The pertinent part of the post:
“He didn’t know the heavies were planning to rip Guppy off. It must have seemed a serious plot. Guppy made it clear that he could try other means of finding the journalist’s address. Johnson assured him he didn’t have to – and did absolutely nothing at all to find it himself. I actually had that confirmed by Clive Goodman, the now disgraced formed News of the World royal correspondent who listened to the tape. Johnson said he would approach a specific third party. He specifically didn’t. The only conclusion I can draw is that he was trying to make sure Guppy didn’t manage to have the man attacked. Rather, he was stalling, waiting for Guppy’s attention span to expire – a safe bet for those who knew him well.” – Free Born John

“He is under no such illusions about all opinions being equally valid.”
I cannot speak for DK of course, but if that is the case I doubt the opinions he thinks are ‘valid’ are the same ones you do. So who decides that you are right about this and DK is wrong? Hmmmm, looks like we’re back to god again.

“And I suppose that your new found relativism will tell you that the handful of more intemperate comments you’ve found in Polly Toynbee’s columns make her just as abusive in her arguments as DK?”
Nowhere did I say or even suggest that. Who decides what level of personal abuse is acceptable in debate and what isn’t? Hmmmm…

“…Boris Johnson…” I’m no great cheerleader for Boris myself (I just wanted to show that PT is no angel herself when it comes to using personal abuse in her arguments), but you and readers of this discussion might be interested to know that that story about Boris was rebutted by someone who was involved (Link).

I think that you’re mistaking public debate for those seminars with hippy teachers where ‘there are no wrong answers.’ DK will probably explain to you that you’re a victim of state education (all teachers are c**** dontcha know?).

He is under no such illusions about all opinions being equally valid. That’s one of the few things I like about him.

And I suppose that your new found relativism will tell you that the handful of more intemperate comments you’ve found in Polly Toynbee’s columns make her just as abusive in her arguments as DK? You think that using the term ‘Euro-Crazies’ goes beyond the bounds of reasonable debate? Have you ever met *any* Eurosceptics?

I think that she made the case that Boris Johnson is a serial liar and a sociopath rather well in that article – he did, after all, provide details of a journalist’s whereabouts so that one of his school chums could have him beaten up. But perhaps that’s me being too judgemental for your relativist soul?

And I can’t see why you think you’ve hoisted me on my own petard with my slight on Simon Jenkins. I’ve not argued that it is always wrong to be rude about people because of their views.

Yes, and comment notification. I’m so used to LiveJournal that I having to think to come and look at this post to see if anyone had replied to me was an odd sensation, and threaded comments, like you say, let things develop more conversationally.

This is not the case with most of the Bloggertarians. Their grasp of social science is so profound that they think that the best way to argue is to…

- personify an historical process – usually as a politician or public figure
- call that person a c***
- call their insult an argument.

“Not the biggest fan of the Toynster myself [... thanks for the compliment... ] but the attacks always play the (wo)man, not the ball.”

Actually, it is entirely possible to do both. Yes, I am extremely rude about (to?) Polly but that is because she is the worst kind of “do as I say not do as I do” nanny-stater.

But one does try to point out at the same time that her information is often flawed, skewed or just plain wrong (the Fact-checking Pollyanna blog is sadly missed on that score) and that her arguments are inconsistent or contradictory — often within the same article (Tim Worstall does this very well).

It is not really enough simply to call people names: you need to have some substance to the attack too. Some people do argue that the argument can become obscured amongst the swearwords but — hey! — such is life…

DK

OK, first of all, the answers to the questions in post 19 are as follows:

1) Polly Toynbee, in her Guardian column of July 17 entitled ‘Boris the jester, toff, serial liar and sociopath for mayor’ (Link).
2) Polly Toynbee, in her Guardian column of October 16, entitled ‘We can’t let the Euro-crazies drag us out of the club’ (Link).
3) Polly Toynbee, in her Comment is Free article of April 27, entitled ‘Live and Let Di’ (Link).
and finally
4) Yours truly, on October 20 2006 (Link).

Polly Toynbee is no stranger to dishing out personal abuse. Neither are you. I suspect that the reason you criticise the ‘bloggertarians’ (I still think that’s one of the daftest supposed insults I’ve ever come across) for their attitude to Polly is because you agree with her and disagree with them, not because they ‘get personal’.

Like it or not political debate is about opinion – Agreement and disagreement, not right and wrong. If that means I’m a “relativist” then so be it. DK and Mr Eugenides and all the other libertarians have as much right to criticise Toynbee’s constant demands for state intervention and compulsion as you have to criticise Simon Jenkins and Madeleine Bunting.

I don’t get people like you who want to shut down debate saying “I’m right and you’re wrong”.

Aha! Trick questions!

Firstly, I have no real problem with general rudeness. I usually avoid it, but not always (few bloggers *always* avoid rudeness – how could you?).

Personally, I’ve never been a Trot, and I’m sure that they can defend themselves. But I know the one you have in mind, and I happen to know that he is generally rude out of a lack of patience rather than a lack of coherent arguments.

This is not the case with most of the Bloggertarians. Their grasp of social science is so profound that they think that the best way to argue is to…

- personify an historical process – usually as a politician or public figure
- call that person a c***
- call their insult an argument.

Being called a stupid c*** by someone who is plainly not very clever is a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. No-one should have to endure this.

And the difference between Polly (sometimes rude to others, often unfairly and disproportionately insulted) and Madeline Bunting? Well, only a relativist would argue that *every* debater should be treated with equal respect. Polly is a writer who speaks to a certain part of this governing party’s soul.

Her arguments may be wrong, but they are hardly immoral. Madeline, on the other hand, IS a relativist. In fairness, I’ve only really seen her *position* being attacked. But the fact that she is given space by a newspaper like The Guardian illustrates the rotten cold that the liberal left has caught in recent years.

This puts me in mind of a watered-down version of that Irving / Oxford Union debate. Should Irving be allowed to say what he thinks? Probably. Should he be allowed to say it on a platform provided by an institution that cares about it’s reputation? Probably not.

Should Polly T be spared further punishment from rude bloggers by The Guardian’s editors? (i.e. Should she be axed on humanitarian grounds?) Absolutely not. This would damage the newspaper’s reputation for promoting reputable public debate.

Should Madeline be axed on similar humanitarian grounds? No. But she should be axed on sensible editorial grounds. No respectable rationalist newspaper should be regularly giving one of it’s main editorial slots to a relativist god-botherer.

This is bang-on. Not the biggest fan of the Toynster myself (and I usually enjoy DK), but the attacks always play the (wo)man, not the ball.

Plus, I don’t know why you keep fingering just the ‘bloggertarians’. I think some Trots are equally bad. I’m particularly reminded of one, who you know well, that just calls everyone ‘cunt’ without engaging in anything serious. How is that different from… say, Devils Kitchen?

Gracchie – I welcome and enjoy critiques and have had some really good arguments with other bloggers- but I don’t welcome attacks on my position.

Completely agreed.

Chief among these points are the reminder that blogging is an evolving medium, that should be taken as one part of the Internet revolution. It needs to be considered as part of that wider technological development. And for me, at least, being part of that “barnstorming” phase is an end in itself.

I also see you’ve touched on the notion that blogging is more influential in terms of “social capital” and civil society, than in forcing acute political change. I’ve tried to touch on this at my own place, where I wrote that “the operative word in citizen journalist is the former, not the latter.”

I think the attraction for all of us, is that we see the potential of this medium to shift and undermine power structures. I think it is that notion which unites us, regardless of where we see the main power imbalance lying in a patriarchy, class structures, racial hegemony, Rupert Murdoch, oil companies, the CIA, or all of the above. Exploring the myriad ways in which this may be done is the project. Recently, for example, I’ve noted a small way in which Chavez was undermined by technology in Venezuela, and how the masses can break the power of the record labels using new digital technology. In the light of the very, lets face it, popular stories about donations this week, I would like to see similar ideas applied to party funding too.

(Sorry, I didn’t mean for this comment to be a big signpost to my own blog, but what can one do!?)

Hennyway, I’m off to meet some politicians and policy wonks tomorrow, at an impromptu Nick Clegg speech to the SMF. I shall mention blogs, and point them here.

Who said of a prominent British politician: “Jester, toff, self-absorbed sociopath and serial liar, the man could still win.”?

Who referred to opponents of the EU reform treaty as “Euro-crazies” and “Euro-hysterics”?

Who described a British icon dead for ten years as “a sad neurotic”, “brainless” and “a celebrity who believed her own hype”?

…and finally
Who described a Guardian columnist in the heading of a blog post as:“A See You Next Tuesday at work”?

Yes and no. I think that sometimes this sort of thing brings out the worst – and most obsessive – characteristics. Sometimes, when writers are in some way intellectually dishonest, fatuous, or vain, they deserve it (and, IMHO, Robert Fisk or John Pilger fit the bill here perfectly). But – and here’s an example – Polly Toynbee only needs to write a sentance and a few dozen bloggertarians pop out of the woodwork (no newspaper would ever publish most of them – and not for conspiratorial reasons) and give her what they imagine to be a ‘fisking’.

Not because she is intellectually inconsistent, or any of those other vices, but because she is a middle class woman who is a ‘statist’ – she looks and sounds like the personification of what the bloggertarians hate most – the nanny stater.

They simply attack her in a highly personal way, over and over again because she doesn’t share their bizzare worldview. They do so from a position that would get them pilloried if they were ever given a bigger platform than their own little hypertext circle-jerks.

It isn’t a failing of the MSM that it doesn’t give bloggertarians a platform. It is simply that no medium that ever had a reputation to defend would hire one of them.

I’m not even against the idea that some writers will get a chorus of criticism every time they write something. There are plenty of paid columnists that deserve this. But when it goes beyond ridicule of their positions, and gets personal in the way that Ms T gets, it’s just disgusting.

I’m pretty-damn far from being an enthusiast for Polly’s worldview myself, by the way. But the treatment that she gets is oppresive – and as a phenomenon, it is the poor relation of book-burning.

Well, I’ve spent two years writing on a blog with lots of comments constantly and have attracted a fair amount of stick for it. I don’t feel like that, partly because I think it forces me to sharpen up my arguments… and clearly I’ve learnt from other people’s attempts to nitpick at me.

Isn’t this why we celebrate blogging though? So that we can nitpick at MSM writers and force them to be more sharp? (well, we’d like that but I don’t think anything’s changed). So why shouldn’t that apply to bloggers? The only thing I don’t like on my blog is ad hominems.

The reason I mention this to you is because my own experience is that the “separate blogs tangentially conversing” isn’t much of an advance on the Liberal Conspiracy setup. Trackbacks are still too unreliable, so unless it’s a conversation between already established big blogs, no-one gets around to following up most of the discussion.

However, I’m also curious to know which social media places you’d consider worth experimenting with from a “political discussion” point of view.

I think that blogging on the left of centre in the UK will only take off as a political force when Brown loses the next election. It’s no coincidence that overall in the US, blogging has been taken up by both sides, but the most interesting developments are in campaigns from outside the incumbent zone (e.g. Ron Paul or from the official opposition – Democrats.)

Sunny and others have touched on this point, but at the moment the Labour party is discredited and there are a bunch of left of centre people left without a real sense of direction. Ian Dale and Guido have a very clear focus, “get the Labour lot out” and that is part of what powers them.

Gracchi: Your point (f) deserves another blog I think. To me the thing most urgently needed is more “brainstorming” (if you’ll forgive that ugly word) about how UK blogs can organise an influence on UK politics, because it’s pretty clear to me that we can’t just follow the US model, because our politics is structured differently.

For example, what does this framework tell us?

Weblogs are just one very flexible peice of content management software. They’ve been used for lots of different purposes and work for any website that wants to post dated items in decending order with a comments thread and an RSS feed.

I think that ‘social media’ is the more interesting space than ‘blogging’ – and sites like this one highlight this. Returning to my lukewarm reaction to The Liberal Conspiracy, I think that largish sites where lots of people contribute aren’t always capable of any of the interesting dynamics that you can get with either small personal blogs or other social networking tools. The need to respond in a linear way can often be oppressive – in the same way that detailed ‘fisking’ can be unconversational or adversarial. Fisking isn’t *always* a bad thing, but there’s more to life than point-by-point nitpicks.

Personally, I dislike having regular critical commenters lurking on my site, ready to pounce on anything they disagree with. Not because I lack any confidence in dealing with them, but because it disincentivises me from posting. Instead of spending ten minuites writing a throwaway post, I feel obliged to spend 90 minutes defending what I’ve written.

I often ask commenters like this to set up their own blog so that I our views can have a more tangential conversation.

But even with people that you broadly agree with, a multi-lateral conversation is much more productive and interesting. And this is something that I don’t think that sites such as this promote very well.

See Harry’s Place for details – a few very good bloggers, but stuck in a sort of ‘Groundhog Day’ – write a post, wait for Benji / Verchika / Morgoth (Christ, I know their names!!?!!) to pop up and rehearse their usual position and make snide remarks about each other’s views.

a. Yes Drudge is still key in the US and I suspect that Drudge like alternatives in the UK will be key as well. I should have said there were alternative ways to blog apart from the Drudge Guido model. I’ve never regarded that personally as an option for what blogging does.

b. Yes non-political blogs are great and have a massive influence. I don’t write only about politics at all on my own personal blog but try and write about film and literature and tons of other things too so I’d fit into a personal blog with politics motif. I would never discount personal blogging and also I think it has an effect on politics- too much stuff is too narrowly political at the moment in the UK sphere, I plan to write an article for LC at some point on that theme- that we neglect the other ways that we can learn about life (and hence politics as a subsector of life) at our peril.

c. Sunny’s point about bias. I’m against balance but I would take a different slant from Sunny in part because of my different preoccupations- I think that we should be tough on those bloggers that don’t engage with arguments- but where people do no matter where they come from you should treat them as you are treated by them. One of the things about a discussion is that it can improve both sides- I notice that in my debates with various rightwing bloggers.

d. I suppose that ties into a theme I didn’t explore which is the way that blogging can enrich everyone intellectually as well as politically- I think it can change our minds and make us learn things- and I’d agree with Paulie there. I think social media has a lot of capacity to do that and definitely that’s the principle reason I am a blogger.

e. Having said all that there is this question of impact- the US blogs have done well by having a campaigning impact particularly for Lamont on the left or Paul on the right- you could name other examples- I wonder if the UK blogs could do more of that. Take a candidate like Richard Taylor- I wonder whether one trend in teh blogosphere that you might see is a candidate like that emerge in say a London constituency around an issue. Dan Hardie’s stuff on the Iraqi interpreters I should have mentioned as well for a way that blogs are being used politically.

f. At the moment my diagnosis would be that the British blogosphere does well flying low- we’ve got our Guidos and Recess Monkeys. There are signs that an analytical sphere might be developing- Chris Dillow, Matt Sinclair, Paulie all those guys are sort of milling about there and we have some great other blogs as well who don’t write all the time about politics but have an impact and something to say about politics- what we don’t have on either the right or the left is the organisation blogs- blogs which get people together and say hey lets do this. I’m just interested in whether that can develop and to what scale.

This is where it pays to be a female blogger, blogging about EVERYTHING and then having a separate bit for politics that’s still attached to your main blog. Your average, focussed, generally male blogger has yet to cotton on to the conversational aspect of blogging that comes naturally to female bloggers [/rampant sexism]. This is why, when my better half went to the Lib Dem blog awards, and told me about the readership figures of the top ten, I was genuinely confused by the fact that I get five times the readership on a private, friends locked, personal blog…

Which is why I say that political bloggers need to talk to non-political bloggers more. If only because it will massively increase the reach of their words.

The progressives see themselves as trying to get back the liberal consensus that the Conservatives stole from them with concerted efforts over the 80s and 90s through direct mail, syndicated radio and investment in think-tanks etc. So the left is angry and the blogosphere is the only place that is articulating that anger and proposing to do something about it.

I think that lefties here are not agggressive enough and too willing to give ground to the right in the name of ‘balance’. Let the newspapers do that. Let the BBC do that. I don’t want to have any pretensions to find a balance on politics and strive towards consensus.

I’m quite open about the fact that I’m on the liberal-left and those are the ideals I want to see out there. Those are the ideals I want to promote and develop.

There’s a few points I’d like to make about the above comments.

1) First, much of the high-traffic that Guido and Iain Dale get is a direct result of the media coverage they get and thus become brand names. Obviously, the fact that they run light gossip or poke fun make them easily accessible, but you can’t get that far ahead in visitor numbers without the media spotlight. I think their content is less a factor in visitor numbers than the publicity. That means the opportunity exists for other blogs to also make a name for themselves.

2) The views about American blogging are correct but I feel one of the reasons why there are more readers on American blogs is because the general quality is better and it is very empowering.

In other words, American bloggers are much more gung-ho about getting things done as activists (as Daily Kos shows, but there are many others) which empowers people and they keep coming back to see how they can play a part in ways the normal system does not offer. The libertarians who have backed Ron Paul are also a good example.

3) I actually think the obsession with Westminster puts people off, and its one of the reasons why I want to avoid that here and focus more broadly on issues rather than political parties.

On how we can be different

1) Partisan political commentary – of course Comment is Free fills the same gap, but I think there is a need for a space that takes a broader look at liberal-left politics in a very partisan and aggressive way and wants to figure out a way forward.

2) Campaigning – Something we haven’t yet built up yet but there are plenty of plans by myself and others to do so. Eventually I think campaigning is what will make LC more empowering and different from most political blogs AS WELL AS the mainstream media itself. That is the basis on which the LC bloggers were signed up. I was explicit about my plans on campaigning.

3) Covering stuff that the MSM won’t do. Here I mean stuff on trade unions, obscure political candidates (like Daily Kos did with Ned Lamont) and media analysis. I’ll be saying more on this in the new week or so.

Jennie, you are right about the wide spread of blog popularity. The most popular search term this year has been…Britney Spears – OMG! Maybe I should start a blog called ‘Britney and Paris do UK politics’, or something Which brings me to Paulie’s point about the ‘long tail’. It’s been shown pretty conclusively that the ‘long tail’ in advertising income for bloggers produces almost nothing for the blogger. It pays to be ON the long tail but not IN it. In the same way UK political bloggers outside the top few hundred or so (the long tail) are getting an average daily number of unique visitors in single figures! As someone once said, that’s not blogging it’s merely typing

There certainly are many blogs which touch on political (small p) subjects in some way or other but I’ll stick by my contention that the majority (here and worldwide) almost never refer to politics in any meaningful sense (and pictures of Hillary Clinton dressed as a witch don’t count).

It is my firm belief that the future of UK political blogging has got to be in local issues. This, surely, is where positive results could reasonably be expected. This is where citizen journalism as opposed to citizen essay writing could make a difference. When we refer to the MSM we hardly ever seem to be talking about the local media which is almost universally abysmal. Dependent, as they are on local businesses and official contacts local papers avoid contentious issues almost entirely. It’s an area ideally suited to web based citizen publishing. Unfortunately there isn’t a decent sized audience out there – yet. Spend a day in your local paper shop and ask every customer who buys a local paper about blogs and blogging and I guarantee you’ll see more blank stares than you’ve seen in your life. And I don’t have any answer to that problem

On reflection I wonder how many ‘political bloggers’ are going to get excited about holes in the road, refuse collecting and the placement of zebra crossing when they could spend their time trying to change the whole world )

This suggests that the time for more “political action” sites is yet to come in the UK blogosphere, rather, we’re still at that earlier point of development. What made Drudge so powerful at the time is that he was prepared to run on rumour that established outlets were not ready to print/broadcast because they didn’t have evidence. Then the mainstream could jump on it “Drudge claims xxx.” Guido would seem to be in the same mould although UK libel law might slow him down at times.

Guido and Drudge aren’t really “bloggers” per se, so much as media outlets who happen to be on the internet. However, whilst the next wave in the US did come through blogging, I have to wonder if the next wave here will. Blogging is already old hat. In the UK a lot of blogs are attached to existing political structures. You’d have to suspect that if a new perspective is going to come from the UK internet on politics it’s going to come from one of the social networking areas.

That aside, the DKos model of direct influence comes mostly through:

a) Money
b) Volunteers

but as Henry notes, it’s a lot easier to gather enough of these to have an influence at more local levels. Then you might grow towards national influence. The difficulty in the UK is that at local levels it’s not clear how much more money and more volunteers can swing a parliamentary seat all that easily, or even make an impact on council elections.

Any regular campaigners got a view on this? Would extra campaign volunteers make a difference in your last campaign, given they came from a geographically disperse website (i.e. they were mostly not local.) What about money? What amounts of money would actually make a difference in a UK election campaign on the local level?

“There are millions of blogs out there and the vast majority have absolutely nothing to do with politics.”

Here’s my back-of-the-fag-packet breakdown.

- A small number of blogs that only post on Westminster / Holyrood / Stormont politics
- A larger number of blogs that largely cover the above – along with wider philosophical issues that touch on politics
- A number of blogs that have the opposite balance (and points along the scale between Kremlinology and wider political issues
- A number of blogs where individuals focus on specific policy areas that they are very interested in, or have on which they have some expertise
- A much larger number again that post on loads of things but occasionally touch on either Westminster gossip OR wider political pheonomena
- Loads of blogs where individuals comment largely on things around them – their work, their neighbourhood, etc, and very occasionally they touch on both Westminster gossip and less personalised issues like liberties, culture, the quality of goverment services etc.

I would argue that – while a handful of ‘superstar’ blogs (this one included) get lots of hits each day, they are the peak of ‘The Long Tail’ – and that the general bubble of public conversation on low-volume blogs – sites that have a multi-lateral conversation going on – is where the real ‘politics’ is happening. It is also where the vast bulk of page impressions are being recorded. For this reason, I think that capital-P Political Blogging is over-rated. It is not as important as we think it is.

I hope I’m right about this, because if I am, from a liberal / social democrat point of view, this is very good news.