Decentralisation – depends on where it is. I’d say that even local elections in a place like London should be fought on a regional basis – i.e. appeal to people as Londoners – as that can feed into a good regional campaign. There are lots of local community campaigns going on in different parts of the UK; political parties need to be a part of those, and candidates need to put down roots in those communities if they haven’t already in order to understand how their local party should operate. I’ll try and blog on this in the near future and let you know about it.

Given your experience campaigning across the pond, I’d appreciate it if you could fill in this survey for my research and pass the link on to other campaign volunteers/staffers you met:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=8g9IAUL6YqC1GY3pPbBWWA_3d_3d

Hopi: Final point, a lot of the things the left “needs” online isn’t within the power of the party to do. We really need a “talkingpointsmemo” factual reportage style site more than another Labour opinion blog, but that requires someone to set it up, put the effort into it and break a couple of stories. Someone who does that will do more good than almost anyone online could.

Agreed. I’ve in fact said this to everyone I’ve talked on the issue at length.

Rayyan – agree with what you said. On the figures, not 100% sure. Since SocNets were roughly around 5 million, I assumed the DailyKos/HuffPo crowd were lumped in with MyBO.

On that article – interesting, but as I spent a fair bit of time using and studying the website (we had to pull info for the campaign office!) none of that is particularly new to me. The trick for any party in the UK would be:
What do you do if you don’t have a particularly good candidate?
How do you decentralise to local constituencies?

I think despite its comparatively low usership, it was an incredibly effective platform and technology. Some further analysis:

http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Management/The-Barackobama.com-Difference.html

>I console myself by having a fairly low opinion of “opinion-blogs” (including my own), because in the end, all it is is burbling online, and I don’t really think what I do/say is going to change anyones votes.

I think place to look for blogs seriously changing things will be either Scottish, Welsh, Irish politics or the English Regions – since the numbers and building links offline make it so much easier to get penetration, and the regional local media is on it’s knees and much easier to compete/collaborate with. There is also much less competition to reach the attention of politicians in the regions.

It could be something like Curly in Newcastle, or alternatively a high-profile regional blog such as Created in Birmingham taking an interest in political life. In Brum there is also the prominent infrastructure provided by Paul Bradshaw that could help.

One of the directions I’m looking at is to focus on detailed coverage in 2 or 3 regions (maybe London / Birmingham or Manchester and the East Midlands) over the next 18 months to see what happens.

Rgds

I’ve said before that if I were the party campaign team I’d regard supporter email acquisition, support for labour organisers and activists, and methods for transmitting key messages (like leaflets, canvassing techniques, narrow policy interest briefings) as much. much. much more important than engaging with bloggers.

I think this is the party itself is focussing on, and quite right too. (Douglas Alexander is good on this)

That said, as Matt says, blogs are important in one area in getting stories up, creating a buzz that people need to listen to and helping to set the political agenda. I actually think the party is as good as the Tories on this sort of thing. It’s just that the kind of buzz you can create is very different when you’re in government to when you’re in opposition – Tory Troll and Boris watch, while not “Labour” sites, show that very well.

Side note – I sometimes feel a bit wierd in that I blog because a) I like politics, b) I like writing and c) I like writing about the politics as it makes me happy when someone chooses to read what I write about. Which isn’t a particularly impressive mission statment, and means I quite often don’t get involved in the story of the moment, and forget to join in the buzz creating narrative shaping stuff. Which I then feel bad about.

I console myself by having a fairly low opinion of “opinion-blogs” (including my own), because in the end, all it is is burbling online, and I don’t really think what I do/say is going to change anyones votes. The only thing it might credibly do is influence a few parly researchers, be read by journalists and occassionally get me on the telly.

To even do that well, i think it has to be in my voice, not that of the party, even with someone as loyal as me.That’s one of the reasons i think the most successful Labour politicians blogs (Tom H, Kerry) are ones that play very much on their individuality and own ambitions and interests as MPs. One thing I’d argue is that those individuals should get more credit and support- I’d like to see Kerry more often on TV as a talking head, as well as a blogger.

Final point, a lot of the things the left “needs” online isn’t within the power of the party to do. We really need a “talkingpointsmemo” factual reportage style site more than another Labour opinion blog, but that requires someone to set it up, put the effort into it and break a couple of stories. Someone who does that will do more good than almost anyone online could.

..Coffee..
..Choke..
..Keyboard..
..You Sod..

who’s going to raise the tone?

Hmm, well my money’s not on Draper to do that…

“I have only one problem with Labour List: it’s shit.”

Actually, in “think before you type” news, that was as childish as Fawkes. Apologies.

If that’s true, then who’s going to raise the tone? And are they any more useful than Rush Limbaugh in the grand scheme of things?

My thesis has been that they are fitting into the online gap left by the absence of a US national daily print media (USA Today aside) reporting the news in detail online.

One further observation is that doing a wildcard* Google search suggests the Huff Po now has millions of pages of content online – which is not far short of guardian.co.uk. I’m still reflecting on the implications.

site:www.huffingtonpost.com *

More in a bit…

think that with Ed Balls talking about cross party consensus

that is is coming more from a party of wise elders than elders skateboarding. I think.

How will that increase the quality of US politics (apart – arguably – from giving a “progressive left of what passes for centre in the US” platform).

I haven’t followed them in the detail some have, so I could be wrong on that point – but what I have seen has been pretty personalised and nit-picking. That’s one reason why I’m not that enamoured of the presidential campaigns we saw on both sides.

why not mention his outstanding qualities. The most prominent one being to carry people with him. and what do we do (with our situation being worse than the US).

and in future I would appreciate that you are not selective of my quotes. It was clear in my post that I do not believe that the Tories can pick themselves up, dust themselves and get on with it.

clearly you have some special insight if you wish to equate Mr Cameron with Mr Obama. President Obama ( and by definition the whole of the US) disagrees with you.

yu started it.haha.

I could say more. But I rather not. thanks for the reply.