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The British Political Blogosphere 2010
British Election .co.uk
By Elizabeth Gough
With the UK election a mere five weeks away, warring between the three main parties involved (Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) has begun. Now that the polls are so close there is a likelihood of a hung parliament (no one party with an overall majority) the parties are attempting to pick up as much media space as possible to influence voting in marginal seats and attract floating voters.
While there has been much talk about the Twitter phenomenon (a virtual instant messaging service which reports opinions and up to the second developments), the key media the three main parties are depending on are television, the press, radio and the internet (specifically, virtual political blogs).
The most prominent political blogs in the UK include Iain Dale's Diary, Guido Fawkes and ConservativeHome on the right with Liberal Conspiracy, LabourList and Liberal Democrat Voice on the left. Although the right-wing bloggers were previously seen to predominate both in terms of traffic and influence, the left has been credited with a resurgence with the success of newer blogs such as LabourList and Left Foot Forward.
Britain's political blogosphere is behind the US political blogosphere in terms of spend (and it shows) but way ahead of the US political blogosphere in terms of cutting, witty critique and scandal-scenting (recently parliamentary candidates have been forced to pull out of the election race because of ill-thought out comments online which were seized upon by bloggers who allied with the mainstream press to out the candidates involved). The US political blogosphere has more effect on the US political race than its British counterpart (but, again, this is much to do with the available spend, which is statistically far greater in the US than the UK, where elections are traditionally less of a jamboree).
Although the influence of political blogs on the three mainstream political parties is growing this has been accompanied by criticism of their content. A former leading adviser to the government has criticised blogs' anti-establishment nature for fuelling a "crisis" in politics stating that there should be more emphasis on working together to solve problems rather than making hostile and conflicting demands on politicians. Some bloggers are blamed for encouraging citizens to remain in a "perpetual state of self-righteous rage", behaving like "teenagers" who are "increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government." The director of the Press Complaints Commission has even called for a voluntary code of conduct similar to that governing newspapers and magazines due to the current lack of redress for those angered by their content.
There has been much change since 2005 when Britain last went to the polls and voted in Tony Blair as Prime Minister for the last time. Back then the most prominent political blogs in Britain were mostly the same but there have been some spectacular casualties and some returns to form.
Take for example the right wing political blogger Guido Fawkes (a nom de guerre for the arch-blogger Paul Staines) who, after some time on top of the British political blogosphere, last time round was licking his wounds after an attack by the extreme left wing of the blogging scene (who tend to be the nastiest and most full of rage in virtual political Britain) led by the site Bloggerheads run by blogger Timothy Ireland. This time round the right wing has managed to turn the tables: while right wing blogs lead the British political blogosphere and Guido Fawkes is one of the top two most visited and influential blogs online, Ireland's Bloggerheads has been marginalised after Ireland publicly took on one Conservative blog, the Westminster Journal, and very publicly lost all credibility and users this autumn when the Westminster Journal exposed Ireland as an all-round sore loser, bully and smearer to the point where recovery is impossible. The British political blogosphere is far more ruthless than its American counterpart!
While the Far Left is rudderless in British virtual politics, centre-left Labour has invested a great deal in Labour List and the site has recovered well from the scandal it became embroiled in during 2009 when on 11th April Damian McBride (a former civil servant and former special advisor to Britain's current Prime Minister Gordon Brown) resigned his position after it emerged through the blogosphere that he and another prominent Labour Party supporter, Labour List's Derek Draper, had exchanged emails discussing the possibility of disseminating rumours McBride had fabricated about the private lives of some Conservative Party politicians. The emails from McBride had been sent from his No. 10 Downing Street e-mail account.
With broadband internet penetration reaching levels of up to 90% in some areas of Britain, British politicians are well-aware that voters are spending an increasing amount of time making up their mind about how to vote while online. For this particular election there is one telling statistic about internet coverage which may well have a major effect on the election: the highest take-up of broadband has been in the South East of England where most of the swing seats (marginals) are located. It is estimated, based on census data, that 80-90 % of households in the South East have broadband access (a number that has more than doubled since the last election in 2005).
Blogs and Twitter do not stand alone as online media through which the parties struggle to prize votes from the British public. Youtube is a big draw with all political leaders uploading their key speeches (and the errors of their adversaries) to. Offline publications with online versions (above all the Murdoch stable of newspapers including the highly influential Sun and News of the World) are pored over by political activists as they call in their journalist friends for election favours. Then there's the usual collection of tongue-in-cheek joke sites which get personal about the various political characters involved (one noting that Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is the best-looking of the three main party leaders and has the hottest wife).
The effect of Britain's political blogs can't really be measured until after May's General Election but it would be an understatement to say that politicians are not ignoring them this time round. It promises to be a very interesting five weeks indeed this side of the pond.
Liz Gough is a freelance writer and commentator. She lives in Anglesey with husband Rollo and two cats.
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