Blogger Mark Reckons has interviewed Helena Kennedy, Chair of POWER2010, the new campaign for democratic reform which launches today. POWER2010 is a bottom-up campaign which asks members of the public to submit and vote on their ideas for fixing our broken politics - the most popular will become the Power2010 pledge to be used to persuade and audit candidates and parties at the next election.
I'm working full-time on the campaign and hope to be blogging regularly on its progress and the different ideas it generates here. In this interview Helena Kennedy explains to Mark how the campaign will work and how we hope it will succeed:
POWER2010 sounds like an interesting campaign for political obsessives like me but why do you think this will succeed in a way that previous ones perhaps haven't? For example as far as I can tell, despite all the hard work of you and your colleagues, almost none of the original Power Inquiry key recommendations have been implemented three and a half years on.
There have been, as you say, many campaigns over the past few decades which have tried - in various ways - to get democratic and constitutional reform realised. I have been involved with many of them. You are right - despite the welcome the Power Inquiry report received - little has changed. I think you have identified the problem very accurately. In the end we have been reliant on politicians - those with power to implement reforms - reforms which in most cases will see them losing Power. And - they just can't take that!
So despite fine words, things don't change. But I do believe that change can happen. Look at how the Scottish Parliament came about - we needed an Act of Parliament and for MPs to vote for change. But they were persuaded in favour of the Parliament in the end because of the campaign in Scotland which involved civil society and real people and over years persisted and changed the culture in which that conversation was taking place. We need to do the same now.
