If you are interested in political campaigning I recommend James Frayne's Campaign War Room blog.
James is fascinated by effective, gutsy, grassroots campaigning and his blog is dedicated to bringing the best thinking to the UK, where political campaigning is amateur in comparison to the US.
On his blog today he lists the key features of a campaign war room. It is not simply an open plan office. It must, be blogs, be the place where key decisions are taken and implemented:
"War rooms are often created because prior decision-making structures failed, perhaps because there were too many people involved in discussions, or because no one knew where authority lay. These were reasons why the most famous political war room of all - Clinton's in 1992 - was created. They need be tight so that people don't get bogged down by endless people given their opinions, and they need to have clear lines of authority so that everyone knows who can make what decision... I remember one campaign where we worked in the campaign office but ultimate authority for decisions lay off-site. It was a debacle as you can imagine. War rooms must contain those people who can actually make decisions."
Yesterday James was explaining why Europe was not at the top of voters' list of priorities... but how it could be:
"Conventional wisdom in Westminster [eg Mike Smithson] is that the public don't care about Europe, pointing out that polls show it sits well down the list of public priorities and that recent campaigns that have tried to push eurosceptic arguments have failed. This is partly true. Ask if they want a referendum and they'll say yes, but the public don't follow the ins and outs of debates on treaty changes and potential reform. But it only tells half the story. The opinion research is clear - if you link Europe in people's minds with issues that they do care about then Europe becomes relevant and important. The research shows there are three issues above all that do this: the cost of the EU; free movement of people within the EU (ie immigration); and concerns over the EU's effects on national security."
