Labour takes the fight online (and loses)
Last month saw the launch of several new online initiatives by Labour, as it desperately tries to find a strategy to beat the Tories in the coming election.
John Prescott, who is apparently a star on Twitter (I find this hard to believe but that’s what they say), is writing a new blog, called www.gofourth.co.uk , so called because that’s where Labour will end up being placed in the next election, ha ha. Apparently Alaister Campbell is also involved in the website, somehow…
In the same month, Derek Draper, who briefly showed an interest in psychotherapy but now appears to be a full-time party apparatchik, launched a site called LabourList, which will try to be the same sort of ‘indepenent grass roots website’ as the influential www.conservativehome.com
The Tories have widely mocked these initiatives, saying the government just doesn’t get the net – it is de-centralised, off-message and spontaneous, and therefore completely different to the Alaister Campbell model of spinning and bullying the press corps. The fact that LabourList is run by Peter Mandelson’s former assistant is testament to how much Labour doesn’t get it, and how worn out the grass roots Left is in the UK (just read New Statesman if you’re in any doubt).
That much is said, with the accompaniment of a great gangsta beat, by Raplog, a blogger who’s declared aim is to ‘bring some hip hop panache to political blogging’:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqBFF6TDI8I’>watch?v=cqBFF6TDI8I[/youtube]