I’m not sure that much has changed you know Mike. PB.com’s readership has always been slightly to the right of its authorship, it’s just that they are becoming rather more noisy and self-confident in the light of recent polls and by-election results.

I don’t think Mike Smithson has so much given up on the Labour Party as on Gordon Brown - witness today’s “Just imagine….” post - but he is hardly alone among the political cognoscenti in that regard.

Maybe he’s hedging his bets?

(sorry)

The analysis of thisw article is basically correct, although I’m not sure (a) if it’s actually a problem, and (b) what, if anything, Mike Smithson should (or could) do about it.

Politicalbetting.com is undoubtedly a site with a strong Tory slant, judging by its commentators (Mike Smithson’s leaders, however, continue to be relatively neutral). To some extent that’s inevitable - as you say, a site based around betting on politics seems likely to attract a more right-wing crowd, simply because Conservatives are, broadly speaking, more likely to bet - or political betters are more likely to be Conservatives.

Having said that, if the purpose of the site is to be the centre of the British political ‘blogosphere’, then perhaps it is a problem. The commentators remain, on the whole, relatively intelligent, well-informed and frequently witty, but they are also what Mike himself would surely recognise as a very biased sample, which means anyone reading the comments would get a somewhat misleading view of the current state of British politics. And it’s worth questioning if there’s a self-reinforcing, ’spiral of silence’ effect here - the more PB.com is seen as a Tory site, the more only Tories will want to post on it. I know that I, as a Liberal Democrat, have generally chosen to lurk rather than post there, mainly due to the strongly right-wing atmosphere and the contempt in which LDs are held on the site.

Politicalbetting.com remains a good website, especially when on its core focus of political betting, and its comments are generally worth reading. The only question is - is there something wrong with it if perhaps two-thirds or more of its commentators are writing from a Tory point of view, and if so, what on earth could Mike Smithson do about it?

I think it’s only possible to make a judgement on PB once it has survived a complete political cycle.

It has acted as a magnet for some of the less prudent and injudicious conservative voices around, in which sense I’d cautiously suggest it is slightly more subversive than is being portrayed here and over time will be one of the places where conservative incoherence comes to light.

PB is only just getting into it’s stride, so it’s one to watch, even if there are a few hurdles still to cross.

With respect Mike, it sounds like your predominate reason for getting out is that you don’t like the prevailing climate - but you must recognise that that climate is a fairish reflection of where the nation is politically at the moment. Re-reading threads from last summer is an instructive exercise.

Also, I do think there are probably more “thoughtful Tories” than you imagine - I would hope to count myself as one, though I haven’t contributed as much of late.

My bigger issue with pb.com is the inanity of several posters [from all sides, though naturally the Tory ones are "on top" at the moment], and the sheer volume of guff one has to wade through to get any nuggets of genuine analysis or (important to me, but I appreciate not all readers) value bets. In that respect your departure is unfortunate.

It’s worth bearing in mind that political betting *as an activity* leans Tory - simply because having large amounts of surplus cash, being keen on financial speculation, and being economically right-wing are three things that are correlated with each other. So it’s not too surprising that the main site espousing it has acquired a massive Tory bias in its readership…

(all the people I’ve known - myself in 2005 included - who’ve made significant sums betting on elections have done so by betting on left-wing parties, because the general consensus in betting markets is skewed by optimism bias among the right wingers who dominate the markets. Indeed, my political betting tip for the next election is a spreadbet to buy Labour seats - the markets are almost certain to predict an even greater rout than Labour will actually receive.)

Excellent Article.

I always just assumed it would naturally be Tory supporters that could afford to follow political betting as a hobby. Not a slur on the tendancy of Tories to profit from politics, honest ;)

One or two factual errors in this piece by Mike and I think he is being partial in his judgement.

Certainly it is untrue that there was no criticism of Chichester and the other MEPs. Many of us commented on that case and actually took more than a little pleasure in it as it confirms our preconceptions about the inherent corruption of the EU establishment. There was also certainly plenty of discussion of Spelman’s situation and much of the problem with the Tory response was a that it was as a result of the crowing from the left wing contributors who seemed to have had so little to celebrate recently that they went off the deep end in their condemnation of what I suspect will turn out to be something of a damp squib.

There are problems with PB.C and I have long believed that many of those derive from the (perhaps necessary) anonymity that is afforded posters if they choose to make use of it - although a fair few of us do not and we post under our real names.

But I do not believe that the right wing tilt recently is the result of anything other than the move to the right in the country. When Labour were doing well PB.C had plenty of lift wing contributors crowing about how the Tories would never get back into office and offering endless advise - most of it malicious or at least tongue in cheek - about what the Tories should do to save themselves. It is natural that when they had nothing to shout about, most on the right would keep quiet in the face of clear evidence that the country was not ready for them. Now that the pendulum has swung the other way it is rather sad to see the left storming off in a sulk because thhey are on the receiving end of similar treatment.

I am sure that in years to come the swing will be back in the other direction. Whjat is important is that Mike Smithson does not listen to the siren voices telling him that he needs to make changes to his excellent site simply because one faction finds itself on the receiving end of some rather unpalatable home truths for once.

Reminds me of that 60’s band, Earth Wind & Fire,this rant above was the Wind bit.

“ideologically individualist - it cannot teach us fraternity or solidarity.”

you say it as if socialists have anything to say about fraternity and solidarity in practice. In reality, it is from individual liberty and conscience where such things have genuinely grown. FreebornJohn said it best on this front: http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2008/06/laying-claim.html

I think many on this thread just don’t see the paradigm shift that the internet allows for. I have made and maintained numerous relationships with the help of the web as a tool for social networking. The web is individualist, of course, but that is because we are individuals and the web simply gives everyone the same tools as everyone else. In that sense, it is essentially egalitarian. Not the sort of equality that many on the collectivist left are used to (the sort mandated and filtered by state bureaucrats) but that doesn’t make it right wing intrinsically: just anarchist rather than statist. As it happens, buying and selling stuff is a major component of freedom; but that is just the beginning and not the end of individual freedom.

Mike Killingworth,

Well, you make statements that are unsubstantiated. Somewhat like this:

But if all we get on the blogosphere is relentless self-promotion, the potential of the medium to engage people in fruitful debate as to the future direction of our society will be tarnished: what ought to attract will instead repel. Life on-line is a series of fleeting transactions: to the extent that it replaces real-world human relationships it degrades all who engage in it.

the antithesis of which might be equally true. Provide your evidence. Personally my internet expeience has been a lot better than that. I have met people I now admire and respect, such as this web site’s owner, Sunny Hundal. I can assure you that I would never have come across him in a less virtual world.

I’d argue the opposite. That an ability to talk over obvious boundaries such as religion, age, sex and nationality are a great thing.

I’ve been doing exactly that on PP for years now. So has your host. So have most of the other commentators.

Jesus shit! A virtual community that, mostly, stands up for each other. Tell me that , anyone on PP, for instance, is anything less than a completely wonderful human being and you will get both barrels. And I’ve never met them, face to face. Still, I know that they are better human beings than you. Why? ’cause I know them. How? over this internet thingy. Kind of destroys your thesis, doesn’t it?

You really don’t get the virtual world. It is about a projection of identity, mine even, into a new environment that doesn’t play according to any rules you construe.

Sorry to ask Douglas but what is PP?

(I am an interloper from Political Betting so am not familiar with the shorthand of this site)

PP = Pickled Politics

[12] I admire Pickled Politics - but I do think that it (and the same goes for LC) works because people like you recognise that the internet only opens up “real world” possibilities for those who are prepared to work for them. My case is that such people will be in a minority. The default position is passive, transactional, isolated. Effective blogging is more like a business start-up than many people realise: you need a plan, and a degree of commitment. You need to be sure that you have something new and relevant to say on a daily basis - very difficult for a “sole trader”.

More generally, of course it’s arguable that the current atmosphere on Mike Smithson’s site is a consequence of the Tories currently having twice the support of the Labour Party. This, of course, does not explain the vitriol which has been consistently poured over Liberal Democrats. It’s also perhaps worth pointing out that (with the arguable except of the thread on Liverpool City Council!) “Vote 2008″, which is run by the Tory Iain Lindley, has managed to sustain a welcoming and civilsed level of discussion that “Political Betting” hasn’t - I’ve no idea why.

[11] That link leads not an argument but a rant. And Geras, whom “Freeborn John” seems to admire, is, in my experience, a man with no respect for those who hold different opinions to his own. As for “buying and selling stuff is a major component of freedom” - well, go tell that to the Chinese.

14

Ta muchly.

Think commercially for a moment. People a bit to the political right appear more given to betting than the left (and likely have rather more money even in these New Labour days), or than the people who find left and right funny political categories. The site therefore attracts them. Mike spices it with enough non-Tory thinking to motivate them to comment. The comment reinforces their predjudices and enables Mike to boost his income backing the bets his readers are irrationally against.

At the same time, his exposureof his readers to a modicum of non-Tory thought (and perhaps to losses on prejudiced bets) is likely to be opening their minds to new ideas.

I.e., Political Betting is not your ordinary meeting of like minds in an internet community, and should not be expected to behave like one.

Mike @ 15 - agreed with the comments re Iain Lindley’s forum, to which I’ve been a fairly regular poster for a long time; without a doubt one of the better ones around, though unsurprisingly a little quiet in between elections. Not sure what degree of moderation, if any, he uses, but it does tend to be much less of a bear garden that most sites of its type, and rather less sneering and dismissive - give or take one or two regulars who should know a lot better - towards LibDem posters in particular than PB.com. Indeed, some of the more thoughtful and knowledgeable Conservative commenters on PB - David Herdson, Sean Fear, Anthony Wells, Joe Brayson - have been known to crop up there. And Geoffrey Brooking is funnier than “‘Ave It”, but only just.

Paul Killingworth

Nope,I don’t think this is true:

My case is that such people will be in a minority. The default position is passive, transactional, isolated. Effective blogging is more like a business start-up than many people realise: you need a plan, and a degree of commitment. You need to be sure that you have something new and relevant to say on a daily basis - very difficult for a “sole trader”.

It is neither passive nor isolated. Why you put a daft wordf like “transactional” into the sentence., is beyond me.

I stand by what I said. The Internet is a good thing and you are talking shite…

Douglas, I don’t think anyone is talking shite, its just you and Mike are making different points.

Internet communities can end up just coalescing around ideas and interests. That is natural. It is also true that unless there is energy or sense of mission to carry them forward, they end up decaying a bit after a while.

The point is, can they have any impact? I think that is what Mike is focusing on.

A hundred people in a SWP meeting sometimes have more of an impact than a thousand people reading a website simply because the former are willing to take action while the latter are just passive consumers.

Here is a key point. Nick says:
Not the sort of equality that many on the collectivist left are used to (the sort mandated and filtered by state bureaucrats) but that doesn’t make it right wing intrinsically: just anarchist rather than statist.

but that is because he seems to misunderstand the left. I’d say the left is more anti-statist than the right. And more than that, the web allows communities to form, which can be more collective than what the right is used to.

Facebook for example has been used by many to organise and plan events in a way that would have been difficult a few years ago. So the web might be individualist, but there are fantastic tools here to be collectivist. People can quite easily hear about and get involved in campaigns they are passionate about.

And in fact the left is generally more democratic and egalitarian than the right. There again, the web helps. Forget the Labour party - look at indymedia.org

[19] In my use of the words “transaction” and “relationship” I’m following Richard Sennett’s analysis - in his book “The Culture of the New Capitalism”. He (very broadly) argues that humans need to relate to each other, and that capitalism cannot fulfil this need because in capitalist exchange they only transact.

It is, for example, the degradation of the doctor-patient relationship into a transaction (it doesn’t matter whether the doctor knows anything about you, just so long as she’s open for business 70+ hours/week) that is at the heart of what’s wrong with the Government’s proposals for primary healthcare. Of course, people are more than happy to take time off to see the doctor, it’s their employers whose needs are being met by these reforms. A major purpose of marketing is to persuade people that their wants are the same as capital’s needs.

“there can be no doubt that, at least in Britain, the energy of political blogging is with the political Right.”

Stopped reading at this point. The right has more big, focussed blogs precisely BECAUSE there are less of them and they have to coalesce around a few hubs. Anyone who thinks the British blogosphere is right-leaning doesn’t read outside their comfort zone.

The guff about the internet being fundamentally individualist is almost enough to make me do my best splenetic Randy Waterhouse impersonation.

This whole effect can largely be pinned on the fact that New Labour have been in power for the duration of the rise of the blog as a medium. They have become distant and remote and even their own supporters are not terribly interested in defending them in public on a daily basis. This is not at all unusual for third-term governments and doesn’t really have anything to do with the nature of the internet.

Of course, if Mike is correct in saying that blogs are shallow interactions then we shouldn’t really be worried about the extent to which the right allegedly dominates the blogosphere (and I’m very curious to see the evidence for this; the idea has been around long enough that it is now an easy assumption to make, based on the high-profile personae of Guido and Iain Dale, but is the right-wing blogosphere generally stronger than the left? I don’t know much about Labour blogs, but I don’t think that the Tories have anything that compares to libdemblogs.co.uk, for example). If blogging doesn’t really change anything then we really don’t need to care about what the Tories are saying online, do we? The fact that this conclusion is never reached leads me to believe that the author doesn’t quite believe his own premise.

I’d disagree with the notion that there’s anything wrong with being an ‘egoist’ in the sense of believing that others may have some interest in what one has to say. If that makes a person a Tory then we’re all Tories. In fact, Mike’s thesis can’t really explain why a left-wing blogosphere exists at all.

I think that Mike is down-playing the genuine exchange of ideas that can occur on blogs. It will never happen in some shining, pristine internet equivalent of an ivory tower - it’s likely to be messy, awkward and sometimes not terribly pleasant, but it does happen. I personally believe in the importance of the exchange of ideas for their own sake, and ideas are no less real for appearing on a screen (in fact, it’s one of the best means of transmitting ideas we have yet to invent). I can’t see why Mike is objecting to this not being ‘real’ enough, although I can understand that there is a need to combine online discussion with action beyond the online world. But - and again, my experience is limited to the Lib Dem blogosphere - most of the bloggers I know are politically active offline too. They get involved in local community campaigns, they deliver leaflets, they’re generally about as politically engaged as it’s possible for ordinary non-elected people to be.

“and I’m very curious to see the evidence for this; the idea has been around long enough that it is now an easy assumption to make, based on the high-profile personae of Guido and Iain Dale, but is the right-wing blogosphere generally stronger than the left? I don’t know much about Labour blogs, but I don’t think that the Tories have anything that compares to libdemblogs.co.uk, for example”

ConHome, maybe?

ConHome is more of an equivalent to LibDemVoice or even Liberal Conspiracy. It’s a content provider rather than a community aggregator. What this suggests is that ConHome is reasonably well-funded (and it is - it has had a paid editorial staff much longer than any other UK political blog that I’m aware of) but this says relatively little about the strength and depth of the online Conservative community.

as Richard Tyndall points out many of us criticised Chichester et al over their expenses. The whole article I’m afraid is wrong headed -

just because Martin Day keeps posting “Nick Clegg is like Neil Kinnock” doesn’t detract from the excellent contributions from all over the spectrum - nickc argues a good Labour case, Mark Senior does his job of interepreting all and every piece of info as dire for the tories and great for the LDs and Sean Fear’s dry wit makes the traditional Conservative case well.

I think you do PB a grave disservice because it doesn’t suit you - but surely the whole point of the internet is it doesn’t have to - you can go elsewhere. God bless the free market!!

I have posted regularly on PB for quite some time and have heard this refrain ever since I began posting. Also describing Seant as a ‘hack writer’ is mean spirited and petty and Europhobe is wrong -EU-phobe would be more accurate.

Since its earliest days the majority of the sensible posters on pb.c have been Tory - I think the point about betting, money and the right are good ones (though my biggest ever win with political betting was buying lumps of Tory seats last summer - I believe and still believe the natural senescence of governments had clearly affected Labour then).

But what Mike says is very true - the abuse and rancour from a large number of rightist posters with nothing really interesting to say makes it hard to pick out the good bits. I find it hard to imagine a lot of them older that about 14 but no doubt I would be shocked if I knew the truth.

Having said that I really enjoy SeanT - he is eloquent if way ott - but then I am a eurosceptic.

““ConHome lite” - not only in the proportion of right-wing contributors, but also in their vehemence and arrogance.”

From what I’ve seen of Political Betting, the tone is civil. The ‘vehemence and arrogance’ I’ve seen there has been principally from the ‘left’, especially supporters of Mr Obama.

“It is, for example, the degradation of the doctor-patient relationship into a transaction (it doesn’t matter whether the doctor knows anything about you, just so long as she’s open for business 70+ hours/week) that is at the heart of what’s wrong with the Government’s proposals for primary healthcare.”

A transaction would be an improvement on the current manegerialist version of the NHS and its original incarnation as a monopolised doctor-controlled organisation where the medical establishment decided whatever treatment was appropriate. Before the NHS was created, friendly societies and unions would contract doctors on behalf of their working class members. The doctors had to treat those members as clients/customers, in other words with the respect of someone who is responsible for their salary. The NHS put a stop to that and thus helped to entrench middle class hegemony over the rest. Now the NHS can deny people prompt treatment on the grounds of lifestyle, which disproportionately impacts on the poor. This wouldn’t have happened under a market system.

But on the blogging point, my understanding is that Samizdata ( http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ ) dwarfs most (all?) other UK based political blogs in terms of audience by a matter of scale, even Dale and Guido. I don’t have figures to hand but I think this makes sense for the new medium as the contributors are mostly non-party political and stridently anti-collectivist. They are not tribally right wing, however, despite the gun in their iconography as they have No2Id’s Guy Herbert as a regular contributor who is very much at home on the liberal left. Of course, the audience is more international but to an extent that just helps place the UK as a broadcaster of the new liberalism that the net can foster.

[29] You’re entitled to your opinion on the NHS, Nick, but few share it (and certainly no leader of the Tory party since its creation). The NHS has been extremely popular throughout its existence.

I know it is popular, which is a shame considering it is responsible for so many avoidable deaths, as a model, when it is compared to the social insurance systems that European countries have used in the last century and the compulsory individual insurance that is becoming increasingly popular in Europe in this century.

I am not a Tory, but it doesn’t suprise me that the Tories would acquiese to a popular institution which, while leaving low income people worse off in terms of health outcomes, is quite good at dealing with middle class complaints.

Jennie@22 You make a good point - the left-right distinction online has shifted to more clearly reflect conformist-nonconformist divisions, which probably has also served to give impetus to the conservative tendency with its enhanced appearance of uniformity, if not harmony, amongst their ranks and from where the herding instinct takes over.

On that grounds the anti-conservative (liberal) or non-right (left-liberal) causes would benefit from the use of dissimilar methods as their competitive difference, something samizdata instinctively does.

HOwever, I still think it is as easy to overestimate the dominance of the whipping hand as it is to underestimate an underdog.

The answer is simple.

Don’t read the comments - there are hundreds of them anyway.

Mr Smithson’s views always seem very sensible and to the (polling/betting) point.

He was certainly able to give a proper perspective on YouGov during the London elections for example while all the pro-Ken crowd were going bananas, and consistently pointed to the pre-handover polling evidence that Brown would be a loser.

Still a very useful and interesting site.

I’d say the left is more anti-statist than the right.

Hohoho

Could the issues being discussed here be influenced by lifestyle? Italians are supreme individualists and extreme social animals at the same time. When getting hold of friends in Italy one of the last options I’d choose would be e-mail as it inevitably takes them an age to reply and the mobile is always the preferred option. Why? Whilst they all have pc’s and laptops their use is strictly limited by their social life - at a certain time each day they just have to don their designer shades (very useful for guarding against the regular bright midnight sunshine) and hang out in the piazza to discuss the relative merits of Juventus or Inter and how that will reflect on the political future of Berlusconi or Veltroni - but even this takes second place to who was seen chatting to whom in an over-friendly manner (and long may it be this way). One regular contributor who I follow with interest and amusement because of his bizzare blogging style is Phillipe Magnan. Now I know that Canada is not the USA but I can’t help being reminded of being in Long Island many years ago and being looked at out of people’s windows like some kind of apparition because I was taking a walk and not driving to where I was going. Phillipe always gives the impression of writing from within a bunker or behind the barriers of a “gated community”. I hope I’m wrong and he really lives in a busy downtown multiethnic area of Montreal or similar.
Technology may be a useful tool and we’d all be lost without it but if the web becomes our only or only permitted method for dipping our toes into the social world then its not only sinister (a’ la “1984″ - looking at the use of survellance technology in China is chiiling) but also risks turning us all into virtual Minotaurs. When the left in Italy had any credibility (sadly as far back as the 1980’s) you could tell who was in charge of cities like Rome as soon as you stepped off the plane - if you had a left-wing mayor the streets were alive with festivals, concerts etc…and when the Christian Democrats took charge an air of suspicion, emptiness and curfew reigned and the same was even more starkly evident in Naples. The Summer festival “tradition” has now been stabilised and fortunately become politically neutral.

“He was certainly able to give a proper perspective on YouGov during the London elections for example while all the pro-Ken crowd were going bananas”

…and when all the anti-Ken crowd were going bananas. Remember the YouGov polls a couple of weeks before the election predicted a much larger Boris lead than the final one (which, indeed, called it), and spread-betting pro-Ken on election day was a profitable activity. Mike spotted all this IIRC.

“my understanding is that Samizdata ( http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ ) dwarfs most (all?) other UK based political blogs in terms of audience by a matter of scale”

…but its readers are mostly in the US, so it doesn’t really count.

“the left-right distinction online has shifted to more clearly reflect conformist-nonconformist divisions”

Which way round are you talking here? I mean, ChickYog and DK agree on more than they disagree, and Guido hates everyone, but the right-wing blogs who get the most attention are still conformist Tories like Ian Dale and ConHome…

Thanks thomas.

John B @ 35: “but the right-wing blogs who get the most attention are still conformist Tories like Ian Dale and ConHome…”

I reckon this is partly a function of the trad Tory herd mentality that thomas refers to, and party due to the fact that those sort of blogs are more easily understandable/accessible by the MSM, and thus they get all the attention from the MSM, and thus it becomes self-perpetuating.

Mike - go and check out PB today - please! May be just coincidence but excellent postings re Labour and the Unions with the hint of PtP and SeanT having an affair for levity! I blame you!

[37] I blame me, too.

I think its also worth pointing out that the “fanatical” libertarian site Samizdata gets only a fraction of the posts of PB.com. I still insist on the “fanatical” because of their tendency to suggest that certain views or political positions are freedom threatening and so should be prohibited. they remind me a lot of the Humanists who spend their whole time scouring the media for a mention of religion of any kind so that they can present a reasoned argument against it and failing to see that they are just the flipside of the same coin.
The association of betting with right leaning views made by some commentators above would seem to suggest that we should find very few betting shops in Labour voting areas. Perhaps my glasses need changing!

The real problem with PB isn’t the fact that most of the contributors seem to be Tories, it’s that the level of debate can wildly deviate between genuinely informative to Daily Mail level “Gordon Brown has betrayed his country and will be first against the wall when we take over” type stuff. That and the fact that seemingly all of them believe the current government to be socialist, or even better, communist.

So I just don’t bother reading the comments.

Eheu fugax! I hope that Mike won’t be giving up all blogging on these grounds: his intelligent and unaggressive approach has always made me want to read what he has to say, even when I disagree. Don’t forget that there have always been people who want to tell you their opinion when they haven’t got one; maybe too many of them now find their way to a well-known site like pb.com. If this keeps them away from the meetings of any of my committees, I’m not altogether sorry.

#40: If you are looking at politics from the viewpoint of a ‘taxation-is-theft’ libertarian, then it’s not so unreasonable to say that our Government (and both opposition parties) are “socialist”.

Just like certain leftists I’ve encountered, who can’t seem to tell the difference between conservatives, libertarians and ‘fascists’.

It’s all a matter of perspective, innit ;-)

Good to have you back QuestionThat, where have you been? ;)

el windy@39 compare the takings of working class bookmakers and those where big bets are placed - casinos, racecourses and in the city - and you’ll see a mighty difference in class-oriented gambling.

#43: Oh, I was never far away (at least, not at my place). Maybe there was a period I didn’t post so much at Liberal Conspiracy.

For a time, it seemed like the site was completely given over to campaigning about 24-week abortion, an issue I don’t have a strong opinion on either way.

I’m an erstwhile PBC regular, who remembers the “good old days” of 2004 before even Jack W joined the scene.

The “problem” with PBC turning Tory started after the 2005 General Election, when the press picked up on the site. Because it was linked to betting, there was an assumption that commentary on the site was more in tune with the political actualities than from other, less transparent sources. When this was picked up, naturally politicos from all parties became interested and the Tories turned up in droves.

You used to be able to have a reasoned argument on the site, but nowadays its pretty impossible (a) because of the sheer volume of comments and (b) because anything which veers slightly from “Cameron is an elctoral god and the Tories are headed fro a landslide” gets howled down.

I feel sorry for the real punters; in the “old days” there was much informed and interesting betting comment. No longer …

Mike

The obvious first question is why this post is here not on PB? Did Mike Smithson refuse to let you post it there? If you are raising questions about a community, the place to debate its balance in the first instance is in that community. In my opinion, anyway.

If critics withdraw, of course the balance will go the other way.

>A blog is probably a necessity to-day for anyone who wants to become an MP, and before long that will be true at local Council level, too.

I don’t think you can make that statement until the majority of them have them; at present I don’t think that they do. I’d guess that the number is less than 500 from a total number of MP/MEP/AM/MSP/MIA candidates of more than 5000. The last list of MP blogs I compiled only had about 30 on it.

I think that you are invoking more than a few caricatures, and not really making a case that hangs together:

>Life on-line is a series of fleeting transactions: to the extent that it replaces real-world human relationships it degrades all who engage in it.

That is back to arguments from the mid-1990s. I think you have a false division between “online” and “offliine”; they are both part of real life.

Life online adds new possibilities for meeting people and interaction, rather than destroying old ones (e.g., I know people in Egypt, Sudan, Sri Lanka, India and Australia that I would never have encountered without life online.) If individuals choose to abandon life “offline” in favour of the Internet, that is their decision and is cannot be blamed on cyberspace. I anything that any degradation is self-degradation through misuse of a greater freedom.

>For if the left - broadly defined as anyone who considers rampant individualism to be insufficient for the good life.

I think by that definition the left broadly encompasses something between 95% and 99.9% of the population; I don’t think that even the likes of Mr Question That would defend “Rampant Individualism” - and would strongly affirm the rule of law, the nation state, national defense, open markets and so on - and he’s a member of the Libertarian Party. Perhaps you have a different definition of the term to me?

As somebody roughly on the centre-right, I find the inaccurate stereotypes flying around on the “Liberal-Left” at present rather encouraging for our political future, and promising some good rough and tumble to come !

>And that means going beyond article and comments in hyperspace - it means building real-world networks in localities committed to re-engagement,to the political education function the Parties long ago abandoned.

The problem that I see there is that political (or other) blogs are not suffciently local with a sufficiently dense coverage to achieve anything like that. At the moment the best you will get is something like The Stirrer for Birmingham. I think we are one, if not two, orders of magnitude away from being able to build effective networks in Anytown.

Two signs of hope in this area:

- The experimentations with local blogs and communities by Regional and Community Newspapers (such as in Birmingham where one of the papers has 35 local bloggers, or in ) would be a far better place to start, since they are already genuinely engaged with staff and infrastructure on the ground - political blogging (apart from for a few blogs with Mainstream access) is a niche of politicos arguing with each other consisting of perhaps 100k people in total, including readers.

- And local blogs such as the one in Crewe and Nantwich that covered the By-Election.

On Samizdata etc, I’m not going into detailed stats unless somebody produces some real figures, beyond noting that they are probably in the same ballpark as Dale and Con Home. Imho *no* Uk Political Blogs can be considered to be genuinely large websites - even in blog terms. Hitwise published a list of the top 20 individual blogs with the most UK traffic yesterday - none of them are political blogs and only one of them was British. I’ll post on that later over at the Wardman Wire.

That’s all I’ll say for now.

Matt

[46] Good to hear from you, mate. Trust all is well with you and yours.

[47] I agree with your basic point that the British political internet is at a very early stage of development. This is doubtless partly because of the factors you mention, but also I think because of the fear both Labour and Conservatives have of the policies their members would (and in Labour’s case, in the past have) lumber them with! The American system works against hegemonic centralist parties of our type and so creates a greater space for the blogosphere.

I daresay I was wrong about candidates and the internet, got ahead of myself there - it will happen!

Very much agree with old Tabbers at 46. I quit reading pb.c 6 months or so ago. Occasionally read the odd article but these days the comments are a waste of space. If there is the odd gem in there, it’s not only too time-consuming but now also too tedious to bother looking for it. Sad to see its demise but nothing good lasts very long in this medium :(

>The American system

I’d suggest the absence of daily national newspapers and the BBC gives US blogs the opportunity to be viable.

>hegemonic centralist parties

I choked on that.

>it will happen!

I agree it will. It may not happen mainly through independent bloggers, however.

For what it is worth, my “best guesses” on blogging politicians are:

All MP/MEP/AM etc: perhaps 60-100 active.
All Councillors perhaps 200-250 active bloggers.

The best interaction and debate imo is in Wales, since it is a small enough place that all bloggers can more or less know each other, from MPs and AMs to local individuals.

Scotland could be similar but Scottish Parliament blogging seems thinner on the ground (not sure why - could be that I am ignorant of what is happening). Scotland needs a Slugger to be a fulcrum.

England struggles with size so poliblogging gets Balkanised, and divided by “class” (!), area (especially Westminster village), profile (e.g., national media writers) and party.
Relatively few bloggers get to interact with (e.g.,) national politicians unless there is a relationship first, or they are prominent in one of the above.

For example, I have seen AMs and the occasional Welsh MP, and the odd Scottish politician reading my blog, but very few English equivalents. I think that is largely down to the scale of English poli blogging - too big for most of the bloggers to know each other.

Northern Ireland I don’t really know.

As to politicians who use blogging well - I’d point to some of the Welsh AMs and MPs, and maybe John Redwood for his use of his blog when he was doing the policy review and Tom Watson for the stuff after Civil Serf - provided it feeds through. For the LDs, perhaps Lynne F.

Matt

[...] There’s been an interesting conversation going on over at Liberal Conspiracy [...]

“Yuri Andropov, briefly boss of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and before that its chief ideologist,”

Really? Umm, Suslov was the ideologist, Andropov was head of the KGB.

[52] Then Suslov should have the credit. Thanks for the corrrection.