emmanuelle avril

An amazing coincidence

I sat down to watch Conference, this morning and in practising my friendship skills spoke to the woman in the seat beside me and when we exchanged names, I discovered that she was Emmanuelle Avril, whose paper, “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party” had caught my eye several years ago. (See below/overleaf for cross references to the paper and to my previous articles.)

So we had a coffee and talked about the coincidence that in a room of 3,500 people that we should sit together as she observed, the number of people who will have read the paper is very limited, which is a shame.

We talked about the answer as to why the stupidity of the previous afternoon had occurred. … …

The innovators dilemma in political parties

On my way to writing the article “Servants, not Masters”, I needed to check my material and links about Emanuelle Avril’s unfinished white paper called, “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party”. and was presented to the Political Studies Association 2015 conference, in March so before the 2015 election and consequent Labour leadership election. Eaton’s source identified a failure of the New Labour leadership to renew itself as a cause of it’s failure and Avril’s paper explains why they were always going to be incapable of it.

…. it is true to say that internal consensus and cohesion, as they manifested themselves in New Labour, constituted obstacles to innovation and therefore endangered the survival of the party …

and the ambitions of their successors. (This post continues overleaf/below.) … …