Según David Cameron, lider Torie, los días de la política de "arriba hacia abajo" están en retirada. La emergencia de una ciudadanía cada vez más reflexiva, como el fenómeno web 2.0 revela, está movilizando a la clase política a comprender y reaccionar a esta nueva lógica. Y los conservadores están intentandolo seriamente.
Stand up, speak up es una apuesta a conversar sobre las propuesta de política pública de los Tories con la ciudadanía en UK. Utilizando internet como plataforma, cualquier sujeto interesado podrá votar y comentar una seríe de documentos emitidos por los Policy Groups del partido conservador. El objetivo final es consensuar la opinión de los participantes con la visión de los líderes del partido y emitir el Manifiesto del partido Conservador para las elecciones generales del 2009.
Todo esto, en el marco del proyecto político liderado por Cameron: más verde, más local, más pro familia; menos arrogante respecto a lo que los políticos son capaces de hacer, y más optimistas respecto a los resultados que se puede alcanzar con el trabajo de todos. Todo este pensamiento esta fundado en el principio de la responsabilidad social, en claro contraste del sistema de control estatal del Laborismo.
Aquí un video con el lanzamiento de la campaña y la columna completa de Cameron publicada en el diario The Telegraph.
Stand up, speak up: shaping Tory policy
By David Cameron
15/07/2007
The Telegraph
British politics is in deep trouble. Not because of the precise policies that are being adopted - though I could say plenty about that, too. The fundamental problem is the way in which those policies are decided, debated and implemented.
In a recent Home Office survey, more than two thirds of people said they felt they had no power over the decisions that affected their lives. This is a tragedy for the country that brought democracy to much of the world. How has it happened?
The long battle for full democracy, finally achieved in Britain in 1928, is now a distant memory. We take the vote for granted. And at the same time, the 20th century also saw a counter-trend in social policy. There was a centralisation of power in Whitehall, and a consequent "de-democratisation" of public institutions.
Schools and hospitals, councils and the police, planning decisions and public spending have all gradually lost their connection with the local people they are supposed to serve.
Accountability is increasingly upwards - to ministers, civil servants and regional quangos - rather than downwards and outwards to the public.
I passionately believe we need to localise power, as recommended by the Direct Democracy movement of Conservative activists and MPs from the 2005 intake whose work regularly appears in The Daily Telegraph. We need less national policy and more local policy.
But I also want to go further. What national policy there is should also be subject to direct democracy.
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The long years of centralisation have resulted in what Ferdinand Mount, a member of my party's Democracy Taskforce, once called "the thinning of the constitution".
Power resides solely in a parliamentary majority, whipped through by the governing party; democracy merely means a visit to the ballot box every four or five years.
I want democracy to mean far more than this. People should have the right to have their say, to make their wishes felt, far more frequently and far more openly. Rather than simply putting a secret X in a voting booth alongside the name of the person you hope to represent you, I want people to be standing up and speaking up themselves.
That is the inspiration behind the campaign we are launching today. Over the coming weeks the Policy Review groups I set up 18 months ago - six main Policy Groups and more than 20 taskforces - will be presenting their final reports.
We are not automatically accepting every recommendation in the Policy Review reports. There will be some proposals we do not agree with. In some areas, hard choices will have to be made between competing priorities. And, of course, no policies will be adopted until they have been properly costed by the shadow chancellor, George Osborne.
But the most important part of the process will be genuine public consultation. I want everyone in the country who has an interest in politics to get involved in debating these reports, both as individuals and as members of particular communities.
That's why I'm pleased to be launching this campaign with the Telegraph. The website feature My Telegraph creates a personalised paper for each reader, including the power to write your own blog, within the context of the general Telegraph product. It reflects the notion of "our society, your life" that I spoke about a few weeks ago: individual freedom in a social context. That is modern Conservatism.
Many politicians, not least the new Prime Minister, are talking about deepening and widening democracy, opening up the debate, giving people more power over politics. With Stand Up Speak Up, the Conservative Party is the only party that is making this rhetoric real. We want to involve the British people directly in the writing of the next Conservative manifesto.
Of course, politicians have a responsibility to give a lead. We have set out a clear direction for our country: more green, more local, more family-friendly; less arrogant about what politicians can do on their own, and more optimistic about what we can achieve if we all work together. All our thinking is founded on the principle of social responsibility, in contrast to Labour's state control.
But this principle itself requires us to be open about how we make detailed policy. Conservatism means practical, grass-roots common sense. We believe that the public are a better think-tank than a closed circle of experts.
That's why it matters so much to me that we ask for the public's views in helping to shape our manifesto. The first full report, from Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Policy Group, was published last week. That is now available at www.conservatives.com and you are invited to vote on specific recommendations in the report, to make detailed comments and get involved in the online discussion.
For instance, what is the best way for us to support families with young children?
Do you think drug addicts should be offered methadone, or helped to get clean altogether?
What should we do with children whose bad behaviour means they simply cannot be taught in mainstream schools?
These are questions our country urgently needs the answers to. And everyone has a contribution to make - whether amateur or expert, your view matters. If you are a professional working in the relevant field, or if you simply care passionately about the future of our country, please let us know what you think.
The ideas that emerge from the debate will be fed back into the process - giving people a real opportunity to put forward proposals to the party. The shadow cabinet will review the conclusions of these debates and they will inform the preparation of our next manifesto.
In internet circles people talk of "Web 2.0". The first generation of websites simply conveyed information to the public. The new generation is interactive - it allows the public to create the website's content themselves.
Wikipedia, MySpace and Facebook are the leaders of this new field. To me they provide conclusive evidence that the public is proactive rather than passive. People want to be participants, not just spectators.
I believe a similar revolution is coming in politics. The days of top-down, we-know-best politics, delivered to a passive public, are coming to an end. Instead, we want a politics that is bottom-up and open - driven by the passions and priorities of people themselves.
I look forward to hearing from you.
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