Will Straw has written a chapter for the Hansard Society's new report, 'The internet and the 2010 election', in which he argues that Labour's online team and local campaigners learned some important lessons from Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
I’ve written a chapter for the Hansard Society’s new report, ‘The internet and the 2010 election‘, in which I argue that Labour’s online team and local campaigners learned some important lessons from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. There is now an imperative on the leadership candidates to continue the party’s “cultural glasnost” process by using technology to enable engagement with members.
I argue that:
“[In the general election] The Conservative party’s approach focused on improving the user-based experience of the wider electorate by investing in a shiny new website and spending money on Google ads. The Labour party, meanwhile, has tended to focus its online efforts on increasing the number, and enhancing the work, of its activists.”
Examples of the online effort include the party’s single issue websites like Ed’s Pledge which brought in new activists, putting policy briefings and rebuttals online so activists could get the information they needed directly, and facilitating the best ideas from the grassroots like ‘Mob Monday‘ which encouraged activists to use the party’s online phonebank. Not everything went to plan with the crowd-sourced poster depicting David Cameron as Gene Hunt a particular downpoint.
Offline, local campaigns embraced Obama’s “respect, empower, include” mantra. Greater numbers of volunteers and greater activity on the doorstep was recorded than at any time in recent years. The result was that a YouGov poll showed that, despite the money that Lord Ashcroft had poured into marginal seats, by the end of the election more members of the public had been contacted by a Labour activist than by an activist from any other party. Over the course of the campaign 17 per cent of the public had been contacted by Labour’s foot soldiers – by telephone, on their doorstep, or somewhere neutral like a shopping centre – compared to 16 per cent by Conservative activists and five per cent by Liberal Democrats.
Labour’s leadership candidates have expressed warm words about continuing the party’s process towards becoming a more open, grassroots movement. But this will mean little unless they give members greater power including “in the decision-making of the party”. I warn that:
“If Labour is serious about giving its members the tools to self-organise and in letting go of its command-and-control, this must extend from the online to the offline with restraints on vibrant local branches lifted.”
The Hansard Society’s book, ‘The internet and the 2010 election: putting the small ‘p’ back in politics?’ is edited by Rachel K. Gibson, Andy Williamson and Stephen Ward. It contains chapters Blue State Digital’s Matthew McGregor and Liberal Democrat Voice’s Mark Pack among others.
There is an event to launch the report at Portcullis House from 6.30pm to 8pm this evening. Register online.
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10 Responses to “Yes we did?”
Alan Lockey
I think it’s right to focus on the positives on this issue. But we are light years away from an Obama-style movement. It’s a sad fact that most of Labour activists experience of the 2010 campaign was simply as leaflet monkeys, putting out hundreds of centrally created negative leaflets. We just binned them in my constituency, negativity wasn’t what we wanted to run on. The swing was 2.1%.
Encoruaginly, the leadership candidates all seem alive to the power of internet political communication and its potential to empower activists. It has to play a massive role for us going forward, purely because it’s a far more equal playing field.
winston k moss
RT @leftfootfwd: Yes we did? What Labour learned from Obama #webelect http://bit.ly/c6eFND
Billy Blofeld
All the political parties are a pile of shite.
Has nobody noticed that people engage far more with flash images of the party leaders that we can slap? How many million hits did that website get now?
Politics is dead. It is time to bring on the people themselves……… on-line is fine………. I’ll vote with my X-Factor style button……
Mike
take a bow LFF
Simon Landau
Part of the reality that we have to face in Labour is that the online presence is way below where we need to be. The Harriet Harman web chat I attended was appalling on the basic levels of a) ease of registration b) ease of Q&A and c) speed. The Labour Party website is just not up to the requirements for a mass participatory movement (e.g. does not support browsers like Chrome and is only tested on Firefox). Please Will, do not congratulate Labour for only reaching 17% of the electorate ! My dearly missed MP from East Cleveland, Ashok Kumar, had a contact rate of 80% in his constituency and it is great to see Tom Blenkinsop carrying on in that tradition. Check out how Tom uses social media as part of his day-to-day politics. Meanwhile LFF should not take a bow but open up a campaign – how to make the Labour participation experience more effective through the use of collaborative technology. The Labour party website needs to be at the core of this experience.