Part of the discussion I had with David Cameron (results available in Company magazine, March issue, on sale at all good newsagents from 13 March) revolved around the Tories’ publication of draft manifesto chapters.

He said:

“We’ve launched it draft chapter by draft chapter, on the internet, with people then coming up with their ideas and their questions. I’ve done online public meetings, the first one I think 40 000 people took part and voted on which questions they wanted answered on their particular subject. So we’ve got a long way to go but I think it’s a world away from what we used to do. And the exciting thing is is it’s totally interactive – it’s driven by what people want to say rather than just being pushed stuff by the politicians.”

I asked him if this was a bit of a cop-out, maybe even played into (unfounded, by the way) accusations that the Conservatives are entirely focus-group driven.  He replied (unsurprisingly…) that he disagreed, because: “The draft manifesto is what we want to do, it’s what we believe in but I think in the modern world of Wikipedia and crowd sourcing and interacvtity it’s only right when you’re asking people and you want to be their government, look here’s our draft manifesto what do you think, what have we left out, what do you most think is your priority? I think it’s a very good and modern way of doing politics.”

At the time, I was a bit sceptical. After all, four years of research, policy work, review and discussion – surely they are ready to make the argument for the policies they believe in? But actually, the more I think about it, and the more I hear about just how fed up of politics as usual voters are, the more I think that if this process is seen to be making a difference, then it can only be a good thing.

After all, we are a representative democracy. Our politicians are supposed to be answerable to us. They are supposed to represent us – not just pass laws from on high.  I do want politicians to listen, and react to what we say.

Remember when Tony Blair was attacked on Newsnight about the 48 hour GP targets – he had absolutely no idea what was going on. He assumed that because his government’s 48 hour target was being met, everything was ticking over nicely. But he was very wrong. Politicians need to work out a way to get the real facts – targets being met did not tell them that the GPs’ surgeries just disconnected the phone once two days’ of appointments had been made.

Gordon Brown is right on one thing: politics is all about choices. But you can’t make an informed choice unless you have enough information, and politicians need to make sure that they can access enough information from sufficiently diverse sources to inform the choices they make in our name.

While it does have to actually make a difference (in my experience, fake concern is worse than no concern at all), I have become a fan of wiki-writing the manifesto.  It’s all part of the post-bureaucratic way of doing things…

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.

What do the Tories stand for? The charge that the Conservatives have not made clear what they stand for has been slowly gathering momentum ironically ever since the Conservatives started their ‘one a week’ policy series. Right wing commentators who are fearful that a Cameron Conservative government will not govern in an appropriately conservative enough way have fanned this criticism. A few weeks ago Simon Heffer clarified this view when writing “the problem for the Tories is this, succinctly put to me by a close observer to the party of the day: if you board a bus anywhere in these islands, sat down next to a passenger at random and asked what it stood for, he or she could not tell you”. This got me thinking. Does Simon Heffer ever use public transport? Who is this sage observer who bothers random people on buses? Is the assertion true? I grabbed my Oyster card and went to the bus stop. In the interests of polling methodology I should reveal that I live what Alistair Campbell may describe as a ‘bog-standard’ middle-class London lifestyle.

I won’t lie to you. At first I was a bit apprehensive about approaching people, but I was glad to find that most people do not mind being asked about their opinions. The instant response was ‘umm not sure’ which was then followed by an opinion of what the Conservatives stood for. The two most popular answers were that the Tories would:

• Cut the deficit
• Promote the family

A couple of people said that they would protect the interests of the rich and one lady said she was not sure but they had to be better than the current lot so she would vote for them anyway.

It is only fair that I answer my own question. For me the Conservatives stand for opportunity, which they will facilitate through governing by trust. A Conservative Government will trust local groups to decide what needs doing and how plans should be executed. Labour’s obsession with mechanical control has been both expensive and stifling. It has lead to the ID card debacle; massive increase in state monitoring and situations such as a 64.4% increase in NHS managers. The Conservatives will also focus on the important task of regaining the public’s trust in politicians and Government. This will be done through the transparency agenda, which will allow people greater choice in deciding how politicians should be accountable.

Since I started my little experiment there has been a media frenzy over the Tory poll-acoaster. Most pundits have been asking the question ‘Why are the Conservatives slipping?’ and then answering their own question by saying ‘I told you so, you’re not the right type of Conservative’. This sort of analysis loses sight of the bigger picture. For me the real question should be ‘Why were the Tories so far ahead in the first place?’. This election is the antithesis of 1997. The electorate is not in the mood to place the same amount of trust and hope in our elected representatives as they did with Tony Blair in the great political love-in of 1997. There is an underlying feeling that no prospective government should be given an easy ride or have its promises taken at face value. The people I spoke to could tell me what the Conservatives stood for but this was not the same as them believing that the Tories would make a positive difference. It seems to be that the deal can only really be sealed once a new Government has proved that they are governing in a new way. Many people will enter the voting booths begrudgingly. This will lead to certain amount of electoral volatility, which will manifest itself in some odd results. The polls should be taken with a pinch of salt, and should not distract us from working hard to promote the benefits of a Conservative government.

My conclusion after a week on the bus is that this country is complex. It is full of people with differing needs and beliefs. While a couple of consistent themes did emerge no one gave me exactly the same answer (apart from the two people who looked at me as if I was a madman before declining to answer). The truth is that the question Simon Heffer poses does not have a single right answer. The Conservative party itself is a complex coalition which contains people who can both strongly agree and disagree with each other depending on the issue being debated. What I hope we can all agree on is that the future of this country is best served by electing the strongest possible Conservative Government. The rights and wrongs of certain policies can be discussed after 6 May. As Tim Montgomerie puts it “this election isn’t a choice between a perfect Conservative Party and an imperfect Conservative Party but between a strong government led by David Cameron and the chaos of a hung parliament.”

George Osborne was right when he said, “We are all in this together”. We need to work together to ensure that there is the best future for all.

PS I want to give a shout out to www.futurefairforall.org I often consult this treasure trove of information before I go out canvassing. It has a lot of evidence, which shows that 13 years of Labour has spectacularly failed to create a ‘future fair for all’.

For a while now, all we’ve heard from the Tories has been a bit gloomy. And with good reason – that second look at Gordon Brown is not a happy one.

But this afternoon in Brighton, it seems to all be coming together. William Hague’s speech was a classic tour de force. He set out the very stark choice we face: change or ruin.

Audible gasps of shock in the audience accompanied his revelation that Britain was 4^th in the world for tax and regulation – and now is 84^th and 86^th. This is not something people can vote for.

But crucially, instead of merely bashing Brown and setting out the dire state we are in and the dire measures needed to fix the problems, William, Andrew Lansley, Oliver Letwin, Phillip Hammond, Ken Clarke and most convincingly George Osborne then laid out just why those measures are needed – because there is a point to all the pain. There will be an end to it. And when we are at the end, we will have a far better country. One where life will be improved, where our NHS can do its best, where our schools can beat the world, where our environment can be saved, where our government does its job properly and gives people value for the money that they hand over to it, where the energy, resourceful inventiveness and essential good nature of our fellow countrymen can flourish.

No-one would want to vote for a party that simply gives up and says ‘all is lost’. People want to vote for something, and the only way to persuade people to vote for the frankly unpleasant task ahead is to give them a reason to do so. That message of hope is what David Cameron does best.

It will not be easy. But the message coming out from this weekend is simple: we are a country worth fighting for. The party that has the ideas to change the country is the Conservative Party. It is not going to be easy but the change will come, and the effort is worth it.

Information is power. Information is a valuable resource. Information is becoming one of the battlegrounds of the 21^st Century. Unlike natural resources, such as oil or water, this battle won’t be about competing powers trying to ensure unlimited access. The battle will be over how to control the dissemination of knowledge. The first public salvo in this conflict was fired last month when the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said: “Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”. This was a very public dig at the Chinese Government, who has resurrected a  “Great Firewall” which blocks its citizens from accessing offensive topics, such as democracy. It was also an expression of a philosophy that the best way for society to advance is by the constant facilitation of free expression and informed debate. For me this attitude is the best way for Governments to create high-skill and high-knowledge economies.

Now, please step forward the latest country to enter this battleground: Iceland. The Parliament of this country, which has a population of 317,000, is currently debating the implementation of a radical bill to create a “journalistic haven”. As you may remember, Iceland was one of the main losers in the global economic collapse of 2008. Corporate interest rates rose to 25%, currency restrictions and foreign Government debt amounted to somewhere between 160% and 200% of GDP, and unemployment rose fast. The population was angry. How could their leaders, both political and industrial, be so reckless as to let a situation such as this happen? There were violent demonstrations in the street, the three largest banks were nationalised, and the Government collapsed. During this period a national TV station was blocked from revealing an internal document from a failed bank. Wikileaks then published these documents. The attempted stifling of information enraged the population. People were not in the mood to be censored by those who had let them down. The close relationship between Government, big companies, and the media was blamed for a lack of warning about the impending crisis and accused of trying to cover up responsibilities.

In December 2009 the founders of Wikileaks used the political mood and their newfound hero status to float the idea of creating a “journalistic haven”. To quote one of the founders: “We could just say we’re taking the source protection laws from Sweden… the first amendment from the United States, we could take Belgian protection laws for journalists; and we could pack all these together in one bundle, and make it fit for the first jurisdiction that offers the necessities of an information society.” Many Icelandic people said, “Yes please”. Thus the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) was born.

The IMMI includes strong source and whistleblower protection, airtight communications protections, strict limits on prior restraints, process protection, libel tourism protection, reinvention of the Freedom of Information Act, and the creation of ‘The Icelandic Freedom of Expression Award’. This award will be given to journalists, whistleblowers, human rights activists or publishers who have “most advanced humanity through courageous acts of free expression”. What is certain is that if the IMMI is introduced Iceland will not have any ‘Carter Ruck’ type situations. What is less clear is how this will affect press freedom in other countries. The proponents of IMMI hope that by creating a global haven for free speech Iceland will attract web news outlets, publishers, and human rights organisations. I think it is unlikely that established media groups will move all their assets to Reykjavik but I do not think that this is necessary for the UK to benefit from the IMMI. I would argue that you only need a handful of websites, such as Wikileaks, operating out of Iceland for their global vision to work. If a court in the UK gags a newspaper from publishing a story it does not mean the story is dead. There would be not much that could be done to prevent an Icelandic site from e-mailing UK subscribers the details of the injunction. The UK authorities could create their own “Great Firewall” but this illiberal action would be extremely controversial and counter-productive to the needs of our society.

It will be interesting to see how the IMMI develops and what impact it has beyond the Icelandic Sea. The post bureaucratic age is about using technology to give power and control to people, however they decide to organise themselves. This philosophy can only work if information that was previously held by a few is accessible to all. David Cameron is right to concentrate on bringing transparency to government. This is a big project, which will utilise a lot of political energy. The Icelandic experience may show the path towards part two of the post-bureaucratic age: the redistribution of power from companies to citizens. Free choice can only work if all information, both good and bad, is available. What the credit crunch taught Iceland is that companies do have an impact on the public good outside the narrow definition of GDP. The Icelandic conclusion, that this means companies should all submit themselves to a higher level of accountability, is very powerful. We should all watch this experiment with interest.

It is exciting to see a country that was depressed attempting to reinvent itself by providing a positive service to the world, using the political leverage to create a place where information can be freely exchanged in the hope that this may stop those in power from failing us again. An Icelandic MP said: “There are still very many Icelanders who feel ashamed. I think [the IMMI] is part of the self-recovery we have to go through.” I for one am very grateful to Iceland for what they are trying to do.