by Vincent Moss
IT’S a strange world when Barack Obama and bloggers Guido Fawkes and Derek Draper are bedfellows in the same sentence. But as the President of the United States says, the world is changing.
I got to thinking about this unlikely trio after the outbreak of handbags between newish Labour blogger and long-term politico Derek Draper and right-wing mischief-maker Guido Fawkes (real name: Paul Staines). Draper, a former aide of Peter Mandelson’s, rightly lambasted Guido for allowing some village idiots to post racist remarks on his website (www.order-order.com) under a picture caption of Gordon Brown with some black youngsters.
After a self-confessed “long lunch”, Guido removed the offensive comments. But he continued to mercilessly tease Draper about his nascent website (www.labourlist.org) – an unapologetically pro-Labour creation where Cabinet ministers Lord Mandelson and Hazel Blears are among recent contributors.
Their spat is the biggest row in the Westminster blogosphere for, well, months. But isn’t it just the web equivalent of two blokes shouting at each other in a snowstorm on an iceberg? Probably, given that the vast majority of voters hadn’t even the foggiest clue about their cyberspace feud. As one veteran Labour blogger admits: “We’re still only reaching an almost infinitesimally small number of people.”
How very different from the situation in the US. Over the pond, Blue State Digital – the company behind Obama’s online campaign – raised $500 million in donations from three million people. Volunteers created 30,000 online groups and organised 200,000 events. They helped the good guy win.
Draper is on the right track with LabourList. And, it’s about time someone launched a well-resourced response to Guido, Tory blogger Iain Dale (www.iaindale.blogspot.com) and the professional operation at www.conservativehome.com.
As Labour blogger and Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson told me: “It’s about unlocking the social capital of small community networks.” In tabloid-speak, he means using the internet to build support locally and keep David Cameron out of Number 10. Watson’s website (www.tom-watson.co.uk) aims to nurture these networks in a way that other Labour supporters should copy. For example, he has joined forces with a 2,000-strong online group in an effort to ease his local council into a change of heart over moves to end a St George’s Day parade.
John Prescott brings all his campaigning zeal to the excellent Go Fourth site (www.gofourth.co.uk), while Tom Harris is one of the few MPs with a clever, amusing and regularly updated blog (www.tomharris.org.uk). It’s Harris’ kind of wry, self-effacing humour that sites like LabourList need to develop to take on Tory-leaning rivals like Guido and question their often outlandish claims.
If Labour bloggers are to rival the success of Obama’s operation, they will have to build on foundations laid by people like Watson and Harris to become more relevant, more accessible and more entertaining to a much wider public. The alternative is to remain a navel-gazing group of net nerds, unheard by almost everyone outside the Westminster beltway.
Vincent Moss is political editor of the Sunday Mirror
