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Brown wants party to take a leaf out of Obama's book
Paul Waugh12.03.09
The Labour party's traditional "command and control" structure could be torn up and replaced with a grass roots movement based on Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
In a move that could spark anger from trade union chiefs, Gordon Brown has given his tacit backing to plans to turn the party into a looser federation of supporters similar to the Democrats.
Mr Brown has penned a foreword to a new book which will later this month call for sweeping change to Labour's hierarchical structure, including allowing more dissent and removing "barriers to participation" to the YouTube generation of younger voters.
On his flight home from Washington last week, the Prime Minister wrote the introduction to the Fabian Society study titled The Change We Need: What Britain Can Learn From Obama's Victory.
The book - co-edited by Will Straw, son of Cabinet minister Jack Straw - proposes an end to Labour's tradition that only paid-up party members can be involved in campaigning.
Mr Straw said he wanted a "cultural glasnost within the Labour Party" that encourages rather than suppresses internal debate.
"Learning the lessons from Obama's victory isn't easy, but failing to do so could result in Labour becoming increasingly irrelevant to the ordinary lives of Brits," said Will Straw.
Party sources stress there is no formal backing for such radical reforms, but Mr Brown's foreword is sure to be seen as putting his personal stamp on a full debate on the issue.
During his run for President, Mr Obama generated an email list of 13 million supporters and raised most of this £500 million funds online. The campaign was driven by young people using Facebook and other "two-way" internet innovations.
Senior Labour officials have already held secret talks with David Plouffe and David Axelrod, the political strategists behind Mr Obama's victory.
Both have had extensive private meetings with David Muir, Downing Street's director of political strategy, at which Mr Axelrod and Mr Plouffe are said to have "opened the books" and promised to do what they can to assist Labour.
The Prime Minister is understood to have expressed admiration for the "people-powered politics" of Mr Obama's campaign, which he has compared to Labour's own origins as a "bottom-up" party built from friendly societies and unions.
One Labour source said: "Nearly 500 people went out to the United States to work for Obama. They have all come back enthused by the way the campaign trusted volunteers and voters as grown-ups."
Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabians, said: "This is one of the first substantive reports digging into the US campaign in order to ask how we can translate the lessons of the movement politics to the different political structures and cultures on this side of the Atlantic."
In a pamphlet late last year titled Yes We Can, Will Straw said: "Political parties have to follow Mr Obama's lead by trusting the YouTube generation to take control of their own role in the campaign."
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