Debategraph: Should Gordon stay or go? The sequel

When The Independent launched the map on Gordon Brown’s leadership of the Labour Party in June 2009, one of the clearest lines of reasoning to emerge from the debate was that Labour Party should delay a decision on the leadership until after after the Lisbon Treaty had been ratified.

As (from perspective of the map contributors):

• ratification would restrict the ability of a possible Conservative government to disrupt a process that was perceived to be in the wider interests of the Labour Party and the country, and

• the delay would give Labour MPs and party members a chance to gauge the speed and impact of any recovery from the recession.

Hence, with the Lisbon Treaty entering into force last month, and the economy’s emergence from recession apparently lagging behind the more optimistic projections at the time, it is perhaps not surprising that the leadership question should have resurfaced now.

So what does the collective intelligence of The Independent readership make of the question this time? Tell us what you think using the interactive debate map below.

As before, the structure of the map is like a wiki – every aspect is provisional, and open to further iterative improvement – and everyone can add new points and comments to the map.

The aim is to weave together and rate all of the salient issues, positions and arguments in a single rich, transparent structure – in which each idea and argument is expressed just once – so that anyone can explore quickly and gain a good sense of the perceived merits of the relevant ideas.

You can move around the map by clicking on the spheres: clicking on the smallest coloured spheres takes you deeper into an argument, clicking on the largest sphere takes you back up.

To rate the arguments, click on the arrows that connect the spheres – you will be asked to log in first time (to stop people voting for the same idea multiple times) – and as the community begins to rate the different ideas the thickness of the arrows will change to signal which arguments are perceived to be strongest and weakest.

To contribute to the map, click here or on the “+ button” below the map. There’s a quick video overview of the process here.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with developments on this map via the Independent Minds blog and @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a Google map) using the code shown below:

<iframe src='http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=18241&sc=small' frameborder='0' width='490' height='500' scrolling='no'></iframe>