The end of "Business as Usual"?

Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian comments on Gordon Browns speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations in London on Monday where he said politics could not be "business as usual".

The Prime Minister's Speech was made at the same time as the announcement of plans to  to set up independent citizens juries to help the Government formulate key policies - the first jury will meet later this week on the subject of children with a second on Crime and Communities - and a citizens summit to help formulate a "British statement of values".

He also announced a cross-party Speaker's Conference to help tackle the issue of low voter turn-out. Mr Brown said that this rarely-used device would "address the problems of the political system itself" to tackle the problem where "once 84% of people voted, and that was 17 out of every 20, in the last election it was less than 62% - 12 in every 20. In the 1950s 1 in 11 people joined a political party, today it is 1 in 88. Once political parties aggregated views from millions of people, now they need to broaden their appeal to articulate the views of more than the few. In 1987 nearly half the electorate identified fairly, or strongly, or very strongly with a political party, now only 1 in 3 do so. 20 years ago 4 in 10 people trusted the government to put the needs of the nation above those of political parties, more recently it has been only 1 in 5."

The speech itself again reiterated the commitment to greater local involvement where people will influence their beat policing, their local NHS, the help carers get and what schools offer.

Polly Toynbee commented today that, "Brown is right to point to vibrant expressions of civic life in parallel but apart from the political process. Millions of people do good things that never intersect with the waning life of local political parties, joined by only one in 88 voters".

She cautions that, "These promises are tricky. Will each participant protest when not all their views are acted on?"

However she also criticises those who, "dismiss this ambition to reach outwards, the obvious riposte should be: "What would you do?" Now that only 62% bother to vote and millions say Westminster is out of touch, doing nothing is not an option. Let the sceptics offer their own solutions."

Whilst her comments cover the overall proposals, something that she did not refer to was the Prime Minister's answer to questions after the speech where he was challenged to commit to provide more training and support to enable the less articulate to engage. His response was to say, "The Commission on Volunteering in England is proposing, as I think people here know, that we do far more to help train people. I want us to provide some more finance to enable that to happen. It is clearly a challenge for the future that more training funds are available for this and I think we should see it as a central part of what we can actually do to back up the great work that different voluntary organisations are doing and we will try to do that."

If this commitment is significant, then maybe we can say it is the end of "business as usual"?