Liberator magazine has published in their latest edition an article I have written, looking again at whether we could shorten the party’s existing policy process, and the separate question of whether we would be wise to do so.
Having argued in the past for changes to our policy process (and won some as a result), I am not convinced that dramatically shortening the process in the way I outline would serve us well. But this kind of issue does seem to be coming under discussion again, so if we are going to talk about it then I thought it would be as well to give us some idea of the sorts of changes we would be talking about - so I’ve set them out.
There isn’t a facility to comment, on the link to the article where it is published, so please feel free to comment on its proposals here.
Even more than usual I would very much welcome views on what I’ve said. As I say, I’m not convinced, but I’d like to know what others think.
December 11th, 2007 at 18:25
I’d advocate dramatically shorter policy papers. It comes down to what you want in a policy paper - a full programme for government or policies that are emblematic of liberal principles.
It seems to me that the party has often damaged our ability to have a convincing narrative through having too many policies and not enough vision. It is very rare really that anyone but an obsessive remembers more than the key one or two policies in a policy paper. So why not dramatically shorten the length and time period for policy papers? If you were going to flesh out two key ideas on housing then a couple of thousand words is plenty.