Dale’s story yesterday that Dolly Draper had convened a war council of would be cyber warriors had Guido’s ears burning (a day ahead of schedule). Attendees names you might recognise include Ben Wegg-Prosser (Mandelson’s protege now based in Moscow), Tim Allan (Ex-Blair spin merchant under Campbell, now boss of Portland PR), David Prescott (son of Prezza and another spin merchant). Dale missed Luke Akehurst (Weber Shandwick’s spinner for arms dealers) off his list.

Derek wouldn’t confirm who else attended but he was keen to emphasise there were younger bloggers there as well – “don’t just say it was a load of re-treads” he protested. Derek was pleased that, despite not actually blogging, he now knew “his RSS from his elbow”. Guido encouraged him to become the Iain Dale of the Labour Party, “it looks like a lot of work” he said uncertainly.

Can’t help wondering if this plan to ignite the Labour blogosphere isn’t a bit top-down and over-laden with lobbyists and spinners with few grassroots bloggers involved, if it was going to happen it surely would have happened spontaneously already. What hope is there for any authenticity from this crowd?

This video is apparently only the first salvo in their battle to motivate the Labour base:

It is at least mildly amusing and a welcome change from Labour’s earlier online attempts to motivate activists with videos of Ed Balls boasting about achieving child poverty targets. Guido can’t figure out the strategy here. What do they hope to achieve?