(Article for Sublime Magazine/Rather Topical Post)

To The Commons

Like many people, I started the year not exactly looking forward to the UK elections. The mess that was Copenhagen paid testament to the lack of any real leadership in modern politics – a professionalized generation of technocrats looking on, as the machine they serve rumbles on towards disaster. And UK politics honestly has never looked less inspiring. We have Gordon Brown and his party whose only remaining value is a dogged and pathetic desperation to cling on to their jobs. We have a Conservative party who seem to represent everything that is nasty, selfish and grasping in British society. And a Liberal Democrat party who represent everything that is insipid. The party I have voted for (ever since the Iraq war) are the Greens, who I love to bits - but as a friend put it are “epically unelectable”. Plus my new local Green candidate is not somebody I personally want to vote for. Which left me like many others wondering if I would even turnout this time.

Then one day, a month ago, I got an email from a young activist I know, saying she was planning something "a bit different" for this election. Tamsin Omond is someone I met a few years ago at the Howies Do lectures. At the time she was all of 23 and planning a restaging of the suffragette march on parliament, for a stronger Climate Change Act and against the third runway at Heathrow. She reminded me at the time of a 1930s woman aviator – a real adventuring tomboy sort of spirit. She’s a Cambridge graduate who was intending to train to become an Anglican priest. But then broke this off after attending Climate Camp and realising there was a world in crisis to change, save or at least bring to its senses first. Since then she has also led Climate Rush through on a national tour – the media highpoint of which was the dumping horse manure on the lawn of Jeremy Clarkson (TV car show presenter and climate change denier, or some would say "climate idiot").

Tamsin lives up the road from me, on the other side of Hampstead & Kilburn. And it turns out she is running as an independent MP. Which instantly solved my problem of who to vote for. I assumed she would stand on climate, which is fine by me (but would only split the green vote). But Tamsin has a much bigger vision. She wants to reinvent British politics, take it back from the big dinosaur parties, invent something that people can believe in again. In many ways it’s a return to the world of guilds and commons, pre industrial revolution; a return to a self-managing world, where people are involved as citizens not passive consumers. That style of self organisation is also the hallmark of 21st century digital societies; the reason Wired magazine recently called for the Internet to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s like Athens all over again, via Linux and Twitter.

Barack Obama’s election campaign succeeding in self-organising (or crowd sourcing) an election win. But then they slammed the door to participation shut, once they came to power. Tamsin wants to change the 'in power' bit too – create an open democracy where the whole constituency are able to get involved in how she votes in parliament and what questions and issues she puts forward. Like massive and constantly open MP’s surgery. She also wants to serve the community and play an active role (our current MP lives on the other side of London). Tamsin is planning to forego fat cat expenses and give between a third and a half of her MP’s salary to local community causes. And will spend a day a week on community service; to highlight local issues and put something back. That’s not a stunt, she grew up in this area and has been working in old people’s homes, church programmes and community centres most of her life.

By now you probably have guessed that when I heard what she had planned, it took me all of about a nanosecond to volunteer to help Tamsin with her campaign. But I'm coming at this with a slightly different mindset. Tamsin has a simple, charismatic, almost childlike belief that she will get elected. (And why not?) I’m seeing this differently; I think it is really do-able (so much of the research for my new book Co-opportunity concerns similar processes and shifts). One thing I've found out already is that there are enough under 30s who don’t vote in this area (alone) to win a landslide. Not that Tamsin will stand as ‘for young people’ (alone). Rather she will stand as a leader in the making who happens to be young, and doesn't give a stuff for the old career politics and parties. The Pirate Party managed to get two seats in the EU parliament (out of twenty Swedish seats) by winning 200,000 votes. They did this simply by giving young people something they were interested in voting in. And playing against the stacked odds of low voter turnout. Of course we would have to create an thriving and enthusiastic bandwagon of young volunteers - and sweep the area off its feet - to really get non-voters out to vote. But that’s second nature to Tamsin and her merry band of supporters.

The other key factor in this election is social media. If Twitter can challenge the #iranelections, we certainly ought to be able to get something exciting going in a little constituency of around 75,000 voters. Mainly by bringing a freewheeling creative and fun approach to it all – the same spirit which led Tamsin to dress up as a suffragette (to mark their 100thcentenary of them rushing parliament) with hundreds of other women. We can be the merry pranksters. We can put the (other sort of) “party” back into politics. And a growing group of creative people, developers, entertainers – many of whom live in the area and felt exactly as I did – are joining up. Dave Cameron puts his speeches on Youtube and gets all of about 1500 views. Mydavidcameron.com a user generated satire site (where you can design your own Conservative poster – with hilarious results) got 250,000 uploads in recent months. We will aim to get real hit online content (things people actually want to watch & share) into circulation. We also want to get people out of their shells; let them start to have their say. The internet levels the playing field for all of that. It's not just a medium - its an electrified crowd (something we reckon most other parties will struggle to understand).

It all sounds so much fun that I guess it could read a bit like a stunt. But Tamsin is dead serious about being an MP and re-establishing the commons in the UK. If she gets in there will be a ‘Tamsin’ standing in every seat in the next elections. Which would mean the death of dinosaur party politics. And the start of something new and Ghandhi-esque – where the people finally get involved in politics again from the grassroots up. My son has been coming to some of The Commons meetings (Cosmo's slogan for the campaign is "Tamsin to the Rescue!") and asked me the other day “what if she doesn’t win?” But actually if any of this gets people thinking again about politics, and makes it interesting again, and challenges the status quo, then that’s already winning. Although we are in it to win it too. And you can join us at http://www.tothecommons.com

John Grant's new book "Co-opportunity" (Wiley) came out in January 2010