Forget tired clichés about 2010 being the year of the UK’s first internet election. For many of us, that came nearly five years ago. And what will feel like sophisticated digital electioneering next spring will seem quaint — if not antiquated — come 2014.
Nevertheless, the forthcoming election will mark a media break from the past for a number of reasons.
First, it’s worth repeating that when the last general election campaign got under way in March 2005, YouTube was barely a month old and “broadband Britain” was at least three months away (in June that year, the number of households with a broadband internet connection finally outstripped those with dial-up).
Second, despite the multiple millions spent (wasted?) on 3G licences at the beginning of the decade, by the mid-point of the Noughties mobile internet was more notional than real. Always-on, mobile connectivity in its many guises is now, finally, commonplace.
The third point worth making is that political activists — if not the mainstream media — were mostly dabbling with the power of the net in 2005. Not so this time.
The political right is more established, with Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and ConservativeHome leading the way, but the left is coming. Or so argues James Crabtree in this week’s New Statesman, forecasting “the rise of the genuinely powerful, left-wing blogsophere”.
He cites the likes of 38 Degrees (funded by the estate of Anita Roddick) and Left Foot Forward (set up and run by Will Straw) as examples of the new breed of left-of-centre blogs, joining the more established LabourList and Liberal Conspiracy.
Straw’s site, with a remit to scrutinise Tory policy commitments, is inspired by Think Progress in the US, but also by the likes of Channel 4 FactCheck, where I was editor during the last campaign.
Crabtree is most persuasive when he argues that “the internet is not intrinsically amenable to either left or right”. He writes:
Dubious theories circulate that the online world is ideologically slanted to be either libertarian or collectivist. Instead, it is most usefully understood in British politics as an insurgent technology. It’s where you go when you are on the outside and you need to beat an incumbent.
In this way, the rise of the right-wing blogosphere has been pegged to two forces: people who strongly dislike Gordon Brown (such as Fawkes) and people who want their government back (such as the ConservativeHome activists).
His analysis is spot-on (even if Guido disagrees) but it does mean that, for the left to become truly successful, Labour will need to lose the next election. And that may not be what this new breed of left-of-centre bloggers — preparing to sweat it out over the next six months — had planned.
Read James Crabtree’s piece in full.
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