How the left can win the web war

By James Crabtree / @jamescrabtree

Such is the life of writing for slow, old magazines. In November I went to Barcelona to hang out with the hipster internet politics crowd at the Personal Democracy Forum conference. I was struck then by frequent discussions about the British left having raised its game online. Then ConservativeHome‘s Tim Montgomerie – a more thoughtful and perceptive thinker than many LabourList readers might like to admit – mentioned in passing in a post that he thought a “left netroots” could genuinely threaten a future Tory government. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that a post-election left online resurgence was more likely than not.

The end result was an essay which – two months later – finally crawls into the light in the New Statesman today. But the odd thing is, though, that an idea that in November seemed nicely contrarian is fast being becoming the conventional wisdom.

What has changed? First, thoughtful voices on the right have begun to worry openly. Montgomerie posted again in recent days saying simply that the left is getting “better and better” online.

More remarkable still is Sam Coates on the Conservatives’ official blue blog. Coates is a perceptive, young, Liverpudlian tech enthusiast who partially paid his way through university working for ConservativeHome in its early days. He then landed a plum job as David Cameron’s speech writer in his early 20s, and is now responsible for the Tories’ impressive “MyConservatives” platform. So it was significant that he wrote recently that the right needed to “keep up the momentum” online. It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines of this post to see that the cleverer Conservatives are now fretting that their online advantage is vulnerable.

The rise of bigger Labour sites is the second thing to note. Especially if you consider LabourList’s beginnings under Derek Draper – and his prosecution of a strategy as the online equivalent a suicide bomber – the fact that the site attracted 305,000 readers in 2009 is remarkable. Add the maturing LiberalConspiracy, and you have two potentially big players. Neither is as good, or as deep, as ConservativeHome yet. But both could be.

Yet it’s the third trend, accelerating fast in the last month, that is most significant: the rise of new left micro sites. I have an essay in this month’s Fabian Review – sadly not online – in which I call for a diverse, pluralistic institutional renewal on the left. In English, this means nagging lots of people to set up lots of new small online think tanks and websites. Some will die on their feet, but some will then grow to become major new institutions – as ConHome, Policy Exchange or Reform have done on the right over the last decade.

It is here that a strategy of micro-renewal seems genuinely promising for the left. This year we’ve seen Will Straw’s LeftFootForward come from nowhere to become one of the most important nodes between the progressives and the media. It’s not an exageration to say that it, and its staff of two, soon could rival the Labour, LibDem or Greenpeace press offices.

We’ve also seen the Fabians’ own NextLeft blog become a must-read for the more wonkily inclined. Less obviously, look at something like FarmSubsidy.org, set up by ex-SPAD Jack Thurston – a radical attempt to use the web to shine a light on government subsidies to corporates and old landowners who don’t deserve them. And now, in only the last few days, you can add new sites to that equation – especially the promising looking ToryStories set up by Jon Cruddas and Chukka Umunna, to keep tabs on Conservative local councils.

It seems to me – and as I argue in more depth in both the New Statesman and Fabian Review pieces – that such new sites are just the beginning. Over the next two years progressives, if they’ve got any fight left, should be able to launch a dozen or more such new such enterprises. Of course it won’t be easy to do, and will require a dozen or more Will Straws and Jack Thurstons to step up. But it is perfectly possible. And if executed properly it will come with a distant, quiet sigh – as Iain, Paul and Tim watch as their lead is steadily hauled in.

James Crabtree is an editor at Prospect, and a trustee of MySociety.org. He tweets @jamescrabtree.