Puffbox

Well, I guess it was inevitable: the Tories have played the ‘chicken’ card. If Gordon doesn’t call the election now, and there are enough good reasons why he shouldn’t, he will be portrayed as a coward. Potentially damned if he does, definitely damned if he doesn’t… Charlie Beckett hit the nail on the head this morning: ‘It is one of those occasions where those who attempt to spin the media are spun.’

Incidentally… I’m seeing plenty of mentions of Cameron giving his speech ‘off the cuff’, and an implicit contrast with Brown’s scripted speech last week. Clearly the Tories have decided – rightly – that they have a better story to tell when it comes to sincerity. And they can – rightly – point to Webcameron, which has been running for months as evidence. Uncut, un-spun, me-to-you stuff. Scoble as opposed to Stalin, perhaps. 😉

Am I the only one to feel there’s something inherently wrong with outsourcing the moderation of blog comments or forum posts? Yes it’s difficult from a resource planning perspective, but can you really get a genuine feel for the readers’ responses from an external agent’s written report after the event?

Granted, it can be a pain to filter out the spam and abuse; it’s a mechanical job requiring only rare use of intelligent human discretion. But the other part, the ‘ding!’ when you receive an insightful comment on something you’ve just thrown out there, is one of the more motivating moments in managing a blog. It seems odd to delegate that away to someone else… especially when personal passion, from writer to reader and back, is inherent to the very notion of social media.

What other blogs will be joining Westmonster in Lloyd Shepherd’s MessyMedia stable? A job advert posted on Gumtree last week talks about:

• Celebrity and popular culture
• Media (film, TV and publishing)
• The City
• Food, restaurants and bars
• Cars and bikes
• Consumer issues – buying, selling, complaining
• Politics (to work alongside our existing editor)

I didn’t ever consider this to be a political blog… but then I saw the complete list of 1200-odd UK political blogs as compiled by Iain Dale‘s readers, and it turns out I’m on it. So it’s time for a little bit of politics.

Gordon Brown is playing a very dangerous game. Even if you accept – and few do – that the timing of his surprise day-trip to Basra (complete with home-for-Christmas announcement) was merely part of ‘the normal process of government’, it was always going to be seen by a cynical electorate as a cynical party-political ploy. There is no truth, there is only perception.

It’s not as if he doesn’t have a track record for sleight-of-hand: you only have to think back to his final budget, and a headline-grabbing cut in basic-rate income tax distracting attention from the phasing-out of the 10p tax band. We seem to have accepted that it’s acceptable for nasty things to be omitted from the Budget speech, and buried in the accompanying flood of press releases.

I’m afraid this just isn’t what I expected when he talked of ‘a new type of politics‘. I can’t believe it was pure coincidence: today was either naive or cynical, one of the two. If the intention was to present him as the global statesman in Basra, whilst the Tories were left bleating in Blackpool about party politics, I believe it was one huge miscalculation.

No matter how good Brown’s poll ratings, he is a politician. And politicians don’t have enough credibility to get away with a stunt like that. With big leadership problems in both the blue and yellow camps, Gordon’s biggest enemy at any general election may turn out to be sheer apathy. Or to put it another way, the electorate itself. A proper engagement strategy needs to be in the works.

PS: I know for a fact that the Labour Party machinery is preparing itself for the possibility of an election being called imminently. Brown may not yet have made the decision, but he has certainly ordered the team to be ready for the possibility/probability that he will make the decision.

I can only assume that CampaignTV is trying to be the left-wing response to 18 Doughty Street. It presents itself as ‘the first free to view, independently-owned Labour-supporting internet TV channel’, whilst at the same time recognising its limitations:

CAMPAIGNTV meets the urgent need for a progressive challenge to the dominance of right-leaning political content on the internet. It’s the place to find films making a case for the Labour Party, for trade unions and for other progressive campaigns. We start as a small organisation, with a low-cost site hosting a quality tv player and a selection of quality films. We want to grow and offer more and more programming as the site develops.

There’s a lot wrong from a technical perspective. They declare quite unashamedly: ‘For optimal viewing of CampaignTV, we recommend using Internet Explorers 6 & 7. (Firefox 2.0 is NOT recommended). You should also use Windows Media Player 9 or 10. (Windows Media Player 11 is NOT recommended).’ Based on my own experience at least, ‘not recommended’ actually means ‘not going to work’.

Finally, you reach the content: and it’s a curious mix. They’ve clearly got good connections, given the one-to-one interviews with senior Labour figures including the PM, and footage from official events. Most of it, sadly, is standard corporate-video fare: smiling faces, snappy soundbites, muzak.

Will it engage me as a voter? No. Much as we’ve done with online ad banners, when we stuff like this, clearly over-edited and over-produced, we automatically disengage. People only create material like this when they’re trying to preach at you. And nobody wants to be preached at. Think of it as the difference between a blog and a brochure, but in video form. It’s why Webcameron was working, and why David Miliband is taking the Foreign Office down the same road.

Stephen Fry started blogging last week. Already, in Bloglines alone, he has nearly 400 subscribers. Now I love Stephen Fry to bits… but he’s averaging 7250 words per posting. Blimey. I’m sure his new piece on the modern notion of fame is fabulous, and I’d love to read it whilst travelling tonight, but I’m not sure my battery will hold out.

Newsnight editor Peter Barron points to an interesting Mayo/Steinberg moment this week. On Tuesday night’s show, David Miliband was being Paxman-ed about Burma: unable to answer a specific point, he promised to clear it up by publishing the missing information on the web later on. Not on the FCO’s main site, nor indeed on his shiny new blog… but over on Newsnight’s own site.

Arguably this was a risky tactic, and were I still working there, I might even have been inclined to advise against it (although it seemed to be a spontaneous decision by the Foreign Sec, judging by the video recording). By handing over the text, you’re handing over control of it. Who knows how the BBC might present it, or what else they might put around it?

As it turned out, Newsnight did publish it… and they followed it, on the same page, with responses by their own production staff, and from the UK’s Burma Campaign…. followed by a further FCO follow-up. All shown without additional commentary. And you know what? It’s a brilliant example of adult, reasoned debate. Here are the viewpoints, all in one place – now you decide.