Sunny Hundal, over at my favourite blog, Liberal Conspiracy, has always given the impression of wanting to be Britain’s answer to Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the founder of DailyKos – the leader of an online grassroots of progressive political activists. Not quite there yet though, it seems.

Unfortunately for Sunny, Markos’ success came from running the leading anti-Government blog whilst at the same time being equally critical of the DNC and the sorts of candidates they were selecting (like Hilary Clinton with dubious records on Iraq) and wanting to get fresh faced people like Obama selected instead (with good track records on Iraq). Liberal Conspiracy, on the other hand, rarely has anything new to say or anything interesting to bring to political debate. It’s the same old, “The state should do this!!!” concept repeated ad-infinitum, convinced the failure of the left is due to the specific implementations or the personalities of their leaders.

Wrong. All that fretting and worrying about policy is such a complete waste of time. I’ve heard it over and over on Labour Home, I’ve heard it over and over on Labour List and it’s been done to death on Liberal Conspiracy. All of them looking for the new idea, the new brilliant policy that’s going to somehow going to reinvent the left, bringing together the benefits of redistribution and a monolithic public sector without economic stagnation, unemployment, crushing of innovation, a welfare subculture, Government enabled Monopoly corporations and all this without the authoritarianism and ‘unfortunate’ need to take as much wealth as possible from as many sources as possible to pay for all these adventures and ideas.

In short, there’s no way to ‘reinvent’ this crap. It’s a flawed, morally bankrupt premise that depends on people being willing to allow the state to decide who wins and who loses – shafting one group in order to boost another. It amazes me that people still believe it’s possible to make this hideous faith system work in the real world without experiencing exactly the same outcomes over and over again.

So while DailyKos is community generated and focused on real action that people can take, Liberal Conspiracy is a collaborative blog desperate to figure out ways of ‘reinventing’ the failed ideology of Social Democracy.

DailyKos was a successful campaigning tool not because of policies and ideas, but because they threw their full weight behind what they knew to be a highly attractive candidate for grassroots Democrats – Barack Obama.  So it’s not a new Democratic Party in terms of policy. It’s a new Democratic Party in terms of presentation.

I’ve long argued that the Left doesn’t need reinventing: The malaise of the Labour Party and the left in general has come not from a failure of ideas, but complete lack of that kind of charismatic leader that can blag the British people into renewing their subscription to “Marxist Bollocks Monthly” Brown’s complete lack of charisma and ability to communicate exposes the emptiness of the ideology underneath. There’s nothing there, at all, and without the pretty smile and handsome charm of a true Progressive Leader, this ugly truth is left naked for all to see. Long may Brown continue in his role.

If Liberal Conspiracy really wants to reinvigorate the Left, all it needs to do is find that charismatic new leader. If you want power Sunny, it’s yours – just find the leader, that’s it, and embrace the inner Authoritarian and spank your Command Economy monkey to your heart’s content. Just don’t pretend you’re achieving anything else.