Saturday saw Real Change: the open politics network go public in an excellent speech given by Helena Kennedy to the Compass conference. She appealed to conference-goers to get involved with and support Real Change, which aims to encourage a movement of engaged citizens whether Labour supporters or not. Citizens who organise together to advance the values of the public interest, civil society and reform through open discussion and debate. We can no longer rely on the parties and the political elite to deliver reform for us, she said. We must instead rely on ourselves.
The idea behind Real Change, which I am involved in along with Anthony Barnett, Clare Coatman, Rosemary Bechler and others, is to have one thousand meetings to feed into a major people's convention in the autumn to draw up a minimal programme to clean up and reform politics, allowing citizens to audit parties and candidates on their commitment to reform in the run up to the next election. Behind the minimal is an ambitious radicalism, by holding parliament to account it will challenge the basis of British sovereignty. Baroness Kennedy is Chair of the steering committee of Real Change due to launch on 6 July. We'll be posting more on Real Change on OurKingdom over the next few days and I'll post the video of her speech as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime you can check out the plan here, and comment and feedback on the Real Change website and best of all... join us.
(PS: read Stuart Weir's thoughts on the day with Compass here)
