The state of the left wing blogosphere

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

This article was first published in the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging 2009-2010. You can buy the book, with the list of the top 300 political blogs in the UK and articles on the blogscapes of the right and Lib Dems, here.

When this guide was published last year, there were only 28 left of centre blogs in the top 100. The broad right, if you include mainstream media platforms such as the Spectator’s Coffee House and right-leaning Libertarians like Guido Fawkes, had more like 50. Back then there was no doubt: the right was streets ahead online.

Nobody could ever fully explain why this was the case. In these pages, Jon Worth wrote that “the left wing blogosphere has lacked the major players around whom debates can be structured.” Others argued that blogging is necessarily an insurgent activity, that government agenda-chasing limits meaningful discussion on the fringes for fear of being counter-productive.

But over the last year, both those notions have been largely overcome by a left inspired by the Obama movement and determined to reclaim some ground. Big personalities like Alastair Campbell and John Prescott have seized the online space as their own, and widespread grassroots disillusionment with Labour in power has given independent voice to previously unwavering supporters, adding to the debate about the future of the left.

The gap has not been entirely breached; the continued dominance of Conservative views in this poll’s top 20 show that there is still a lot to be done to achieve parity. We still have no single personality to rival Iain Dale’s slickness, and we are rightly wary of allowing or supporting a Guido-style blog.

But while success has been incremental, it is also tangible: Tom Harris’ eminently readable site is the first to break the right’s hegemony over the top 10; Harry’s Place, Kerry McCarthy and the Fabians’ highbrow NextLeft have each achieved impressive rises; people are beginning to take LabourList to their hearts; and there are now roughly the same number of blogs broadly on the left in the top 100 favourites as there are on the right.

Moreover, two of our most influential blogs are absent from this list. Liberal Conspiracy and the Guardian’s Comment is Free have both distanced themselves from this Labour government – indeed they have encouraged voters to look elsewhere – but both remain highly committed to the values of the left, and highly thoughtful in their assessment of left-wing ideas and ideals. Each has its own unique personality and distinct community, and each is a leading light. And John Prescott’s GoFourth – with his big personality and quotable phrases that still help shape the mainstream news agenda – undoubtedly has more influence than its 82nd place here reflects.

The left’s relative advances over the last year have been the result of two things: the grassroots’ eagerness to get involved and the improved organisational targeting of the niche to harness that enthusiasm.

Certainly, that first compulsion was fed partly by the Obama campaign and its inspiring victory last November. Many left of centre activists had been over to the States and volunteered on the campaign, and each brought back personal memories and unique lessons for our own activism. Those lessons were of grassroots autonomy, open and honest politics and coherent and integrated online communication. All of a sudden, we realised that no one need be told what to do or how to do it. This was our movement, and we could make the change ourselves.

Initially, Labour HQ mismanaged its own involvement. Allowing establishment figures to dominate the online fightback was surely counter-intuitive, and Peter Mandelson’s assertion that Labour was ready to leave behind “command and control and begin to embrace and engage” was patently absurd in the context of the early days, party-launched and exactly on-message LabourList. The site then was too dominated by government voices and stale, rehashed press releases. Little of any unique relevance was mined.

Then there was 2009’s most definitive and iconic blogger story: the Damian McBride affair. McBride, in assuming the role of political slanderer, nearly killed LabourList, and he nearly killed the Labour government.

But, after trial by serious error, the left started to reassert itself in the blogscape. The McBride saga – catastrophic as it was for Labour and Gordon Brown – re-awakened many activists through sheer disgust. Dozens of centre-left bloggers signed a progressive blogging statement stating what it is we stand for and what we would do differently in the future. The online centre-left found a new confidence from crisis. Positive campaigns, such as the We Still Believe video on the night of the European and local elections in June, coordinated by the team at Blackburn Labour, proved that we could be spontaneous and energetic, innovative and timely. As the excellent Paul Waugh has said, “slowly, the left has got cannier (and, crucially, funnier) in their use of the web and prospered when not following the po-faced party line.”

I hope the new LabourList has been reflective of that spirit, and I hope its success as the highest party-aligned new entry to this list is just the beginning. Regular columns, interviews and PPC Profiles have brought consistency and journalistic integrity to the site, and we’re beginning to lead debates, rather than merely comment on them. But LabourList remains a work in progress. The new design hopefully makes the forum easier on the eye, more navigable and more conducive to the archiving of older content for the longer term. And it enables us to better aggregate content from across the left’s blogscape, to provide a natural, pluralistic hub for all the left’s online output. But there are still further improvements to be made.

The next challenge for the left’s bloggers will be how to best respond to the threat of Conservative government. Liberal Conspiracy has already shown its agility and importance in rebutting Conservative ideas; Left Foot Forward and no doubt a host of other new projects will add to that scrutiny.

But we will also have to force the discussion on our own policy. If there is to be momentum towards proportional representation, how will we build new online coalitions to reflect a more collegiate movement? If there is to be democratic and parliamentary reform, how will we help influence the agenda in the face of a hostile government? If we believe primaries might replenish the left, how can we bring those campaigns to the blogs? If the Greens become the best last hope for environmental action, how will we support their development? And if Labour is to have a serious discussion about its future direction, and those personalities who will most effectively lead it, which blogs will take which sides?

Again, there will be lessons to learn from how President Obama has harnessed social media for his own reforms, notably on healthcare. But if we on the British left think we can transplant those techniques directly to our own campaigns, we may find ourselves out of government for some considerable time. The future will require our own innovations, tailored to our own needs.

Because of the widespread belief that the post-New Labour debate is already happening and because Labour has already been through a contraction of sorts this year – with Gordon Brown perilously close to exit in June – some of those online infrastructures are already in place and contention is already feeding renewed engagement. Compass and Progress are poised for debate. Luke Akehurst’s blog remains a loud voice for the Labour right, while Socialist Unity continues its immense output. Open Left, a Demos project led by James Purnell, has an impressive canon of work after just a couple of months, and will only become more vocal as the debate rages.

But increasingly, the future of the left’s online activity will depend on integrating social networking connectivity. Blogging is no longer just about blogging; traffic and influence will increasingly come from email, Facebook, Twitter and whatever application may come along next. A year ago, few people had heard of Twitter. Now, the left has learned how to utilise it for political advantage far quicker than the right . The #WeLoveTheNHS campaign was evidence enough that that’s true: it was grassroots, it was spontaneous and it was immensely powerful. Whichever faction or personalities gain an early advantage on those fronts will surely lead the pack when it comes to future campaigning.

So while some of our most impressive online presence may currently belong to older-hats such as Alastair Campbell and John Prescott, we also know the future of our blogs and general online campaign activity will depend on the younger generation of councillors and new MPs and those activists who seek to rebuild any of lost electoral base or aim to push the party in an appropriate direction. Indeed, the future of the left will depend on it.