“Political parties are too small to be safely in charge of politics,” warned Paddy Ashdown in a bleak assessment of the challenges facing Britain following the vote to leave the European Union. After spending the referendum campaign relentlessly making the case to “Remain,” Ashdown felt crushed by Brexit, tweeting “God help our country” as the result became clear. This was the second time in just over a year that Ashdown, who led the Liberal Democrats from 1988 to 1999, found himself on the wrong side of public opinion, with his party ejected from government and reduced to just eight MPs last May.
Ashdown, however, is refusing to give up. Last month he unveiled his blueprint for reshaping British politics in the form of a crowd-funded movement that would “give a voice to the millions of progressive, open-minded and tolerant people in the UK.” He hopes that this movement, called MoreUnited.uk, can inspire people in a way that parties, including his own, no longer can because they “have too small memberships and they tend to be very tribal.”
Speaking to Prospect in his garden in Somerset, Ashdown pitched MoreUnited.uk as “Britain’s first high-tech political startup.” Joining costs “some money, any money, one pence, £1,000” and its policies and structure will be decided on by a one-memberone-vote basis over the internet. Along with a small group including historian Simon Schama and entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, Ashdown is billed as a “convenor” of the movement, and he argued that it could reach out beyond political parties who “in difif cult times tend to crawl into their shell, shut the door and celebrate their uniqueness.”