Agreeing with James Graham

Having spent the last few days away at ELDR in Berlin - I have been catching up with the blogs and have found myself agreeing with James Graham (shock horror!) on a couple of points.

One is the comment he made in relation to the last general election campaign........"We spent so much time trying to widen our appeal in so many different directions that no-one knew what we were for." He also observed that our 10 point plan, and failure to link it with our underpinning philosophy gained us voters but not supporters. Absolutely!!!!

This is an issue close to my heart, we are a small party, we have to shout to get heard, we have to be fleeter of foot than the other two elephantine (apologies Millennium!) parties. So this constant idea of widening our base is totally misjudged.

As a student I spent many hours playing the game Risk. For those not familiar with this board game, the plan is to take over the world. Those who win tend to be those who consolidate their forces into defendable territories and then move out from there. A scattergun approach usually ends up with disaster......wipeout! We must take a truly radical approach that is prepared to sacrifice some ground (in hard to hold areas) for taking defendable and winnable ground.

So, I would like to see us lift our eyes from the minutiae and start considering the big picture.........yes that must link to FREE FAIR and GREEN - so long as we are clear how our definitions differ from the other parties who would also no doubt espouse freedom, fairness and greenness in their own way, but what about really coalescing around what I believe we can all aspire to, regardless or our party "wing", our stated ambition, that no one should be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.