State of the Labour blogosphere – into the darkness

Let no one ever tell you that there are positives about being in opposition. Nothing about the gnawing impotence of opposition is positive. Nothing about waking up each morning to the sound of another government initiative is positive. Nothing about watching your leader ask the questions at PMQs rather than give the answers is positive. You can see it on the faces of the older Labour MPs. That drawn look of resignation. That fraught, near constipated grimace. It screams out at you through the television set.

“I should be sat over there,” it says. “On those warm and comfortable government benches.”

Did the sun always shine under Labour? Of course not. We had our fair share of grey days – more than our fair share at the end. But being a Labour person had a purpose then. To defend or lambast the government felt like a proactive step. In opposition it feels like everyone is playing a part. It’s grim – never let anyone tell you otherwise.

But this chapter is meant to be able the nature of blogging in opposition, so instead of telling you how depressing opposition is, I should probably tell you about that…

Labour’s time in opposition – at least when it comes to online – can still be divided into two distinct and separate chunks. The leadership contest, and everything that happened afterwards.

Being plunged into a leadership contest and opposition at the same time is by no means ideal. The party was tired, angry and upset, conditions that the leadership campaign only served to exacerbate. Small differences between candidates would be picked over and analysed. The responses of Labour Party members and supporters would be probed to see what this contest meant for Labour. The Labour blogosphere only served to exacerbate that introspection.

That’s not to say that the reaction of the Labour Party to an electoral drubbing, or the way in which the Labour blogosphere handled the leadership contest, was a bad thing. The Labour Party needed to heal itself and talk about where it had gone wrong, and with a media that was disinterested at best and downright hostile at worst, the online sphere offered a place for Labour members to open up, discuss the future of the party, and begin rebuilding the party that we care about.

For LabourList in particular, the leadership contest was all-consuming. We were proud to be the focal point for so much of what was being discussed in the party, and enabled ordinary members to engage directly with the candidates and their campaign teams. In our own humble way we were able to shape the narrative of the contest too, by interviewing all five candidates, having them post exclusive articles on the site and posting a daily ‘state of the race’ update that was read by all of the respective leadership camps. Our watchwords were objectivity and balance. We couldn’t afford to get this wrong, either as a party or as a site.

Fortunately the leadership contest passed off relatively amicably – especially considering some of the combustible elements involved. Perhaps the constant scrutiny from online helped shape the atmosphere. The leadership candidates certainly knew that their every movement,

action and reaction was being carefully observed, not just by the other campaigns, but by activists up and down the country. That may well have shifted the tenor of the contest. Labour supporters wanted a clean contest that would leave the party intact. By and large, that’s what we got.

The second phase of blogging in opposition has been – if anything – harder to adjust to. At least over the leadership contest the media were interested in the party. Now online activists not only have to put forward their views on the future direction of the party – and campaign for it – we also had to fill the vacuum in news terms too. All too often the mainstream media will ignore stories about (or pushed by) the Labour movement purely because they don’t think we’re relevant anymore. That’s been a difficult pill to swallow, and has sometimes meant that we’re fighting to make ourselves heard. For many of us that’s a new experience, and not a pleasant one.

So blogging – and more specifically online campaigning – is a completely different beast when you’re in opposition, and the Labour blogosphere has handled life in opposition in a totally different manner to our counterparts on the right. Where they were (and are), largely about personalities with the two or three ‘big name’ iconoclastic bloggers stand apart and above the fray, the left in opposition has been more plural. Where online traffic on the right was (and is) clustered around the lines of Guido, ConHome and Iain Dale, the left online – as well as offline – tends to look more towards the niche.

That’s not to say that there aren’t high traffic sites on the left – there are, and they’re growing rapidly. Liberal Conspiracy, Left Foot Forward and LabourList have all solidified their reputations this year as the pre-eminent Labour/Left group blogs, with growing traffic and engaged readerships. And Political Scrapbook has flourished in opposition, bringing a cheeky and irreverent look at politics from a lefty perspective, showing that not all online left-wingers are dour, miserable and po-faced. Indeed, Political Scrapbook may well be the “one to watch” on the left in the coming years – it certainly has the broadest potential appeal, and the “show it to your mates” factor, which can help them build a potential readership much bigger than any of the other big left blogs.

Other sites on the left have also flourished in opposition. LabourUncut has found a niche on the right of the Labour Party, as has Left Futures on the left. Progress, Compass and the Fabians continue (each from their own unique perspective) to provide food for thought
online, and the powerhouse of the left, the New Statesman, is now an online force to be reckoned with, as well as a top magazine.

Moving into opposition has, however, seen something of a changing of the guard for individual bloggers on the left. Sunny Hundal and Will Straw continue to be two of the most highly regarded bloggers on the wider left, but two Labour blogging stalwarts – Tom Harris
and Hopi Sen – have hung up their keyboards or returned in different forms. Their insight and their determination to blog every day will be sorely missed. Similarly, the cerebral Anthony Painter and party stalwart Luke Akehurst are blogging less than they once were, as are pioneers of the MP blogging world Tom Watson and Kerry McCarthy.

However, the number of prominent Labour bloggers who have moved on is dwarfed by the number who have risen to prominence in opposition. Unshackled by the relative constraints of blogging in support of the government, a new wave of writers have emerged – the verbose and controversial Dan Hodges and the eloquent new voice of the working class Owen Jones are probably the two most obvious examples. But there are other Labour bloggers who deserve similar respect and attention – Emma Burnell, Kevin Meagher, Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, Sarah Hayward and Sue Marsh (to name but a few) have all seen a rise in profile over the past 18 months, largely because they write engagingly and persuasively about issues outside the Westminster bubble. Those stories will need to be told with even greater force in the years ahead, so expect these online voices to grow louder and more confident as a result.

The Labour blogosphere is in many ways at a crossroads. The next year may define what kind of blogosphere we end up with. The kind of blogs people write – and those who achieve the greatest success or influence online – has consequences that extend beyond the individual ‘careers’ of the top bloggers and relative success of top blogs on the left. It also reflects what kind of blogosphere we want, and in turn, what kind of politics we want too.

At present, the Labour blogosphere reflects the people who are active within it. People who read Labour blogs (and indeed, all blogs) are more likely to be male, London-based political types. That inevitably means that the content is largely Westminster focused. Whilst there is undoubtedly is a place for that in the Labour blogosphere, that shouldn’t be the entirety of our focus. The Labour Party has always been a movement more than just a party but that is not yet reflected in our presence online. The big test for the Labour blogosphere in the coming years will be how we can balance becoming an online movement that pushes for change, alongside our determination to scrutinise, debate and elect a Labour government. That’s by no means an easy balance to strike, but for the future growth and vitality of the Labour Party online, it is the direction that the blogosphere must move in to.

Some of this kind of campaigning is already taking place. The most obvious example is the phone hacking scandal, where e-activism from the likes of Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook put immense pressure on News International. Although not a blog, the influential campaign group 38 degrees has been an inspiration, as well as an indication of what kind of campaigning the Labour blogosphere could engage in. The next 18 months will bring battles between the government and the left over pensions, jobs, the NHS and of course cuts. The Labour blogosphere at present is an engaging, diverse and vibrant place. But if we want to push on, we need to become more relevant. That doesn’t mean less talk and more action, but at the very least it means backing up some of our good intentions with campaigns on the ground.

That’s where the Labour blogosphere needs to go in the next twelve months. Only time will see whether we have the will, the determination and the resources to get there.

This post was written as a chapter of the Total Politics Blogging guide – you can buy a copy of the e-book here.