Does Iain Dale know much about blogs?
A couple of days ago Tory blogger Iain Dale wrote an article for the Sunday Telegraph which repeated the same meme that left-wing blogs are boring and right-wing blogs is where the impact and numbers are at.
Usually I let it go because it seems to be a psychological condition amongst right-wingers that they have to continually pat themselves on the back in fear of looking inadequate. As the latest amusing example, here’s Daniel Hannan MEP desperately pleading to be let into the club. I don’t even have the heart to give him a primer about blog ‘hits’ versus ‘absolute unique users’. Anyway, Iain Dale said:
Over the last few years, Right-of-centre blogs such as my own (Iain Dale’s Diary), Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome, Dizzy Thinks, Nadine Dorries MP, Donal Blaney, Devil’s Kitchen and John Redwood’s Diary have come into their own. Several are now read by more than 100,000 individuals every month.
…
Bloggers like me, Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome and Guido Fawkes have become part of the media punditry circuit. But on the Left-of-centre, tumbleweed still blows around the blogosphere.
Gotta love the ‘media punditry circuit’ quote. But tumbleweed, really?
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Derek Draper is poisonous for the Labour party
If there’s one lesson for the Labour party to be learned from smeargate – it’s that if Derek Draper is leading your online operations then you may as well give up politics.
The antics of Damian McBride and Derek Draper, the latter now beyond redemption (again), epitomise all that has gone wrong with the Labour Party. That Alastair Campbell, John Prescott and others at cabinet level put their faith in Draper to bolster their online operations has now shown to be stupidity of near epic proportions.
But in case it isn’t already clear to the party why we are angry, it’s because we expect more of the left. We expect more of a party that claims to represent the left. We understand the need for pragmatism, for building narratives, and sometimes the need for discipline. But this episode serves to highlight all that has gone wrong with the Labour party.
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The smugness of the right
The smugness pours through Iain Dale’s article at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, as Dale tries to assess how much of a competitor Derek Draper’s Labour List is likely to be to sites such as Conservative Home.
Liberal Conspiracy is too serious, according to Dale, so there is room open on the Left for a big blog, but the smugness threatens to choke off whatever point Dale was making when he says, “It would be good…to have some real competition for a change.”
In the words of my forefathers, what an arrogant little shoite Iain Dale is. What I’d like to know is this: by what standard can Conservative Home or the Spectator Coffee House be judged as more successful than any individual or collective Left effort? More visits? By that definition, the websites of the mainstream meedja have us all beaten – but the very reason we bloggers write in the first place is that we don’t want to read inane drivel. Quality matters – not just popular appeal.
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What we need for campaigning
I recently wrote about the Obama campaign’s ground operations that helped them win the election, and pointed out that many of the online techniques used by the campaign were first pioneered by US left-wing blogs.
Everyone in the UK now keeps talking about aping the Obama campaign but no one has actually done anything about it yet as far as I’ve seen. But this may soon change. So what can we do and what is required?
First, some questions need to be answered.
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Dealing with right-wing trolls
There’s an interesting blog post here about online trolling, which basically affirms my theory that if a blog’s debate level is allowed to deteriorate by allowing loads of trolling, then it gets worse.
The ‘broken windows’ theory, online:
Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to “own” their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves.
This is why we have a tight comments policy, and I stick by my view that drive-by commenters who come here only to say ‘oh you call yourself liberals then‘, or ‘lefties are just stalinist evil scum‘ etc, will have their vowels removed. This is a debate and discussion site aimed at the liberal-left, though it is an open site and I encourage constructive debate, broken windows will not be tolerated for obvious reasons. If you want to hurl insults, use Guido Fawkes – that’s all they do there.
‘Communities in Control’ – the bloggers’ consultation begins!
A big thanks to all of you who volunteered to contribute to our series on the ‘Communities in Control’ white paper – it looks like we’re off and running!
Here’s a run-down of who’s been delegated to do what:
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Happy Birthday Liberal Conspiracy
We are one years old today. Of course, this news is bigger than an Obama win so I’m not sure why the headlines of newspapers around the world are ignoring us. You can’t have everything eh?
It still feels amazing being here in Los Angeles and celebrating Barack Obama’s win. And yes, I was part of that because for the last three weeks we made calls to the states of Nevada (especially!), Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio (which I though we wouldn’t win), Indiana and Montana. On election day, as poll results started coming in to the office we were still making last minute calls to Colorado and Alaska, even when Ohio was called for Obama and the race was effectively over. The dedication of the foot-soldiers was unyielding and complete. Victory, when it came, was sweet. Onwards and upwards, comrades!
Northern Ireland women on Northern Ireland and abortion
Before Sunny went to the USA, he and I created a Liberal Conspiracy photo gallery for photo articles and essays on some of the people and issues we’re covering at LC.
I’ve used it to post a collection of pictures of and quotes from some of the Northern Ireland women who are campaigning to have abortion rights extended to Northern Ireland when parliament votes on Abortion Act amendments at the report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. The women speak for themselves, which is surely at least as good as me ranting.
You’ll see that they are concerned that the great Gordon Brown has already done for their chances of a Yes vote by agreeing to an anti abortion deal with the Demoractic Unionists in exchange for the DUP’s support on 42 days’ detention.
They also talk about the role they expect Westminster to play in Northern Ireland, and about their disappointment in Stormont.
The gallery sits on my hangbitch site at the moment, and with a variety of logos, because we didn’t manage to integrate the gallery at LC before Sunny left. We’ll sort that out when he gets back.
I’ve also added audios of all the speakers at last week’s pro choice lobby at parliament.
Link to Northern Ireland photo gallery.
Blog Nation and future of politics, online
I was reading about the US event Netroots Nation over the weekend and realised – I hadn’t properly written about Liberal Conspiracy’s own Blog Nation event a few months ago. There was plenty of commentary across other blogs but it didn’t really reflect what I had in mine when I organised it.
Blogging about blogging again? You betcha. I’ve been discussing the future of political blogging at various events, and I’ve been invited to participate at the bloggers fringe at both the Libdem and Green party conferences in coming weeks. Oh and there’s the infamous David Lammy incident I want to go over again.
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We need your help for a briefing on Anthony Browne
A week ago the director of the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange, Anthony Browne, joined London Mayor Boris Johnson as his new policy director. He was replacing Nick Boles, also formerly of Policy Exchange, for screwing up over the Ray Lewis incident.
Put aside for a minute that the Charity Commission recently said (pdf) that: “there was no evidence of [Policy Exchanging displaying] party political bias towards the Conservative party or any other political party.”
After all, so what if James O’Shaughnessy, another former director of research at Policy Exchange, joined the Conservative Party as director of research. So what is one of Policy Exchange’s authors and fundraisers, Munira Mirza, is Boris Johnson’s director of arts? No connection, see?
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Fifth Estate or Democratic Tool?
When we think about blogging and the development of human interactions through the web, it is easy to assume some kind of historical determinism. The Internet is one huge sandbox, with new blogs and campaigning sites being launched all the time. Most peter out (I’ve been involved in a couple of those myself) but others persist, and grow. This trial-and-error approach suggests that we are at least inching towards a more sophisticated and empowering blogosphere, which exercises more influence over politics and therefore the direction this country is headed.
The Blog Nation event earlier this week raised some of the key issues that the Left needs to answer in order to become more effective online. As I crouched in the front row of the event, rubbing my temples and trying to think of answers, the following thought occurred to me: What if this is all there is? By which I mean, perhaps it is impossible to become much more organized. I refrained from articulating this thought at the time, but it did seem a deft, if nihilistic way of avoiding giving an answer to some of the questions posed, above. Perhaps there is no historical determinism to any of this, and we are not destined to develop anything significantly more efficient than what we have now.
Now I don’t know whether I really believe things to be so hopeless, but if its true it may not be such a bad thing. Rather than grandiose ideas of the blogosphere become some kind of Fifth Estate, perhaps we should aspire to nothing more than another tool for the people to use in checking the power of the elite (both elected representatives and others who hold positions of influence).
Of course we should ask how existing bloggers and activists can work better together, but that is just oiling the machine, rather than inventing a new one. A more important focus is to try to increase access to the new information and opinion that is appearing online. Just as increasing literacy strengthens democracy and promote equality, so computer literacy can strengthen it too. So, my suggestion for the next open source campaign – introduce one relative, friend or colleague to blogging each month. This need not mean forcing them to set up their own blog. Instead, just a gentle explanation of the power of RSS, and the suggestion that they bookmark one – just one – of the fine sites listed here.
Ever so slightly longer version cross posted at my own corner.
Fighting for our civil liberties, post Davis
The Green party has put forward a candidate in the by-election against David Davis. Left of David Davis? Check. A left / progressive candidate? Check. Wants to push for even more civil liberties? Check. So the Labour and lefty bloggers must be rising up in support? Erm… well, there’s Neil Harding… and a lot of tumbleweed rolling by.
[update: non-Greens support also from: peezedtee, Dave Cole, Stuart Jefferey, Socialist Unity, Unbeliever, Pamphlet Labour]
Yes, it really does look like many lefties really will cut off their noses to spite their face on this issue. Well, I’m not sitting here praying David Davis fails miserably because the outcome would a vindicated Gordon Brown willing to push it through with the Parliament Act if the Lords reject the 42 days bill as expected.
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Pictures from Blog Nation
Yesterday around 80-90 people met up at our first Blog Nation, held at the Guardian newsroom in London. Here are some pictures…
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Where will blogging go from here?
An editor at a paper asked a question the other day – given that in all likelihood Labour was going to be out of power at the next General Election, how was the left going to get used to being out of power. And how would bloggers react?
It’s an interesting question. I think there are a series of questions we should be thinking about now.
- Once New Labour goes out of power, it will be enveloped in furious infighting to resolve its future direction. What part can bloggers play in influencing the narratives and supporting various groups (factions?).
- Can the web be used to build grass-roots activism? Isn’t that the future of the liberal-left when a right-wing government is in power?
- How can we facilitate and have the discussions about taking the liberal-left forward?
Will New Statesman run a candidate against Davis?
Word reaches me that the New Statesman editors have been looking for a candidate to run against David Davis in the by-election.
You may already be aware that today New Labour announced they wouldn’t stand anyone against Davis. Part of the problem apparently was that the Labour PPC for the area himself was against the 42 days.
Yesterday I was told that New Statesman magazine has been actively looking for someone to stand to the left of David Davis on a platform of even more civil and social liberty.
Its not clear whether they’ve found someone yet. The current edition will go to print today or tomorrow and we’ll know when it hits the news stands.
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Has Political Betting gone Tory?
Some years ago now the former BBC journalist and Liberal Democrat activist Mike Smithson decided to start a blog for pleasure and profit. The story of Political Betting is undoubtedly one of the successes of the British blogosphere – but it also provides a cautionary tale for those who suppose that the internet itself is politically neutral.
Yuri Andropov, briefly boss of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and before that its chief ideologist, believed that the personal computer represented a definitive break, or step-change, in the means of production whose effect would be to destroy socialism. And there can be no doubt that, at least in Britain, the energy of political blogging is with the political Right.
It’s easy and comfortable to think that this is simply because we have an exhausted Labour government – once Labour’s back in its natural home of opposition, left blogging will bloom and the internet become the capillary system of a new progressive politics. For me, Political Betting suggests otherwise.
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Netcast update
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I have recruited additional writers to help me with the daily web review.
I have personally compiled the daily web review since Liberal Conspiracy was launched last year. I’ve very much enjoyed it, but I’m also keen to bring a fresh perspective to the review, and I’m sure that the bloggers I have assembled will do just that. You’ll probably know them from their contributions to the comments, but I’d like to introduce them nevertheless ::
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A tube-crawl on the 31st?
Yup, it’s our first opportunity to stick one up at Boris Johnson. Since BoJo is banning drinking on the tube from 1st June, it has been suggested by various people (ok, bloggers mostly) that we get together for an almighty piss-up on the 31st of May. It also happens to be a Saturday, which is handy.
A tube-crawl then? Various Liberal Conspirators are already up for this… if any readers want to join us then email me and I’ll let you know where and when. Suggestions for venues gratefully received too.
Update
I should have been clearer. This tube-crawl is primarily for Liberal Conspirators, readers and contributors. Not random Facebookers. Hence I haven’t made it part of another event.
Update 2
Sadie has asked whether we’ll be going around on the Circle Line or drinking in one place. I think we can do both. Legally. But, apparently, she’ll be part of the rowdy crowd. Let’s not do a Guido, yeah? 
Writers protest to Tesco
Writers from English PEN are protesting agains Tesco’s action in Thailand as an attack on freedom of speech. Tesco doesn’t care.
Housekeeping: writers, colours and cacheing
As you would have noticed already, the colour scheme has changed further over the last week. For that you can thank Jennie’s “pus and blood scheme” comment which, if a bit stark, was quite apt I thought. I realise the Libcon look and feel is still a bit inconsistent and I’m working on that. Suggestions always welcome.
I should have announced this earlier but… I’m pleased to announced that Alix Mortimer, Mat Bowles and Laurie Penny have joined as regular contributors. There’s more changes to the LC contributors coming, but I’m currently in the process of launching our next campaign (more tomorrow hopefully) so am busy with that.
Lastly, (and this is for the computer geeks only) I’ve enabled WP-Cache for this blog because the front page layout makes more database queries than a normal blog would. My only problem is that the ‘Recent Comments’ tab on the right doesn’t update when cacheing is enabled. Anyone know how I can still keep that dynamic?
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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