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Hard yards?

3. David Owen, co-founder of the SDP in the 80s, was one of the first to open my eyes. He suggested a “progressive alliance” built initially around the defence of the National Health Service. “It's mad [for the parties of the centre-left] to be competing against each other,” he said. “Get agreement on something like the NHS and then take it to a constitutional convention.” There, a common programme on the health service and constitutional reform could be agreed, with trickier issues such as nuclear disarmament parked for future consideration.

He was very exercised by the case of Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. It was crazy for Labour to oppose her when her values fitted so well with theirs. Lucas felt the same way. In an email, she told me she rejected the idea of a new party, but backed the idea of pacts. “The first-past-the-post system is designed to keep power in the hands of the few,” she wrote, “and we need to hack that system before we can change it. Until we have the electoral reform we so desperately need, we should be considering the potential of locally agreed progressive pacts for the next general election.”

Another conversation that influenced me was with Paul Arnott, one of the founders of the East Devon Alliance. The EDA was formed only two years ago to take on the Conservative-dominated council, but it already has 10 councillors and the independent candidate it backed in the general election came second to Tory Hugo Swire, polling an astonishing 13,000 votes, well ahead of Ukip, Labour and the Lib Dems. “I just wanted to take young Russell Brand and flush his head down the khazi,” Arnott told me. “It was so frustrating because we were doing precisely what he was advocating, though we were rather more middle-aged and unattractive. We really wanted to provide an alternative, but because unlike him we're grown-ups we knew the only way to do it is to put yourself up at local elections – do the hard yards first, Russell.”