We have lost one of the political greats today.

We mustn’t remember Michael Foot for his leadership of the Labour Party.  He was, in so many ways, ill-suited to the demands of leading a modern political party.  But the fact is that the Labour Party in the early 1980s was verging on being unleadable and Michael Foot did a tremendous job at keeping his party ‘in the game’.  Instead, we should remember Foot for his radicalism, his passion, his oratory and his love of country and Parliament.

I had the good fortune to meet Michael Foot a few times.  He was a thoroughly decent, honourable man – happy to spend a few minutes talking about literary figures, politics and memories of the likes of Nye Bevan and other massive post war figures.

He was undoubtedly one of the finest orators of the post war years.  Listen to his speech against the Common Market in 1972, or his speech during the wind-up of the No Confidence motion in 1979, or his famous speech about the conjurer’s watch when he was gently mocking Keith Joseph in the early 1980s.  The oratory is spellbinding, the passion is clear and the humour is brilliant.  I saw Michael Foot speak a few times.  Although his powers were clearly deserting him – it was still clear that we were in the presence of one of the greats of oratory.

Foot also seemed to represent a whole tradition of romantic radicalism.  His radicalism was firmly rooted in a long British tradition – that of Swift, Hazlitt, the Levellers, the Chartists and Byron.  Whatever you might think of his politics, it is desperately sad that this great tradition in British politics seems to have died with him.  He is the last of the great links with the anti Fascist and anti appeasement movements of the 1930s.  The last of the great links with the passion of the Bevanites in the 1950s.

Although you might disagree with his political means, it is hard to dispute the passion with which he fought for the noble ends of a fairer society, a more equal society and a more just society.  He felt that people involved in politics should be in politics to help those “who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves.”  Like many on the Tory side, he felt that the poverty and unemployment of the pre war period should never be repeated.

He was by no means a narrow political tribalist.  This was the man who named his dog ‘Dizzy’.  He understood that there was a radical tradition in the Conservative movement as well – although he clearly did not sympathise with it.  His essay about Disraeli in ‘Debts and Honours’ illustrates Disraeli’s importance to radicalism as much as almost anything else ever written about the greatest Conservative.

Above all, and little remarked, in today’s tributes he was a great House of Commons man.  Enoch Powell called Foot the greatest Parliamentarian he had ever seen.  Michael Foot understood that the greatness of this country lies in the people and in the Commons.  His stances on so many issues (the Common Market, the House of Lords, Select Committees) were formed by the fact that he believed, with the flourish of a true romantic, that the House of Commons was the beating heart of the nation.  He believed that the Commons should be strong and should hold Government to account.  Doubtless, he was saddened by the emasculation of the Chamber in recent years and the great decline in its reputation last year.

Michael Foot will live on with his tremendous speeches and his mighty literary canon (his biography of Bevan is tremendous, as are both Debts of Honour and Loyalists and Loners.)  He was deeply unusual amongst party leaders and amongst senior politicians in being so intellectual and so literary.

British politics is lucky to have been blessed with Michael Foot’s considerable talents.  We will never see his like again.

So the British version of the ‘Tea Party’ movement was apparently launched in Brighton today.  Seemingly, most of that delightful seaside resort responded with indifference at this apparently ‘historic’ event.  Personally, I’m pretty alarmed that the most crankish part of an increasingly crankish Republican Party (see my post here about the rightward drift of an already right wing GOP) seems to want to replicate itself over here.  The last thing we need is a British version of the tea party movement.

The first reason I don’t like this idea is that it is an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction from the election campaign to come.  While we should be resolutely and absolutely focused on the election, some members of the Party  seem to think that their time is better spent on British ‘tea parties’.  It seems like a very curious sense of priorities on the part of the ‘tea party’ organisers to me.

Secondly, the entire ‘tea party’ movement in the States is driven by a near hysterical anti Government agenda.  There is no coherent theory of Government in the tea party movement.  There is no acceptance that Government is necessary and can be a force for good.  The American tea party movement is driven by a divisive, shrill, simplistic view of politics that is driving moderate Republicans like Charlie Crist out of the GOP.  This is just the kind of politics we do not need in the UK.

Thirdly, look at the nature of the tea party movement in the US.  They are driven by the hysterical and frankly at times delusional agenda of Fox News presenters like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, as well as various right wing shock-jocks.  The Times talks of a “dark underbelly” at the heart of the tea party movement, crystallised by the utterly offensive speech by Tom Tancredo at the start of the tea party convention in Nashville last month.  Conservative  journalist Jonathan Kay turned up at the tea party convention and was shocked by the “toxic fantasies being spewed from the podium”, including the thoroughly horrific and offensive ‘birther’ movement, which was well represented at the convention.

Kay argued that the US tea party is “dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality.”  Of course, any movement that looks to Sarah Palin as a potential President surely fits the definition of being “dangerously detached from reality.”

Fox News, Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh et al can keep their right wing conspiracy theories.  The tea party movement is something that British politics can absolutely do without.

James Purnell’s announcement last week that he is stepping down from Parliament is a great shame to anybody who wants politics to achieve progressive ends.  I have written before about how Purnell underestimates the ideas put forward as part of the ‘progressive Conservative’ umbrella.   Having said that, his contributions, particularly since leaving the Cabinet, have been genuinely thought provoking and pretty compelling.  Read last week’s speech at the LSE as an example and compare it with Miliband’s particularly substance light Demos speech yesterday.

Despite the protestations of the likes of Liberal Conspiracy (and quite a few left wing friends of mine) who still seem to detest Purnell, we should all be sad that people who are radicals and thought leaders think it is better off for them to be outside of Parliament rather than inside.  What does that say about the health of our politics and our political process?  Witness, as well, the announcement by Tony Benn before the last election that he was resigning from Parliament “to devote more time to politics.”  Or the fact that, love him or hate him, Daniel Hannan prefers to be outside rather than within Parliament.  Or even the resignation of the likes of the highly talented Bryan Gould a few years ago.

It is worth reading Kenneth Morgan’s excellent life of Keir Hardie, or looking at the causes of Chartism and the other great radical movements to understand the emphasis placed on gaining working class and radical representation inside the House of Commons.  Indeed, that is one of the many things that sets British radicalism aside from continental radicalism.  What does it say about the modern House of Commons that so many people of radical views feel that the best place for them is outside of Parliament?

Of course, there are many potential reasons for this.  The growth of unelected institutions, at a national, European and international level has, undoubtedly weakened the power of Parliament.  The judiciary, rather than elected decision makers, plays an increasingly activist role. The power of the 24 hour media has probably diminished the capacity for ‘thinkers’ to gain breathing space whilst under the media spotlight.  The power of the party hierarchy and the whips has undoubtedly grown, to the detriment of a healthy democracy.  The rise of the blogosphere and think tanks means that radical ideas can potentially gain as much emphasis when expressed outside of Parliament than outside.

There is little doubt that political reform is urgent and overdue.  The role of Parliament undoubtedly needs to be strengthened.  It is, surely, tragic that some of the best thinkers and most talented politicians no longer see being in the House of Commons as being the pinnacle of political life.

The best poster and viral campaign of the election was launched this morning, with the Conservatives launching a campaign aimed at people who have never voted Tory before but may do so this time round.

This is exactly the kind of poster campaign we should be pursuing.  It is based on a set of factors that will determine the next election result:

• Success at the next election will depend upon us forming a new electoral coalition.
• A key part of this coalition will be people who have never voted Tory before and, in some cases, may never have even considered voting Conservative before.
• Elections are won on the centre ground.  That is where we, thankfully, now are and where we must remain if we are to build and maintain this electoral coalition.

People who have voted Labour all of their lives who have grown sick and tired and are looking for an alternative.  We must make clear that we are a real progressive alternative and that we can be trusted with the vote of lne natifelong Labour voters.   As I mentioned in a talk to the TRG last week, there are millions of working class ex Labour voters who feel that they have been let down by the Labour Party they placed so much faith in.

We must make our message to voters who feel let down by their traditional party thoroughly compelling.  We must make clear how a progressive Conservative government will make them and their families better off; lead to a better quality of life for all; and protect and improve public services.

If we are successful in attracting and retaining the support of first time Tory voters then the progressive Conservative project could lead to a fundamental realignment of British politics.

I’m a fan of Left Foot Forward.  It is amongst the list of ‘must read’ blogs.  But in an article a few days ago, they completely misunderstood the nature of the Tory blogosphere.

Sam Coates et al arranged a fairly informal get together for bloggers on Tuesday, at which Eric Pickles gave a short and very entertaining speech. The normally excellent Left Foot Forward added a blog based on a fiction.  According to LFF, the disparate and varied Tory blogosphere will now be marching with the discipline and unity of a well drilled battalion – apparently driven on by 7 AM briefings that they will be expected to parrot.  This is, of course, totally untrue.  Nothing even remotely of the kind was said at the event.  In fact, the independence of the blogosphere was loudly celebrated.

There are two important points here.  The first is that what Will Straw alleged was said absolutely wasn’t said.  The second is that it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Tory blogosphere.  The truth is that the Tory blogosphere is highly independent and highly diverse. The idea that blogs from the progressive centre such as this one will start singing from exactly the same hymn sheet as some of the blogs on the right wing fringe is absurd.

What Straw fails to note and comprehend is that internet and the blogosphere has resulted in the greatest proliferation of sources of news, information and opinion for centuries.  Not since the time of the likes of Cobbett’s Political Register and Marat’s L’Ami Du Peuple has such a range of political opinions (from the sensible to the crackpot) been able to reach a wider audience.

In such an uncontrolled environment as the internet and the blogosphere, central control verges between difficult and impossible.  As Joe Trippi’s brilliant ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ makes clear, the internet and the blogosphere are, by their very nature bottom up rather than top-down.  It is part of the left’s misunderstanding of the blogosphere that they think any kind of central control is even being considered.