The long road back to the future for British online campaigning

By Gabe Trodd

‘Yesterday marked the British blogosphere’s first big political scalp, and the day political new media in the UK came of age,’ writes Gaby Hinsliff in the Observer. Rather than any coming of age for UK political blogging – it’s crunch time for UK politics and its relationship with new social media. It’s time for the left-wing, the progressives, the young and the liberals to reclaim the UK’s political blogosphere with backbone, inclusivity, substance and vitality – this needs to happen now.

Without question, the USA deserves to bask in the success and implications of Obama’s grassroots, bottom-up campaigning – Obama and Blue State Digital have embraced the network potential of Web 2.0 with achingly fasionable messages of inclusivity, accessibility and hope (read the Change We Need: What Britain Can Learn from Obama’s Victory by the Fabians). The Huffington Post, meanwhile, is a trailblazer for modern investigative journalism and the direction of new social media.

But the UK isn’t learning and much of the current political blogging is a red herring. It’s obscene and bewildering that the most notable aspects of the UK’s current political blogosphere/online campaigning are to community cohesion and grassroots campaigning, what the early auditions of the X Factor are to virtuosity in the UK’s music industry: puerile, calamitous and self-glorifying exhibitions of desperation and immaturity. Scoffing, pinstriped city boys to the UK’s economic green shoots of recovery. Jim Davidson to cultural diversity. Richard Barnbook AM to London’s status as the coolest city on the planet. At best, these web spaces are gossipy, illegitimate political off-shoots of the Daily Mirror’s 3AM – at worst, they’re unregulated online bullying, slowly worming their way into mainstream consciousness. There is a danger that a new generation of potential British political activists who are engaged with the power of Web 2.0, will be carelessly batted away. Alistair Campbell gets it… the UK can and will do much better.

I’d like you to know this: I am the founder of the Stand Up Tall Project – a new, progressive, youth-driven, voluntary political initiative, which seeks out discussion, understanding and action on crime, its underlying causes and its coverage. The project will aim to: bridge the gulfs between Westminster, the media, local communities and everyday life in the UK – these divides are increasingly significant; engage those people disenfranchised with the UK’s action on crime and youth; generate open and accessible discussion; create union and consensus amongst disjointed groups; push forward new voices and, in the end, reach uncharted waters on issues around crime, youth and politics.

More generally, this project will look to shake off the unpleasant undertones and connotations of being a British online political entity. Partly, we will look to do this with a range of great contributors including a number of Ministers, high-profile MPs, NGOs and musicians (Ashley Walters aka Asher D of So Solid Crew, for example). But this project will also be driven by accessible discussions and honest reflection on what it means to be British today – Guido Fawkes et al have no relevance or significance to everyday life in the UK and what’s going on in British communities in 2009. This reflects the change we need.

The UK’s political left needs to launch a relentless rebuttal operation within the blogosphere against the opportunism of many of the most high-profile blogs. The UK’s grassroots need to be tapped into, the strength of British communities needs to be harnessed and those people concerned with equality, justice and inclusivity need to unite now more than ever to shape the narrative. If there are cycles of change in politics, there is space now for a new era in online British campaigning.