support the Dutch coalition after elections there.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. The Young Fabians & Young Labour ran a trip to Sweden for their General Election. What was clear to us was just how much more politically engaged the general population were compared to here in the UK. For example the Swedish Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna)have over 100,000 members in a country of 10 million people. The UK Labour party has around 180,000 members in a country of 60 million people.

There is no single reason for this greater level of political engagement that we can simply emulate to reinvigorate British politics, rather there are structural and cultural processes at work. The electoral system in Sweden is a form of proportional representation and while we’re all familiar with the pitfalls of PR it does result in an every vote matters campaign. With no such thing as safe seats, and vast numbers of activists the political process is constantly invigorated and campaigning is not highly focused in a small number of key seats.

The recording of voter ID is not allowed in Sweden and door knocking is a relatively new political campaigning tactic. As you can imagine with no voter ID information the approach becomes very broad brush. Campaigning also takes place where people congregate. Town squares, railway stations and busy public places become a colourful election fest. A carnival atmosphere takes hold with good humour all round.

All this brings the political process to the people, not some people in key seats but all citizens. The Swedes therefore are engaged. Their vote matters, state funding of parties mean they get manifestos and quality literature from all sides. The process is not remote and with the absence of the Murdoch press the media reports events rather than driving them.

In analysis of the Swedish Social Democratic model a great deal of importance is often placed on the Swedish protestant work ethic as a factor in their success and this also begets a sense of civic duty where people really do believe that voting is an important duty. Combined with political engagement this results in 80% of Swedes voting in General Elections which puts the UK to shame.

So although the results in Sweden were poor to say the least, the Social Democrats are in a good position on the ground to lead a European Social Democratic resurgence. Their electoral system means that the elite cannot simply sneer at the far right but rather will have to confront their narrative in order to regain power.

Economic crisis has historically always led to a surge in right wing support. Over the last hundred years however Social Democracy has transformed Sweden from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest. Surely therefore the Swedish democrats are in an enviable position when it comes to creating a narrative to oppose the anti-immigration, anti-islamic, welfare and public service slashing right wing narrative of the moment. Hopefully this will be a narrative that can be easily exported to their sister socialist parties including the Labour Party here in the UK ensuring that those dark clouds are quickly dissipated.

Organising for success

Post-conference and with a new leader, Labour has a chance to start building. But it must seize the opportunity, bring together what has already been achieved and learn from choices made by others.

Back in 2008 when the Young Fabians came back from Ohio, having played our part in getting Barack Obama elected as President of the United States of America, our hopes were high that the same scale of political engagement we had seen in the US could be generated in the UK. Through outlets like the Young Fabians events, Progress-organised CLP meetings and on blogs like Labourlist, we actively sought to spread the word about what we had seen and what could be achieved.

Lib Dem conference and Coalition Government: who’s dragging who round the circus?

Years of ignoring the Lib Dems’ conferences are at an end, the Left should be careful to read the signs in Liverpool and the public’s reaction closely.

By the time you read this Nick Clegg will have made his pitch to the Liberal Democrat faithful that their Coalition with the Conservatives is “the right government for right now”. With the polls where they are, this message is going to be a tough sell and whether it convinces either his party’s faithful or the public is something only time will tell.

Poor Nick’s got a difficult balancing act: reaching out to the public without completely trampling over his party. Clegg has to convince his party that that he hasn’t gone native in Mr Cameron’s company.

Many will have thought that Coalition Government would be about Conservatives instigating policies and Liberal Democrats holding back the nastier Tory tendencies but the reality is proving more complex.

Over the weekend senior Liberal Democrat figures were actively trying to paint their party’s role in Government, behind closed doors at least, as being about ensuring the Lib Dem’s distinctive signature on every policy this Government puts through. On the BBC this weekend Simon Hughes was keen to make sure people understood that “ …there are lots of times when Nick will say ‘No, not now, or not this way’…or they’ll [Lib Dem ministers] be saying we need to go further, faster or differently”. I’m not sure whose fears that is supposed to allay. Its cold comfort for party members already uncomfortable on a whole raft of issues, already the word ‘dictatorship’ is being bandied around by the grassroots.

When you add public opinion that they don’t like large strands of Government policy, the question emerges: is it Cameron’s lot to blame or Clegg’s?

So far the Conservatives seem to be happy to acquiesce Clegg’s political muscle flexing but the future post-conference, especially the post-coalition agreement, looks stormier than ever. Already Saint Vince’s comments on the migrant cap have put him at odds with Teresa May, whilst Evan Harris has decided to put some distance between the ‘progressive wing’ of the Lib Dems and Clegg (though that distinction should probably have been made clearer to Lib Dem voters).

The Lib Dems are now tarred with very cut, every policy, and all the rhetoric of this Coalition Government. Why shouldn’t Labour cover them with feathers call them what they seem to be?

This puts a little pressure on Labour as it journeys up to Manchester. Thousands of new Labour members are actually Lib Dem voters angry at being sold a duff political project and by the end of this conference there are likely to be many more of them ready to  follow their lead.

But it is a very different scenario if uneasy Lib Dems MPs and councillors are, after a week in Liverpool, pushed/shoved/encouraged to search for a more comfortable political home.  What will Labour be ready, or able, to offer them?