Posts of the week: reforming the banks and learning from Reagan’s speeches

Welcome to my weekly round-up of two blogging highlights from the past week: the post that I found most interesting or enjoyable to write and the post from someone else that I found most interesting or entertaining.

A post from me…

The email the party could have sent to members and supporters

This week I returned to my theme of how party members and supporters should be seen as a campaigning resource that can help ministers achieve their aims in government, rather than as passive spectators awaiting the next piece of news about what has been agreed in talks with the Conservatives. I gave as an example an email that Vince Cable might have sent out this week, calling people to help achieve liberal aims rather than simply telling us the latest news:

Sorting out our banking system doesn’t have to be about what the bankers do, what the regulators do or what I can persuade George Osborne to agree.

It can be about what you do. Right now.

And what is it that people can do? Read my full post to find out.

… and a post from someone else

Learning from Ronald Reagan, master storyteller

Neil Stockley looks at what made Ronald Reagan such an effective political speechmaker:

Reagan was a master storyteller, He understood, instinctively, what political narratives are about and how they work. He saw that his compatriots feared national decline, in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, the oil shocks and stagflation of the 1970s. Reagan offered them a happy ending.

Read the full post from Neil Stockley here.