From September 2008:

PR Week can reveal that the Labour Party is exploring plans for an online rapid rebuttal unit, designed to kill off damaging stories circulating in the blogosphere. Former lobbyist Derek Draper will oversee the initiative, having recently been called in by Labour’s general secretary to advise on how the party can communicate its message. Labour strategists are keen to respond to the growing influence of right-wing blogs.

Channel 4 covered the bright new dawn here.  It didn’t quite work out…

Back in November 2007, when Comrade Hundal launched his site, we were on a Radio 4 show together, he told them “it will become ‘the hub’ of a revitalised left-wing blogosphere”. Two years later they are making the same claims all over again…

Look away if you hate blogging on blogging. The unpopular left-wing part of the blogosphere is convincing itself that 2010 will be the year they take off. Prospect’s editor James Crabtree has an article in the New Statesman to that effect.

Most critics and even the right-wing blogosphere gives Will Straw’s Left Foot Forward credit as the best new online offering from the left.  It does what successful blogs need to do, produces timely original content that runs ahead of the mainstream media’s news agenda.  Will knows this won’t directly achieve much electorally, instead he aims realistically to influence and frame the media debate, rather than win votes, which he doesn’t think any blogs can deliver.  Sometimes we can Will.  Yes, we can…

LabourList is, like LabourHome before it, a bit directionless and seems more about cheering up the troops than scaring the enemy. That might be a valid role. It is of course way better than back in Draper’s day. Boy, does Guido miss him. To match up to ConservativeHome’s influence and be taken as seriously by the host party as Tim Montgomerie is will take some doing.

• Sunny Hundal’s Liberal Conspiracy suffers from what Lenin would call an “infantilist disorder”, that is the kind of leftism Guido wants to see dominate the Labour Party in the next decade.  A modernised version of the loony left of the eighties would be ideal fodder for this blog.
• Hopi Sen, Tom Watson and Tom Harris all write well, but are they really willing or able to put in the hours Dale does?
• As for Twitter, it isn’t going to win any votes and is a tool, not a means. Forget it.
• This blog?  Guido plans to be in the same position, performing the same role under the next government as this one.

The left has to get the post-election civil war out of the way first before it re-groups. Given that the online left is way to the left of the electorate, there is a good chance that the Labour blogosphere will help consign the Labour Party to irrelevance for a good while. 

There is a good chance the Labour blogosphere will be as much of a hindrance to the Labour Party in 2010 as it was in 2009…

Watch out for the weather girl…

Happy New Year…

Gordon Brown said

“What you as the City of London, have done for financial services, we as a government intend to do for the economy as a whole.”

Mansion House speech, June 2002

A co-conspirator draws Guido’s attention to Swindon Wide’s reporting of the upcoming ‘Swindon Festival of Literature’.  Undoubtedly one of the cultural highlights of the year.  Cherie will really have to prostitute herself somewhat to push her book, she got a reported £1 million advance and it has sold a mere 33,000 copies.

Guido knows Cherie has a reputation for money grubbing, but even so, the headline is a little unfair…