No brimming at the Fabians

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Have just returned from an afternoon at the Fabian 'Democracy Day' with Guy Aitchison who'll come in with his view. Martin Bright himself chaired the final Question Time session having plugged it in his Statesman column which I queried for its celebration of the left's new thinking welcoming Brown's premiership. About 120 people were remaining from the 200 plus who registered. We listened to Hazel Blears MP, Shami Chakrabarti, Simon Hughs MP and Gerry Stoker. There was no evidence of new thinking or, more important, energy and hunger. There was some good discussion about the need for electoral reform, as Gerry put it in some parts of the UK in 2005 you might not even have known that an election was taking place at all: the concentration on the marginal constituencies means that elections have ceased to be a "universal" event for the population as a whole. There was also some real passion and evidence about the need for very much better representation of ethnic communities in local and national politics. But... imagine that things were the other way round and the Tories were in power with a clear majority of English seats despite Labour winning an absolute majority of votes in England in the last election - the passion and anger about the sheer unfairness of the system would have been high indeed. The national question would have been hotly debated too, instead today it was not mentioned. ID cards? Citizens Juries? How to replace the Lords? A referendum on European? None of the above stirred any passion or debate. It was a sedated gathering, if not totally anesthetised thanks to Shami and Simon, neither Labour members of course. Its not that any of the above represent new thinking. Even old-fashioned democratic radicalism was deflated. I'm told that Ed Milliband spoke well when he opened the event, with a call to reach out and involve etc.