The Plan

Tomorrow will see the launch of a new book called "The Plan: Twelve months to renew Britain" by Dan Hannan MEP and Douglas Carswell MP. The general thesis of the book is that in order to sort out at the country we do not need a government that promises to do the same sorts of things as now, but more competently. Instead, what is needed is a "revolution". According to Hannan this means,

a wholesale shift in power from the state to the citizen, from Whitehall to elected councillors, from Brussels to Westminster"

The book outlines what steps need to be taken by a Tory administration and has been written with the input from former parliamentary clerks and sets out the 30 - motions, orders in council or Bills - that would be needed to bring this agenda to fruition within just one year. Some of the ideas within the book include:

• Scrapping all MPs' expenses except those relating to running an office
• and travel from the constituency
• Selecting candidates through open primaries
• Local and national referendums
• "People's Bills", to be placed before Parliament if they attract a certain number of signatures
• Placing the police under locally elected Sheriffs, who would also set local sentencing guidelines
• Appointing heads of quangos, senior judges and ambassadors through open parliamentary hearings rather than prime ministerial patronage
• Devolving to English counties and cities all the powers which were devolved to Edinburgh under the 1998 Scotland Act
• Placing Social security, too, under local authorities
• Making councils self-financing by scrapping VAT and replacing it with a Local Sales Tax
• Allowing people to pay their contributions into personal healthcare accounts, with a mandatory insurance component
• Letting parents opt out of their Local Education Authority, carrying to any school the financial entitlement that would have been spent on their child
• Replacing EU membership with a Swiss-style bilateral free trade accord
• Requiring all foreign treaties to be re-ratified annually by Parliament
• Scrapping the Human Rights Act and guaranteeing parliamentary legislation against judicial activism
• A "Great Repeal Bill" to annul unnecessary and burdensome laws

The book also argues that the Internet has changed everything except politics. That political parties have tried to shoehorn the Internet as a tool into their traditional models rather than understanding how the Internet disintermediates poltics.

To put it starkly, the political party as an organism – a complex structure bringing together local branches, clubs, activists and sympathetic newspapers, professions, trade unions, churches and pressure groups – is dying. The modern political party will be protean: a series of ad hoc, issue-by-issue coalitions. To put it even more starkly, the distinction between political parties, newspapers and pressure groups is blurring.

The political party that realises and "gets" the above will be the one that starts to do so called "digital politics" in Britain correctly. You can buy the book here and I am not on commission or a retainer.