Smeargate - the last word on it from me!

The consensus on the ongoing Smeargate debacle is that politics has lost out, its reputation further tarnished by this fresh evidence that politics is a dirty game. One voice that stands against this is Conservative MP Douglas Carswell who writes on his blog quite rightly that "Politics in Britain is fundamentally broken. The Internet is merely helping to expose the bogusness of what we currently have to put up with" - in other words this is really little that is new. However he makes the further assertion that: "The web will break the predominance of corporate party machines, the corporate media and corporatism - each of which helps currently sustain the SW1 class. Politics will have to become "open source" and more democratic"

I found this a really interesting argument, and one that would be a very positive development, but I worry if this really will be the case. My problem is that I doubt that currently the right people are influential in the blogosphere to hold SW1 to account. My take, disagree if you like and I am sure some will, is that Smeargate is a symptom of something that is endemic in modern politics, that campaigns are as likely to be fought on negative grounds and what often predominates is the personal attack. And perhaps Smeargate provides evidence that rather than being a feature of party machines it is actually spilling over into the blogosphere. Smeargate is the latest instalment of a battle between two egos. This was not a revelation exposed by a blogger wishing to scrutinise the actions of those in politics. It appears to be more the case that the underlying desire was that of Paul Staines to did dirt about Derek Draper, to undermine Labour's rather brash and artificial attempt to have a grassroots online presence and to score party political points.

The blogosphere seems to currently reflect the pattern of the mainstream media. What predominates is bias, with even the BBC being accused of favouring parties and ideologies (usually those in government). Bloggers have no regulation and so, rightly, we can say what we like, that is the idea after all. But if it is biased opinion following party political lines, whether this can encourage democracy in anyway is a very big question. What seems very rare is good, objective political blogging that is not out to score points or cheerlead for one party or another (not a call to read my blog by the way but an observation of what is available). The problem is that much also purports to be independent, both from parties and politically. Thus I share the despondency and am much more pessimistic than Douglas Carswell I'm afraid. Evidence suggests that petty squabbling and point scoring does not encourage engagement in politics, if this is to spill over into the blogosphere then it will keep it as a forum for the few and not the many. Just my humble opinion!

No Surprises there then

It seems that the latest bout in the fight between Derek Draper and Paul Staines is not just a spat about whether sites were or were not offline but is a little deeper. Surprise, surprise Labour are doing badly in the polls so their tactic is to smear the opposition. This is always done, The Conservative Demon Eyes Poster, Michael Howard as Fagin, the Obama bin Laden stuff. But it has been turned into a big story on the BBC, today's Telegraph, various blogs with various comments about desperation, being appalled, it being ludicrous the shock and amazement goes on. The problem is though there is no surprises here. It would be obvious it was happening, it is a pretty obvious tactic and consistent with the tone of Labour's campaigns recently. It is also consistent with a rather ham-fisted attempt to create a Labour supporting journalistic blog in the same vein as Iain Dale's Diary and Order Order, mistakenly they think that they can use this not just to spread the Labour message but also scurrilous gossip about opponents. The bit that is surprising is that once again Labour got caught in this way and made to appear so underhand and devious to the man in the street, and this can only be due to the lack of an effective or stable communications team. Brown hailed himself as the non-spun PM after Blair stepped down, this is of course rubbish but, as this great piece by Fraser Nelson suggests, what he has is a largely reactive communications operation which has little long term strategy and (it seems) little job satisfaction or loyalty. While the next election will not be won by communication strategy alone, as the polls wax and wane you can't help wondering if Brown had a more efficient team and strategy would he be losing out as badly in the court of public opinion?