Thank you LabourList

I didn’t expect to become a blogger.

In fact, my first ever blog post wasn’t even that. It was an angry and heartfelt comment about the Damien McBride affair letting down ordinary Party members like myself. It seems that the editor Alex Smith liked it so much he asked me to expand it into a post. And thus an ego was born.

But LabourList isn’t just a place for me to post my thoughts. It’s a place for all of us to share our thoughts, feelings, exasperations, joys, achievements and disappointments. It is a unique Labour space that platforms every strand of thinking from our Party and encourages us all to get involved.

In some odd, never – please God – to be repeated ways, LabourList owes something to the baptism of fire given it by its short-lived first editor and his friend McBride. Alex Smith and Mark Ferguson between them have done an incredible job of making what could have been a disaster – almost strangled at birth – into a triumph. If you want to know what the Labour Party thinks, you come here. It may think joyously clashing and contradictory things at times,  but it’s all here.

I have been lucky enough to take the occasional stint editing LabourList over the past year. It’s an incredible feeling. The excitement of chasing down a story and making sure you are getting the right voices and the right balance of comment, news and fun. The terror of realising you’ve pressed send on the daily email on a version where the links have inexplicably stopped working.  The joy of finding great new voices to platform. Mark Ferguson may have the best job in the world, but I also know he works up to 16 hour days at times. His extraordinary dedication makes this place what it is. It would be poorer without his editorial judgement and his writing.

I visit LabourList every single day. Several times. Having enough content to satisfy a junkie like me isn’t easy but we manage it. I don’t always agree with every post. Life and Labour would be very dull if I did. But I do love and appreciate the debate (if not the rather more tedious personal bickering that sometimes takes over below the line).

I can say, hand on heart, that LabourList has changed my life. While I am extremely proud of my own blog Scarlet Standard, it was becoming a LabourList columnist that made me feel the energy and time I was putting into writing was worth it. That I really did have a voice worth listening to. That the things I had to say were worth hearing. That’s an incredible gift to give an aspiring writer.

We are proud to publish the content we receive from the leadership and shadow cabinet  but I know they would agree with us that you are what is really, really important. You are the ones out there hearing the stories on the doorsteps and working in your communities to make change. Tell us about it. Tell us what you have learned, what you have loathed and what you have loved. What works and what doesn’t.

But equally importantly, keep reading. Keep sharing, and discussing and disagreeing and disputing and keep this site the lively beating heart of the Labour movement it has become.

Happy Birthday LabourList. Here’s to many, many more.