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Who coordinates internet politics for Labour?

June 8, 2012 5:30 pm

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Labour’s website lists 115 MPs and Lords* in the Shadow Cabinet and shadow teams that assist them. Yet which of those people is responsible for internet politics for the party? I ask this because the SPD in Germany has such a person – Lars Klingbeil, profiled (in German) by Cicerohere. I asked this question on Twitter and a few names of internet-savvy politicians were returned to me – people like Kerry McCarthy, Ian Lucas and Tom Watson. But the future of internet politics is not in their briefs directly. Chi Onwurah – Shadow Minister for Innovation & Science – has the closest brief.

Why is all of this important? The issues are diverse, but linked, and many of them are vital. Here are a few of them. Internet business makes up 8.3% of the UK economy, more than any other major economy. ISPs are being pushed to block websites. The ICO has got itself into a tangle on the implementation of EU cookie rules. Data protection is being debated at EU level. A major increase in net surveillance was proposed in the Queen’s speech. There are challenges to net neutrality in the UK at the same time as Netherlands has explicitly guaranteed it. For Labour there is even an internal component too, but let’s leave that to one side for now.

In short: there’s a glaring weakness in Labour when it comes to answers to these challenges, and coherence between each of them. High time Labour created a role that would be the equivalent of Klingbeil?

* – excluding whips

This post was originally published here.

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  • Kath McG

    I thought it would whoever is in charge of campaigns

    • Jon

      That’s if you view this stuff only as an internal matter. My focus is on policy here – i.e. NOT a campaign issue

  • PaulHalsall

    I think for the time being it is Mark Ferguson, of this house.

    On issues of state control and internet freedom, as on freedom issues in general, Labour as a party does not have a particularly good history.

    It remains an embarrassment that so many more prison places were built as Labour home secretaries agreed with Michael Howard; and an even greater embarrassment that Jackie Smith made cannabis a class B drug.

    It really is a shame that the last home secretary with a real feel for freedom was Roy Jenkins.

  • http://twitter.com/RF_McCarthy Roger McCarthy

    Have we already forgotten what happened when Peter Mandelson aggrandised this role to himself? and that  the result was a bill that was reviled by everyone other than the lobbyists for corporate copyright exploiters who demanded it.  

    • Jon

      Mandelson is just the sort of person we don’t want doing this. Mandy never understood the net.

      • AlanGiles

        Also, of course, Jon, think of Mandelson and you immediately think of sleaze – wasn’t he and Derek Draper great pals at one time, and we all remember how Draper’s career on LL ended.

        It needs somebody of the greatest integrity to hold such a position. The problem the party has is Ed is still surrounded by too many examples of the recent past – the expenses scandal (Byrne, the Balls etc) and it is difficult to forget we are in receipt of soiled goods.

    • Daniel Speight

       If I remember the numbers correctly, there were something like 4 million British people involved in peer-to-peer torrent downloading at the time. If only half of them could vote that meant Peter Mandelson was willing to upset 2 million possible voters in order to cozy up with his corporate friends.

  • Amber Star

    Claire Short - Let’s get rid of porn & intrusive adverts. Then the net will be awesome.

    • Just_Another_Voter

       Why censor the hell out of something just because you don’t like a certain aspect of it.
      If you don’t like porn then don’t look for it. Adverts are there basically to keep a lot of the sites free (You’d be surprised how many left wing blogs rely on ads to exist).
      Anyway if you really find the ads annoying then they are easy to get rid of. I haven’t seen any intrusive banners or pop up ads for years. Just google NoScript and AdBlock.

  • Brumanuensis

    Wouldn’t it logically be one of the shadow BIS team? I know Baroness Wilcox handles IP fo the government, so would it be whomever shadows her?

  • Slakah

    Stuff like this http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/ really scares me. Labour if it wants to help considered reasonable debate on the future of the internet, then lobbying certainly needs to be sorted out, especially in the EU.

  • Know it all

    Policy wise it’s a DCMS role so technically speaking, Harriet Harman is responsible for Labour policy in this area.

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