I think we're all still reeling from a very strange General Election campaign. And the result.
I'm really proud of what we have done. That we have got people involved in politics that would never thought they could. That we have put our ideas forward. That we have increased our visibility.
We've gained a lot of respect in this campaign.
It was always going to be difficult fighting our corner for civil liberties, digital rights and a new kind of politics when the pressure was to squeeze votes. Thanks to all our amazing activists for working to put the case for thinking differently.
I'm glad we've moved forward as a party since the last General Election. But it's clear we have more to do.
That's why I won't be putting my name forward for the next National Executive elections. So I will be stepping down from leading the Pirate Party UK. I'll be talking to the board about the best timetable for this.
We fell short of the targets we set ourselves. That's my responsibility. I'm not going to blame the electoral system, media bias or anything else. That's my responsibility that we didn't do better. We need to do better – and we have to do better for the sake of the ideas we believe in.
Now I believe the best I can do for the ideas we believe in is by concentrating in what and where I do best. So that is focusing on Manchester where I think we have made our politics concrete . What form that will take I can't be sure of right now, as I need a little to time to absorb the implication of this result.
More generally, Pirate Party UK needs to build its capacity as an organisation, we have been simply too stretched.
This has been an extraordinary period in my life and a huge thank you to everyone who let me lead the fight for civil liberties, a crowd sourced politics and a society where everyone can get a fair share.
There's been much discussion about the future of the movement. We've done a lot to define it. But now it's time for others to shape it.
I'm looking forward to balancing my life better, and I really mean it when I say I need to step down to spend more time with my family.
But this is not me stopping politics.
I've now learned just enough to get started.
This is the beginning.
Comments
The Data Says You Didn't Move Forward
2010 GE: 9 candidates, 1340 votes in total, 149 votes/candidate
2015 GE: 6 candidates, 1130 votes in total, 188 votes/candidate
In 2010 the party had barely started. You've had 5 years to plan for a general election. Just weeks before the voting you were still issuing desperate public appeals for potential candidates to come forward, whilst absorbed by a failed policy initiative that left no time to communicate any policies to voters by the time you decided what the policies were.
UKIP and Greens grow by repeating a few simple appealing messages. UKIP and Greens identify credible local leaders to fight seats and then support them for years. They build real campaign organisations. You built no credible campaign organisation. Your organisation spends more time taking the minutes of committee meetings than speaking to voters who do not already share your opinions.
Smaller parties succeed by sticking to a message even when it's not the most topical one in that day's news cycle. They stick to the message ruthlessly. This has been proven by the rise of the SNP, Greens and UKIP. The more focused the message, the greater the success.
Instead of leading the debate on protecting privacy you wasted time talking about music downloads when that was fashionable, and only responded to others when Snowden made his revelations. That's why the party wasn't interviewed by the mainstream press about Snowden - you weren't seen as people worth asking for a quote. BBC and national newspaper exposure isn't beyond this party. It only seems beyond this party because it's not presenting a message that appeals to those channels, so is only interesting to those who have cynical reasons to promote you, like RT.
Instead of running a real political party that tries to make the public aware of crucial issues relating to technology and privacy, you've established a weird and irrelevant social club for people who think the public will flock to their views on the NHS or the Bank of England, even though they have no credibility to speak about those subjects. Instead of seeking broad popular appeal for a very few tightly-defined messages, you've diluted your message horribly. The Pirate Party is trying to behave like a much larger party, which can afford to indulge digressions and bureaucracy. It's not big enough to behave that way.
A leader states what he or she believes in, and then works hard to persuade others to follow. A leader has a set of principles and sticks to them, even if they're sometimes unfashionable, because they believe they will succeed by sticking to those principles. A leader does not crowdsource their opinions.
You kept telling yourselves what you wanted to hear, but that approach usually leads to failure. You're not alone in having that fault; bigger parties have also learned that lesson. Since 2010, the risks you should have been central to your message have grown worse, and were only mitigated for the British public because the coalition wasn't as keen on ID cards and internet surveillance as the government before them. You should have gained increasing attention, but failed to do so.
In many respects, you act more like a reform lobby within the Labour Party or the Greens, mostly repeating the themes and slogans that were developed for their communications strategies. But you're not a reform lobby in a bigger party. If you're running a party that competes with others, you have to have a competitive message. You have to compete for attention, and that means having a distinct message you can communicate. I can state UKIP's message in a few words: less immigration, leave the EU. I can state the Green message in a few words: economic change for the sake of the environment and social justice. I can't state the Pirate Party's message because you're so desperate to appeal that you won't say anything that might discourage existing members. The club lacks cohesion because it lacks a principle to organise around. And it lacks that because it lacks leadership.
I'm sure you're a very nice person who worked very hard and meant well. I know that you probably feel devastated by your failure, and this message might seem cruel. I'm addressing this directly to you, Loz. That's an act of faith in itself - do you read the comments on your party's website? You post blogs but you don't seem to engage personally using this website. I find that strange in itself - if this isn't your primary channel for projecting your personality, then what is? However, I'm directing this personally to you because I can reasonably assume you're surrounded by people who aren't as thoughtful or committed as you are, and so they may mislead you, even if they'll routinely cheer you - and boo me for writing this. I'm writing this to you because I know you care, and would have preferred a better result, so I want you to think hard about whether the Pirate Party is now a busted flush, that wasted its opportunity to build public support for a few key changes to public policy, or whether it can still be turned around.
Loz, you might be able to exercise your influence to encourage a different kind of leader, so the party reverses some of its mistakes, instead of taking the comfortable approach of repeating them. The key issues that should be addressed by this party are more important than the feelings of some of its members. Consider how the SNP's single-minded pursuit of one goal - independence - leads to discipline and success. The Pirate Party needs leadership which is ruthlessly determined to pursue a goal that can be easily articulated to the public, and which both media professionals and ordinary people find easy to understand, empathise with, and repeat. The party needs a leader determined to continuously repeat a few simple messages that will garner wide attention, and so get public exposure about topics the public care about. There will be times when the public focuses on other topics, less helpful to the party, but the leader needs the courage to stick with a consistent and focused message for years, in order to gain recognition and build momentum. The leader needs to trust that an unchanging message will bring votes in the end. That requires faith, and a ruthless streak. It might upset some people with different priorities. It also requires the bravery to appeal to people who are not currently Pirates, who may not be anything like the existing membership of the party, by not adopting swathes of policy that would discourage and distract outsiders from listening to and supporting a core message that would appeal to them.
Such changes would be painful. But now is the time to do them, not a few months before an election in 2020. I know you care, Loz, so I hope you can turn this failure into something positive. You don't want to see people's lives being slowly crushed by a rising tide of technology that is routinely used against their best interests. That much is obvious. Please show yourself a real leader now, by helping the party to change course, so it spends the next 5 years making real progress.
Good points, bad metrics
>UKIP and Greens grow by repeating a few simple appealing messages. UKIP and Greens identify credible local leaders to fight seats and then support them for years. They build real campaign organisations.
In Bridgend we had a parachuted in paper candidate for the Greens. UKIP was a defected Police and Crime Commissioner candidate that was mostly disliked. Both candidates got votes purely on party profile as did TUSC. A lot of Wales had this problem. Pirates are significantly younger than all of these parties, Greens alone are at least 42 years old yet in Bridgend we were only about 600 votes under the Greens, a now major political party.
>Your organisation spends more time taking the minutes of committee meetings than speaking to voters who do not already share your opinions.
In this GE campaign I have responded to my constituency on Amnesty International, Animals Matter, Cancer, Cancer Research UK, Carers, Cycling, Debt, Farming, Football, Fracking, Fuel Prices, Improved Cancer Care, Israel, Kinship care, Media Ownership, Minimum Wage, NHS, Nursing, People with MS, Polish Issues, Population, Secularism, Republic, Robin Hood Tax, Toilets, Trees & Woodland, TTIP, Unicef and WWF in e-mails alone. There were also countless charities, businesses, campaign groups... petitions and meeting with other parties to open a dialogue. Often candidates like myself would get to campaigning at 7am and end by 10pm. Even on the night of the count I was speaking with the public and other party counting agents and leaders. I have also been in the local media twice, that's 1-2 times more than EVERY other candidate here. I've also been on the radio, podcasts and seeking the individual blogs that are traditionally less thought of... I have also now been invited to speak at Bath University about PPUK. (Media links: https://wales.pirateparty.org.uk/media/)
All that being said, why not turn your comments into action. Become more active inside the party. We're listening to you and what you are saying is not without merit. Yes the GE and other things should be handled more pro-actively, which is something I've personally been striving for... and thanks to Loz ratifying me as Spokesperson for Wales, it was made possible down here.
So get in touch fellow Pirate. If you see something is broken, help us fix it.
Cross purposes
When I noted the party spends more time taking minutes of meetings, that's because the taking of minutes and holding of internal party meetings is very apparent for most of the time, whilst I rarely visit the website and see mention of campaign events, publicity stunts etc that show Pirates meeting and speaking to local people who aren't already Pirates. Sometimes you have meetings which are open in the sense that anybody could come to them - but that's not a realistically way to reach most people. Is it that the website - the main shop window for this party - consistently understates the extent of face-to-face campaigning that took place during the last 5 years? If so, why? If not, then why weren't there more events to talk about? How often does the party mention votes on its constitution or votes about its policy compared to showing photos of likely future candidates going out in public and speaking to people who don't currently support the party?
Of course the Greens and UKIP do parachute candidates into constituencies. But that's because they now have the luxury to do so in some cases, after having built up a national profile. Consider Brighton Pavilion in 2010 and Thanet South in 2015. Party leaders were parachuted in. Lucas won in 2010 and strengthened her majority this time. Farage lost again. However, in both cases, many years of hard work and campaigning was done by local candidates in advance of the national candidates being parachuted in. That's why it was worth sending Lucas and Farage, with their national profiles, to fight those seats. The proof is measured in sustained progress to win council seats - a lower level of election but one where success can be gained by working hard to build a local reputation. The Greens had made significant progress in council elections in Brighton before Lucas became their parliamentary candidate. UKIP has taken control of Thanet council in this election. UKIP's nearly 4 million votes isn't solely driven by Farage being an excellent media performer. It's just as much driven by teams of candidates repeatedly fighting local elections to build the party's presence and credibility, reaching out to individual voters. Of course, success at one level can feed back to success at the other, but for a party with less national attention the local work must come first.
There's a symbiotic relationship between the national and local aspects of campaigning. Fighting to win a seat in the nation's parliament earns national media attention, as does coming close. But it's rare that a candidate can come close without the support of an organisation that has done sustained work at the local level. That means the Pirates should pick candidates years in advance of a general election, to see if they have the staying power to build organisations around them whilst they repeatedly fight every other election in that constituency, whether town council, borough council, European election, mayor... you see my point. The first objective for the Pirate Party should be to look at its defeated candidates and ask which of them, if any, will fight more elections in future. Put your resources into the candidates who will go out and fight elections in 2016, 2017 and every year between now and 2020. Identify them as your likely 2020 candidates, and let them hog every publicity opportunity. Don't waste a penny, a second of media time or an inch of column space on somebody who shows up for a national election and then shows no intention of fighting more mundane elections in the interim.
In particular, it seems a mistake to have chosen three 2014 European candidates who had their profile raised during that expensive campaign, but didn't follow up by fighting again in the national election this year.
Loz Kaye has my respect because he's clearly fought election after election. However, it's unfortunate that the party will now look for a replacement, because it's not obvious that anyone else is as prepared to repeatedly fight elections.
As for turning my comments into action, that's what I'm doing now. Unlike some in your party, I'm actually prepared to provoke a difficult discussion about party strategy, and I'm grateful that you took the time and effort to respond. However, I'm no masochist. I could join the Labour Party tomorrow but that doesn't mean I could 'fix' the problems they so obviously have, especially if most of its current members refuse to see them as problems, even after a dismal defeat. The Pirate Party is smaller, but sometimes small groups are even more hostile to necessary change, because they find it preferable to enjoy a shared fantasy about what might happen than to do the unpleasant work that might make it happen. If the people in your party show some ability to come up with a workable strategy, I'll be glad to help. That's why I made a personal appeal to Loz. Though he may be stepping down as the leader, he should continue to be a leader in the sense of helping the party to admit to its flaws so it can correct them. And if he won't do that, and nobody else will or can do that, I've already wasted too much time by making these observations.
One hates to be harsh, but
To be frank, I don't see any reason why the exact same issues couldn't be supported by a lobby group within the Greens or Labour, as above, and probably achieve more given the party appears unable to achieve national media coverage. I think people need to sit down and think "how does the cause benefit from us being a party, as opposed to lobbying either within other parties or as part of i.e. the Open Rights Group? Are we effectively hobbyists rather than effective activists?" I think the answer is no and yes. But if the party insists that it should persist despite public disinterest then the above has to be the way to go.
106 was huge, given the circumstances
Lib-Dems are also considered an option by some - but who joins a party that is dying and doesn't keep its promises.
I also blogged about why I'm not a Green here: https://wales.pirateparty.org.uk/2015/04/18/why-im-not-a-green/
And just how much the 106 votes mean here: https://wales.pirateparty.org.uk/2015/05/10/the-rise-of-the-pirates/
With no leaflets, an exceptionally short campaign and limited local support, 106 votes is huge.
The problem, as admitted above is we need to be more proactive. I answered the call from when candidates were being sought, so from that point on I did as much as humanly possible and even with all the disadvantages in my campaign - we still beat many other parties, as detailed in the blog.
The Wales branch was only formed in late October so even working at maximum capacity (which no new branch does) gave us 5 months to work out how to change a spread-out movement into an election platform. Hitting triple figures against all that is damned good.
Stand for leader
That said, I analysed the results from the 2010 GE and it's a fact that almost twice as many candidates received between 100-199 votes compared to the number who received 0-99 votes. Some people talk a lot about 'evidence-based policy', as if the party is being run on a scientific basis. However, I don't see much evidence of anyone systematically analysing data, especially when the data points toward inconvenient truths. I've not got around to analysing the 2015 results yet, but the party should consider this data when judging how well it has performed at the ballot box. But note: I'm talking about the success of the party here, not the success of individuals who may have lacked the time and support to effectively compete for votes.
Of course you're right about the Greens being very tribal. That always made me wonder why so many wanted to be in the Pirate Party whilst repeatedly espousing an alliance or other kind of relationship with the Greens. You must view the Greens as competitors - or why bother having a Pirate Party at all?
My suspicion is that some joined the Pirate Party for the wrong reasons: to use it as a way to feel important without going to all the trouble involved in climbing the ladders of a much bigger party. The Pirate Party is better off without people like that - you need more diligent workers, not show-offs and fantasists who think volunteering for a job makes them instantly deserving of a Wikipedia page. It's comical that Andy Halsall has a Wikipedia page for being a notable politician when there was only one other candidate who stood in Sheffield Central who also has a Wikipedia listing: the sitting MP, who won with 24,000 votes! Halsall can bang on about the NHS as much as he likes, but if defending the NHS is such an important goal then you might as well not bother standing in Labour strongholds.
The tribalism of the Greens is what helps keep them together, even when battered by critics, opponents, and repeated losses. So there are reasons to be tribal, and hence to reject any criticism. On the other hand, if you can't listen to criticism you can't improve. The tortuous progress of the Green Party - the failure to capitalise on its 1989 Euro election result, the resistance to appointing a leader etc - is a case study in how not to learn from others. Whatever the political views of members, you don't want to borrow your strategy from the Greens. You want to borrow it from UKIP, who have had the discipline to grow quickly and extend their local campaign movement whilst making some effort to divest themselves of the vote-losing racists who had rushed to join them. UKIP takes members and support from rival parties - a leader should selectively encourage the activists who think like that, whilst sidelining the ones who repeatedly talk about how much they like other parties and their candidates.
Take heart, David. At least you've got enough steel in your soul to actually respond to these comments. I respect you for that. Keep doing that, and you'll keep earning respect, from all sorts of people. You're a good example to others in your party.
David, perhaps you should stand as party leader. You've only campaigned for 5 months, so your track record isn't extensive. But you seem to have the stomach for a fight, and you're willing to talk to outsiders without being easily discouraged or dreaming of how you'd be better off in a bigger party.
Loz has used party resources to build a base in Manchester, so it would be healthy to have a leader based somewhere other than the English North West. Let the Mancunians focus on improving their campaigning organisation there, whilst the leader ensures a second base of campaign operations emerges somewhere else.
Your constituency was a marginal, which is massively advantageous compared to the absurdly safe Labour seats contested by the rest of this year's Pirate candidates. That forces you to appeal to a wider spectrum of voters, more representative of the national outlook, instead of being skewed towards messages that might appeal to lefties but alienates everyone else. After all, the party won't find out if it can gain the support of voters unless it tries to appeal to them. And trying to get votes in safe seats is a bad strategy anyway. Being safe, it's far harder to get any swing against the incumbent. And whilst you might not win in a marginal, you have a better chance of taking enough votes to influence the outcome - which would make you noteworthy and attract some media attention. Keep in mind the seats that Lucas and Farage were fighting: two-way marginals that their parties turned into three-way marginals.
The more I think about it, the more I think you should stand as leader. Even if you don't get the job, the party needs more of a sustained debate about its strategy than that which occurred when Loz was elected. Now is the time to have that debate, and to do a thorough job so the party can come out of that process with a decent strategy for real sustained growth. By engaging on this forum, you've shown you're not afraid to discuss these things in public. That means you'd make a worthwhile contribution to determining the party's future direction.
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