Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.
The future of Brussels as seen by the current Minister-President and someone often mentioned as his possible successor: international capital, knowledge city, university town. (Makes sense to me given its multiculti and crossroads nature) lecho.be/economie-polit…
Working and half-watching the #TourDeFrance2021 go through some of my favourite bits of France. A question from @dzyrl prompted me to stumble on this interesting article on diversity in road racing. bicycling.com/culture/a34850…
Thought provoking evening last night at the launch of @PEHumaine #PourUneEchelleHumaine (For a Human Scale) in Paris. It’s a collection of essays by a group of 89-generation (so, 30something) activists and politicians. 1/x
The core of their ideas is a three-point approach covering ecology, democratic renewal (this being France, they used the word republicanism) and altruism. They are also very post-party-politics, though you’ll guess from the topics that it’s broadly left/green. 2/
The three point programme I mostly like. It’s self-evident, to me at least, that without some kind of common programme around just transition, democracy and quality public services parties to the left of centre can’t win. 3/
I also liked that there was real practical experience in the room. Politicians and activists who had done things on estates, not just policy position taking. Respect for that. Politics is action on the ground, not rinsing your enemies on Twitter. 4/
Another strong point was their narrative about democratic renewal and citizenship, on which deputy mayor of @nantesfr, @3asseh has a great track record – again, concrete work not theory. 5/
I also liked the (overall) youth and energy of the group. Many of them will be in the next or next but one round of political leaders and they are definitely preparing now for the challenges of 2030/40. 6/
Naturally, I had some things I didn’t agree with. “Altruism” was I thought quite a weak word for the third element of the trio. It has echoes of 19th century liberalism to me, and made me think of Attlee’s description of charity as “a cold loveless thing” 7/
Why not “empathy” or “justice”? I get the aim – an effective state with a strong moral core focused on justice and good public services – and I understand the need to set this up outside a statist or technocratic argument, even in France. But “altruism” is surely just part of it
It was a much more geographically mixed group than a lot of Parisian policy events, but it was still extremely Franco-français. Europe as a geographical entity got a couple of mentions, Europe as a political entity was invisible. 9/
I understand why – and of course my work is in Brussels so I think about the European level more than most – BUT these battles have to be won everywhere or they will be lost everywhere and I would have liked to see an idea for how this spreads beyond France.
There will also be a challenge to make this approach additive not subtractive. At a time of culture wars (Zemmour, a probable far-right presidential candidate) politics is a conversation about splits and differences. Is eco-demo-justice strong enough to unite
Particularly when it comes to the trade offs on climate and public services between different groups? You can see the fault lines – urban/rural, climate/industrial policy – which can be waved away for now, but not for ever.
I also – and this is perhaps the fact that I am very very old – wondered about how their narrative of democratic renewal connected with their clear desire to stay away from party politics. Traditional parties and politicians were dunked on, as usual, but
I don’t know how you avoid engaging with them if you want to get things done, or hold power. A thousand community actions is good, but even a strong associative layer will struggle if it doesn’t have a method of taking elective political power.
Maybe elective politics will go away (I had a very enjoyable debate with @ClaudiaChwalisz about this over dinner after – I suspect she is right that it’s doomed in the medium term, but I don’t want to give up on parties quite yet)
However it’s not going anywhere for bid, and I wondered what this group hoped for. I didn’t know whether it was intended as a ginger group, to put the fear into centre-left pols and get them to be more radical. It certainly wasn’t an offer to the left parties
But more of a bracing challenge. A little bit of it felt quite En Marche-y – innovating a political party out of an intersection of political views that work. As we’ve seen, though, these personalised parties are mayflies and find it hard to implant locally
It would work for a national campaign but if they want a street-by-street remaking of French politics and policy it will only be through local action and local politics.
But these are generally quibbles. The eco-demo-justice trio is a strong start. I would personally have liked to hear more about power (power/agency and climate transition are all of politics in the next ten years, I think).
But I respect and admire the effort of putting this together, and there is a lot here to like. Keep an eye on what happens next with @PEHumaine and I commend it to my Brussels friends in @PES_PSE@GreensEFA.
Plus on a personal note it was a huge pleasure to be back at an in-person political event again. That’s the sort of échelle humaine everyone can get behind.
A few replies to this are « I don’t suppose Brexiters will mind being shut out of France » – well maybe not, some. But anyone who wants the UK back and playing a full role in Europe won’t fall for the trap of tarring all Brexiteers with that brush. twitter.com/Otto_English/s…
It is a trap, to believe that the charlatans in the political/media class and the barely sane ranters on here are the genuine voice of those who voted Leave. They are no more that than someone with a whole-body Thierry Henry tattoo is the voice of football fandom.
There is an addressable middle. The people who believed (as some of my Leave friends did) that nothing would really change and the NHS would get more money. Or that there would be more jobs, or national pride, without any costs to pay.
I don’t blame people much for thinking that, it was what a group of politicians were telling them and for many people one group of politicians is much the same as another. But now the challenge for British Europeans is to make those disappointed voters – and there are a lot –
connect their disappointment to British false promises not spiteful Europeans who hate British freedom. The majority of the print media will blame Europeans, some because they are proto-fascist by sympathy, others because it sells. The current government will
reinforce that, because it’s in their interest, and the current opposition won’t do anything about it, it seems. So the least we can do is not fall into the trap of claiming that Brexiteers want to ban travel to France. That sets up the maniacs as the mainstream. They aren’t.
There’s some absurdism and even dark humour in this piece but, behind it all, corrupted politicians stoking hate and fear for political gain. They are entirely unfit for public office. nytimes.com/2021/04/10/wor…
#bepol sidebar. The troubles of GLB have strong “Sideshow Bob standing on rakes” energy, but it’s interesting to me how such a self-consciously 21st-century leader is getting smacked in the head by Belgian insistence on collegiality.
There’s definitely a model where political parties are ephemeral things built around strong personalities (this is presumably the French model referred to by the unnamed third MR grandee). You see it in the UK as farce, but in PR systems it’s a real possibility.
But there’s also a wider and more associative model, which is the polar opposite – where one person with a taste for Twitter doesn’t rule the roost alone. What you lose in clarity of message you can gain in breadth of vision and length of connection, I would argue.
But it needs parties that can act in formation more than follow-my-leader, and 20+ years of consumerist politics don’t help.
Originally posted as a thread of 4 tweets on Twitter on 6 October 2020.View the original thread.
It goes without saying that the #ConventionCitoyenne is a great result from the perspective of deliberative democracy, and a lot of credit should go to @MPubliques and others for making it a reality. But…
What was interesting in Macron’s response to it was not so much the response itself (he disagreed with some things, agreed with most and made some announcements) but the commentary on Twitter.
(Twitter, you might say, is not all of politics, or even a representative sample – and you’re right. But it does drive a lot of opinion coverage and journalism, so in this context it’s interesting)
The comments were often positive about the convention members and process themselves (not always, a few talked about them being “crazy greens” or criticized them for refusing to put all their proposals to referendums).
The real hostility was reserved for Macron. Far-right shoutbot Eric Zemmour demanded “a citizen convention on immigration”, saying he’d be happy to chair it. Many pointed out that Macron disapproved of a dividend tax, others that he had accepted too many green recommendations.
It all felt quite … normal. That’s a good thing, in one way. Very few people were saying that this was an unjust or invalid way of creating policy recommendations. This kind of deliberative event feels like it is reaching the mainstream – the #DelibWave that the @OECDgov
has been talking about. But normal is also a bad thing, if the recommendations just become footballs for the same old political game. The Convention wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t easy to arrange. If it’s going to deliver value for the money and citizen time expended,
it’s going to need to be seen to deliver something that ordinary processes couldn’t. In one way it has – deeply deliberated proposals from citizens. But in some ways it hasn’t – the war horses of politics are lining up on one side or another, preparing for the same old battles.
This reaction shows that the political system – media, political commentators and politicians – are still squeezing deliberative processes into a representative frame. It will be interesting to see in 3 or 6 months whether the convention’s proposals are still seen as special.
If the current system doesn’t learn how to handle deliberation, we will always crash into the question of mandates. Macron today said deliberative democracy is a complement to representative democracy, which is true, but it doesn’t relieve the tension.
Would it have been right for the 150 citizens to be able to compel the executive elected by millions? If not, then is it only the process and their randomness that makes this better than a think tank report?
On the other hand, if the convention could have compelled, will any future exercise be so hemmed in that they can’t take any meaningful decisions? Models such as that in Ostbelgien can add themselves into representative structures, but it’s far
easier in a community of 70,000 than in a state the size of France. As I say, the Convention Citoyenne was definitely a milestone, but there is still a lot of road to travel.
« La popularité d’une figure comme celle du professeur Raoult est le symptôme d’une maladie chronique bien française, le malaise démocratique » — via @LaMatinale_Mlemonde.fr/idees/article/…
Poland’s Solidarity trade union endorses “worker-friendly president” Duda for reelection < so depressing for anyone who sees that logo as a symbol of freedom and hope. notesfrompoland.com/2020/06/25/pol…
Emmanuel Macron a “marqué sa préoccupation pour le faible taux de participation aux élections municipales”, qui n’est “pas une très bonne nouvelle”, a indiqué l’Elysée alors que l’abstention s’est élevée à env 60 % au second tour, dimanche. lemonde.fr/politique/live…
