Thread by @jonjalex

I've just published a piece called "Britain needs the Liberal Democrats, now more than ever" via @CompassOffice

Here's your obligatory spoiler/teaser/replacement* thread

(*delete according to preferred social media consumption approach)

My overarching take is that we @LibDems are the natural party of the "empowered citizen" (Paddy Ashdown's term)

And that in the aftermath of "take back control", this idea is crucial to saving British politics

My starting point is Paddy's 1989 book Citizens' Britain, which I was first pointed to by @EdwardJDavey - and in particular this quote...

The @LibDems failure in this election was to my mind a failure of purpose

We forgot why we exist - to champion the empowered citizen - and got embroiled in the wrong battles as a result

That diagnosis draws heavily on my work with @DatapraxisEU during the election - you can find more in the conclusions to this report I co-wrote with @paulhilder (published 9 days out from polling day)
dataprax.is/24-seats-where…

But the much more important argument is about the future

The thing is, as anyone who knows me will be aware, the empowered citizen is on the march even without formal political support

This is what we @NewCitProj call the #CitizenShift

I've mentioned @ParticipatoryC @NLGNthinktank @CPI_foundation @CollaborateCIC in this piece - but I could have talked about so many things and so many people

If you need convincing the #CitizenShift is happening, there's (much) more here: drive.google.com/file/d/0B0swic…

Now imagine what this movement could become with the generous, open support of a party (NB: not one that attempts to take credit for their work)

It's not all about MPs (tho more of them would be nice obvs)

It's also about peers, councillors, and members...

Lib Dem peers will have a major role to play in using the borrowed power of the House of Lords wisely, and potentially introducing a standing Citizens' Assembly

This one's inspired by the Ostbelgien Model:
thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternati…

(Big hat tip to @ClaudiaChwalisz)

Councillors are perhaps the most important - @LibDems lead 25 councils across the country, and have hundreds more councillors besides

These people are directly involved in the business of empowering citizens every day

@CllrLizGreen a major inspiration for this point

Then there's us members

Time for all @LibDems to stand up in our communities, I reckon

Many of us are already doing amazing things

The last point is what this means for our relations with @UKLabour

My view:

They need us to make them better

And we do better when they do better

So we need to stop the madness, now

It all adds up to a pretty fundamental shift

It's not where the party is right now

But it is where it belongs

Paddy used to quote Lyndon Johnson:

"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose"