A spate of articles in recent days herald the growth of the left blogosphere. The next year and the general election will be make or break for many blogs.
Left Foot Forward has been quiet over the last week enjoying our Christmas break but we have come out of hibernation to highlight a few stories that relate directly to the left blogosphere.
We were very flattered by Tim Montgomerie’s piece on Sunday for Conservative Home about how the “British Left is developing better and better online products” in which he described this blog as “an intelligent blog that examines all Tory policy.” This morning, James Crabtree of Prospect has an article on Labour List trailing a longer piece in tomorrow’s New Statesman about the rise of the left blogosphere. Both pieces make several references to Left Foot Forward including describing this blog as “one of the most important nodes between the progressives and the media.”
Meanwhile, Labour List reported over Christmas that 305,000 people have visited its pages over 2009 making it the second most influential political blog of the left after Liberal Conspiracy. Both Crabtree and Montgomerie also highlight the creation of Tory Stories, a new blog from Jon Cruddas MP and Chuka Umunna (Labour PPC for Streatham), which aims to act as “as a depository for evidenced articles on Conservatives in local and regional government, showing that, once in office, the party’s actions consistently fail to match its rhetoric.” Alongside Next Left, Go Fourth, Alastair Campbell’s blog and the sites of Labour MPs Tom Harris and Tom Watson plus lesser known sites like Political Scrapbook, Hopi Sen, and Left Outside, the left blogosphere is looking a lot stronger at the start of 2010 than it did a year ago.
The next year and the “watershed election” in March or May will be make or break for many blogs. If a Labour defeat is followed by a leadership election it will provide a second opportunity for Left-wing sites to make their mark. How will each site compete for space with the mainstream media? What unique services will each blog offer to make them indispensible to activists, floating voters, and journalists? How will bloggers interact with one another to share interesting information while avoiding navel gazing (perhaps this article falls short on that front)? And, crucially, how will bloggers make a living if they aim, as Left Foot Forward does, to work full time?
In November, I made a speech to the Future-democracy 2009 conference in which I highlighted three areas where I felt there was potential for growth in the British blogosphere: the use of video, integration of twitter into blogging platforms, and coordination between online campaigning groups like 38 degrees and blogs. Guido Fawkes has already shown how witty/acerbic videos can reach a larger audience than 300-word blog posts while Tweetminster has innovative ideas about how to aggregate tweets.
These are exciting times to be involved in the interaction between technology and politics. The challenge is to make our blogs increasingly relevant and useful.
47 Responses to “2010: The year of the left blogosphere?”
Anon E Mouse
Richard Blogger – I think you make a good point – my misunderstanding as to what you meant.
I would say though that I do think the Tories are far more Eurosceptic than they portray themselves and for Brits that’s OK I feel.
The problem we have as a society is there seems to be no choice in the directions all the major parties are taking.
For example I remain unconvinced that man made CO2 is the major contributor to the changing climate we have. The Tories with their daft “Vote Blue, Go Green” nonsense means my choice as a voter is shut down there. I vote Labour I get “green” taxes and the same from the Tories, Lib Dems etc.
That’s my complaint on the Lisbon Treaty – give me a choice. And on immigration and so on.
After the bloodbath the Labour Party is going to go through post election next year I just hope there is going to be a major difference between the parties because at the moment they are all the same and that’s not good.
Richard Blogger
Anon E Mouse
Don’t assume that there will be a “Labour bloodbath”, both Labour and Tories agree that the current constituency boundaries mean that there is a natural bias towards Labour (why else is Cameron promising a 100 MP cull if he gets into power? it is to give the Tories a natural bias). Andrew Rawnsley talked about this last Sunday.
To win a Commons majority of just one, the Tories must take 117 seats from other parties and not lose a single seat themselves. This is a feat they have not pulled off since before the Second World War. It will also require a swing to them in the election-deciding seats the like of which they have not managed since 1945, a swing greater even than Margaret Thatcher achieved in 1979 with the help of the winter of discontent.
To get ba landslide Cameron needs to do far better than Thatcher did. I do not need to remind you that Cameron is no Thatcher.
My guess is that there will be a hung parliament or a small majority one way or the other – my preference is left of centre, of course 🙂 Anyone who examines the policies of the parties cannot help avoid uttering the phrase “cigarette paper” (yeah, yeah, that dates my age, but surely people still understand what it it means…?) As you mention, if you want to curtail integration in the EU, if you want to stop green taxes (heck, if you want to stop cuts in public services!) you will not find a mainstream party on your side.
If there is a hung parliament then there are two things that can be deduced 1) it won’t last long and 2) it will force a polarisation in politics. Polarisation will mean that the parties will move to their natural positions. So maybe the Tories will move to the more eurosceptic, more AWG-sceptic, more tax cutting party that we saw under Hague and Howard. I certainly hope so (given their electoral track record). As for Labour, well, I reckon their natural position (given their history over the last 15 years) is New Labour. As a centre-leftie I would be happy with that just as long as the troughers are removed.
(Although I am not an AGW-sceptic I am against green taxes. I am against them because they are applied to me, an individual, when they should be against profligate, polluting industry. FWIW I have always conserved energy and resources, and green taxes feel to be punishing me for doing the right thing. Cameron can afford them, I cannot.)
Colin Hall
RT @leftfootfwd: Will 2010 be the year of the left blogosphere? http://bit.ly/63A8GC
Rory
Looking through the ‘Administrative Incompetence’ archive from September 18, I don’t think there is one piece highlighting the failings of a Labour council.
Anon E Mouse
Richard Blogger – Labour’s support will crash with the leadership debates – the party cannot seriously expect the public to vote for a man they never elected in the first place. The more people see Brown the more they dislike him. Party politics went out of the window last time with “Full third term” Blair. At least Brown should have had a leadership election in the party but he didn’t even have the guts to do that – he’s useless and is the best weapon the Tories have.
Can’t stand Cameron – too patronising for me I’m afraid. The boundaries are clearly unfair – the Tories got the most votes last time but didn’t form the government – go on PR I say. I like Clegg but he’ll never get in.
EU integration is too late for us and we were never asked which is clearly unfair as well. Who the hell do these people think they are ignoring their voters?
Finally on green taxes, they stink. I travel a lot and wonder just where the tax on flights actually go – probably to give Gordon Brown £12500 for cleaning a two bedroomed flat no one lives in, paid to his brother without a receipt when we pay for both his homes in Chequers and Downing Street. Or Jacqui Smith’s husbands porno’s.
Spend all the green taxes on chunks of the rainforest and I’d gladly pay just to stop palm oil plantations.
The people in this country are rightly sick of politics – it doesn’t matter who you vote for the government always gets in. Yes it will be a struggle for the Tories, (especially if the UKIP split the vote) to win but they will.
Labour will never get their supporters out with unemployment doing what it is. I asked a friend the other day if he’d vote Labour again at the election and for the first time in his life he’s not voting and he always votes. He said the next time he’ll vote Labour is when it is Labour and not “Tory Light”.