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Simon Redfern
Tory cool. That's a phrase you don't often see. But when Wired covers the work of three serious backroom players at CCHQ there's no other word for it.
The facts of course tell a different story. Yes, Labour's Membersnet beat the Conservatives out of the gate in providing a toolkit for activists. Yes, Labour's phonebank has been up and running for yonks. But sometimes facts aren't the issue. The Conservatives, through the work of Rishi Saha, Craig Elder and Sam Coates, have captured the castle in terms of online tools for the election in no uncertain terms.
I'm not sure there are any votes in having a more slick website than the opposition (yet). But what Saha et al have achieved is a singular culture change at CCHQ which has far-reaching consequences. Wresting control of the website away from the press office, giving it life as a channel in its own right, were just the first steps. From there the party's website and the sister site, myconservatives.com, has started to inform debate, collect money and provide a backdrop to the all important blue thread in Tory policy: the post bureaucratic age.
When I saw Saha speak at a Public Services Trust roundtable recently I was struck by how a-political his style was. Many of his ideas, about using Government data to build communities of shared experience to cultivate human capital and more engaged citizens work across party lines. When he talks about the post bureaucratic age the content chimes almost exactly with David Miliband's buzz phrase 'double devolution'. The Co-operative Party claims the same space for mutualism.
Fundamentally it's about changing the transactional role of government to where it can enable people with shared views to come together and provide the tools and incentives to help new communities grow and flourish.
Harnessing the power of online communities to build civic activism and social organising is Saha's big idea. He's claimed it, and the mantle of cool that goes with it.
Posted by Simon Redfern
