Where next for the opposition? It isn’t just Labour that need to get their shit in order; the Lib Dems got it horribly wrong as well (although, to be clear, it is especially Labour). But they have gone from being on the back foot to not having any feet; their ability to fight back in their current state is severely limited.

Something new is needed. Something more radical than I think either party is necessarily comfortable with considering. A politics that’s not just trying to adapt to the 21st century, but that is really of it. A move away from campaigns that use the tools of social media and big data and rapid change, but that instead take on the structure and mentality of that world from the ground up.

Here. There. Everywhere.

From broad observation, there are three stages of development, a kind of systemic evolutionary path. They apply to large, complex systems and I think there’s probably a deep, possibly profoundly important reason for that. I don’t know what that reason is, by the way. I just suspect it to be the case.

But that this pathway exists is, I think, undeniable. First, things start off locally. Banks, energy generation, administration, healthcare… all of them grow from an immediate, case-by-case response to a need or set of conditions.

Over time, these individual instances of whatever it is will be centralised. Power isn’t from a generator in the basement, but a massive plant providing for hundreds of thousands of people. Banks aren’t local, independent vaults with some basic services. Software isn’t delivered directly from your laptop or desktop, but from a server somewhere.

Finally, these two approaches reach a sort of synthesis that combines the best of both: decentralisation. International banking, smart grid technology, cloud IT services. These are all examples of such end states. They represent networked, resilient systems that act on the distributed intelligence of the whole, but independently provide for local requirements.

A feature of such a system is that they’re perfect for continuous improvement. What in the IT world often gets referred to as DevOps – the integration of development activities with operational day-to-day process. You can improve small parts of the overall system to see rapid, incremental improvements that don’t disturb the day-to-day functional capacity for its users. They’re adaptive, benefit from intelligence-sharing across all stakeholders, and deliver targeted quick-win change.

And this, I believe, is where our politics needs to start taking its inspiration from. Not only does it better match the structure of our modern world – as above, so below and all that- but it is also a paradigm shift that allows the opposition to offer something genuinely different. And, just as importantly, allows them to defend against many of the weapons of our current political model.

It starts by reattaching politics to the activity of life.

The Politics of the Many and the Few

Our political system is not part of most people’s everyday life. There are a select few who live it day in, day out. They (in theory at least) understand the nuances, are constantly up-to-date with what is happening, and spend most of their waking hours doing it. They are – tellingly – called politicians.

Then there’s everybody else. There are varying degrees of interest, but by and large it is something that peaks in the run-up to elections and then fades out to background chatter. Which, if you think about it, is mental. Because politics – specifically, democracy – is supposed to be the expressed will of the the masses, the manifestation of some bodged, bickering, society-wide consciousness. Why do we only do it every few years as some sort of ideological Harvest Festival?

But for so long as it exists as the lived experience of only The Few, it does a disservice to The Many. Their interests are not properly understood. They are engaged with the process only on occasion. And, as has been demonstrated with unsettling alacrity, it means they can be easily shaped and manipulated. Because, at base level, it is much easier to lie to people who aren’t in the know. Doubly so if you are in the know.

So, we need to erase this divide. But what could such a re-integration of politics into everyday life look like?

This is something probably more easily done from the opposition benches. This is because it’s important that this starts off as a dynamic, grassroots system; not things traditionally associated with the lumbering machinery of central government. To be clear, that’s not a partisan statement; a governing party has a far great range of pressing considerations to deal with than the opposition does.

Service as a Service

Firstly, it needs to be of our third-stage of system development: decentralised. I don’t mean regional offices all implementing and communicating a central set of policies. I mean a network of points of interaction between a party and the people.

To achieve this, those interactions need to be of interest and value to the people the party wishes to engage. Not overtly political, just serving the communities within which they take place. Use party funding to drive projects that help those in the area; these might be as critical (and depressing) as food banks, or as mundane but useful as skills and education networking groups.

All these things take place as not-for-profit activities. They don’t push an agenda. In fact, they do quite the opposite; they’re open forums for understanding and learning about the needs of the community. And in working with those communities to meet those needs and overcome the obstacles along the way, a sense of partnership and trust is built. A common language develops, based around shared hopes and fears, with touchpoints in group activities that bridge the party-people (few-many) divide.

This brings it into the lived reality of communities in a way which shows intent, rather than merely says it’s something that might happen should one party hand over a lot of power. How much harder is it to fool people with fake news, spin, manipulating social media and all the other tools of a contemporary campaign, if those people know first-hand the claims aren’t true? They trust you, have worked with you, and you have given them something without having asked for anything in return.

This helps head off rampant lying as such an effective tool, undermining the attack campaigns that have reshaped our political climate. If you’re a part of something, you’re less likely to buy bullshit attempts to discredit it. If you’ve already seen the benefits of it – and they are benefits you helped to shape – then you’ll know it works in your favour.

Joining the dots

So if party affiliation is something based on engagement all the time, not just something you think about at election time, it becomes about actions over words. And this in turn makes it about ideas rather than slogans, substance rather than style. You head off your opponents and force them to respond in kind. In that sense, it’s a win-win approach that over time should drive policy towards reality, not some futile attempt at the other way around. Everything triangulates around the people and their problems.

But another issue we’ve seen over the years is how ideology fails to keep up with ever-changing reality. This is another point where the ongoing engagement links into my earlier mention of DevOps – continuous incremental improvement and change. You can avoid the situation Corbynism fell foul of, where policy-wonks and echo chambers prevent you from seeing how out of touch you’ve really become.

By doing this in a way that adds value even when you aren’t in power, your party actually helps implement its program of change anyway. Rather than governments shaping society and direction only changing with ruling party, parties shape society and governments arise out of this.

Incremental changes of this kind mean hot topics can be addressed quickly and effectively, all as part of making your case and becoming better attuned to the people you seek to serve – and eventually hope will elect you to government.

This takes the best of modern concepts such as crowd-sourced funding, community projects, DevOps/Continuous Improvement and so forth. It builds them into something akin to the old socialist idea of perpetual revolution, but for the digital age. Only it’s the party that’s in perpetual revolution – evolving alongside the electorate – and the people who benefit. This is pretty much the polar opposite of how the idea has worked in practice when tried before; political evolution that helps change the social landscape, rather than social revolutions that change the political landscape.

Meanwhile, the system is adaptive and demand-led. It uses the same principles as economic markets, the only difference being that it deals in a form of social capital a layer of abstraction away from money. But, crucially, not completely detached from it; changes within one market will be reflected in the other. Market changes feed back as intelligence to the party, rather than the party trying to understand, predict, and respond to varied and rapidly changing needs on a proscriptive basis.

In this way, we see a return of the political franchise to the people who should have owned it all along. The Many and the Few are working together, always current and able to bring about quick wins that steadily build the entire cultural and economic project into something that consistently gets better in the areas it needs to.

If it can be done in a way that is consistent and nonpartisan, it can achieve the kind of servant leadership that has long escaped our political classes. What that will mean, I can only guess at. But bringing this back to how Labour and the Lib Dems change course after their recent disastrous showings, I think it has to start with electoral reform. Without that, this model can never properly make the transition from out amongst the many into the world of the few. But if we can overcome that hurdle, we in theory have connected up development (parliamentary party politics and the activity of governing) with operations (the day-to-day life of those being governed).

So, don’t write detailed manifestos promising what you think people will need. Don’t test slogans against focus groups. Don’t stand on a platform. Bring a blank book and be prepared to learn. Listen to the slogans the people already know and are emotionally invested in. Replace the platform with a bridge and be ready to cross it with whoever is willing to build it with you.