#charter88 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #charter88, aggregated by home.social.
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For those who think a key element of improving the UK's politics is a written constitution, Andy Burnham has some good news.
He has expressed the view that changes he is making around Mayoralties & regional devolution in England, suggest the case for a formalised constitutional settlement are becoming stronger.
Of course this *isn't* a commitment to a constitutional convention & the writing of a (new) constitution but it *is* a change in the mood music.
#RuleOfLaw #politics #Charter88
h/t FT -
Ah, @ChrisMayLA6. I get that. The name #Charter88 is rarely mentioned. I have my own scars from similar fadings.
But political groups are usually transitory. Often at their best when they live fast and die young.
What matters to me is the fate of their ideas. #C88 achieved some solid wins (#FOI, #HRA), but its wider programme underpins most of liberal/left culture in the UK. The institutions are in trouble, but most progressive politics in the UK walks on C88 paths, even tho labels faded.
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@patrickhadfield @adrianfry @grayface_ghost
yes, that is the achilles heel of constitutionalism - when I was working for #Charter88, a common criticism from the floor of public meetings was for someone to stand-up and read from a constitution to general applause at its content/clauses... but then they would 'reveal' it was the constitution of the Soviet Union! - encapsulating the problem of constitutional words & different practice/enforcement
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@adrianfry @patrickhadfield @grayface_ghost
Yup, that was the #Charter88 position - and although they didn't achieve that, the logic remains apposite
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This was certainly part of the problem #Charter88 (who campiagned in the 1990s for PR among other constitutional changes) confronted when I worked for them
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For those who remember the constitutional pressure group #Charter88 (full disclosure - I worked for them fr a couple of years in the early 1990s), here's a contemporary campaign with a similar set of aims for us to get behind.... time for change is upon us (not the sort of change #RushiSunak conducted this morning, of course!)
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Gavin Esler poses the key Q. for contemporary #politics:
'We tolerate a sclerotic, antiquated democratic system allowing people you wouldn’t trust with your wallet or to babysit your children to rise through deceit and thrive through failure'... Why?
Interestingly among the reasons he highlights is the UK's lack of a written constitution; in the 1990s #Charter88 made this the centre of its campaign for reforming UK politics; perhaps a new campaign would (now) succeed?
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Yes, I agree & spent a couple of years in the early 1990s working to these ends with #Charter88... whose agenda for reform remains as timely now as it was thirty years ago
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Yup, agree with all that.... the polite (middle-class?) remonstrations of #Charter88 (for whom I worked foe a while) equally went nowhere, even if they were relatively well received by the political class at the time
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Yes I just saw that - there will be a lot of ex-#Charter88 supporters cheering from the sidelines!
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@philheppenstall @Dasy2k1 @gdunn39 @kennethb @epistatacadam
yes this was quite a popular position among #Charter88 staff & supporters as a sort of achievable end, and makes good sense
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@Dasy2k1 @gdunn39 @philheppenstall @kennethb @epistatacadam
I agree (although maybe not about the actual PR system), which is why I spent the best part of two years working for #Charter88 in the early 1990s towards that end... we failed;
more recent chances at change (most recently the LibDem-led referendum) also have not managed to produce a majority behind the transition....
so we are where we are & we very much need to #gettheToriesout! #GTTO
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Of course, this is exactly what #Charter88 was campaigning fr at the start of the 1990s.... I know, I worked for them; we had some buy in from across the political spectrum but enough to really make it happen - might be worth reviewing the C88 campaign for some things to do again & others which might need a different approach?
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This demand has a long history (as you will know), perhaps most obviously articulated in the early 1990s by #Charter88 (for whom I worked for a couple of years); their campaign(s) remain as relevant now as they were thirty years ago
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yes, as I've noted before, when i was working for constitutional reform with #Charter88 in the early 1990s, support for PR ebbed away as the poll ratings got better... I think you summary at the ned of the post is sad, but true
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Interestingly, back in my old #Charter88 days, this was a strategy that some activists favoured - especially the two-step approach - end FPTP & immediately call another PR election... are you getting good feedback, as back in the 1990s it was very much a minority position, subject to the usual caveat of trust that the second step would follow the first one!
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Having mentioned #Charter88 quiet a few times in the last few days... how about this for a bit of nostalgia?
Still a message with resonance!
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@essjaykeys @hollybrigstocke Well of course I agree; you may have picked up from my previous posts that I worked for #Charter88 in the early 199os, campaigning for PR & other constitutional changes... sadly the idiotic LibDems threw away a relatively good chance of achieving by a badly managed referendum (yet one more thing to blame Nick Clegg for in my view)
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@hollybrigstocke Well when I worked for #Charter88 in the early 1990s that was what we thought.... but rather inconveniently a common tactic among those who disagreed was to stand up in meetings & read what sounded like a highly reasonable section from a constitution to cheers & claps, only to then reveal it was from the constitution of the USSR & had done little to protect anyone....
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@hollybrigstocke I spent the early 1990s working for #Charter88 whose programme included #voting reform, a formalised written #constitution & a range of other associated policies of radical change.... the #LibDems blew their chance for shifting us to #proportionalrepresentation and the rest of Charer88's agenda hit a range of resistances that (sadly) very much remain in place... as @sjwrenlewis focusses on: first #reformtrhemedia!
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@KimSJ @edaross Back in my days working for #Charter88 one of the things some members wanted us to attempt was to make manifesto commitments legally enforceable... but of course all that would mean would be more easily words & vagueness... thus. I like your approach better, although I also think it would lead to an awful lot of vexatious litigation (and lawfare by the rich - see how the libel laws are currently used). But god thought experiment if nothing else on a cold morning!
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@PamCrossland @TheGuardian Completely agree; in a former life I worked for #Charter88 in the early 1990s when it was campaigning for PR (among other constitutional reforms) & I was livid that the #LibDems blew their chance on voting reform in the 2010s... some form of single transferrable vote would be a good move!