Rallying opinion online

Bloggers are transforming the way opposition politics works - soon the web may create and put forward its own election candidates.

Matthew d'Ancona

The Guardian

Monday December 10 2007

At a dinner earlier this year, I sat next to Joe Trippi, the legendary American political consultant who masterminded Howard Dean's brilliant use of the web in the 2004 presidential race. More recently, he's been advising the John Edwards campaign for 2008. Few have a better understanding of how the web is changing politics as we know it. He offered two potentially revolutionary insights.

First, the web is now so powerful a force in American politics that it will not be long before the so-called "netroots" spawn their own presidential candidate: a serious contender groomed by bloggers and webheads who would run as an independent or, more probably, be grabbed by one of the two mainstream parties.

Second (and more immediate), two forms of politics are now in titanic collision. On the one hand, there is the fixation with central control, message discipline and spin, of the sort that marked out the Karl Rove era in the United States, defined New Labour under Tony Blair - and still does under Gordon Brown. On the other, there is the decentralised, anarchic, unregulated energy of the web and political blogging.

Relentless freedom

The old approach is to agree a line at party central and enforce it ruthlessly. The new culture encourages scepticism, scrutiny, transparency and relentless freedom of political expression.

Political bloggers and their growing number of fans do not take their cue from those in authority. Quite the opposite, in fact: they trust "peer-to-peer" recommendation, not hierarchy.

These trends are already at work in the US and Britain, but in different ways that reflect their respective blogging cultures. In the US, the energy and passion of the blogosphere are concentrated on the left; in Britain on the right.

True, the US's right-of-centre bloggers have claimed their scalps - witness the fall of Dan Rather, the veteran anchor of CBS News, who was flayed online (and eventually fired) in 2004 for presenting as authentic forged documents which sought to undermine President Bush's service in the US National Guard.

But the right-of-centre sites are usually toe-curlingly deferential. Take this encomium to Dubya from John Hinderaker of the Power Line blog: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius . . . He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile."

No, for true anti-establishment trouble-causing in the US, you have to go to left-of-centre blogs such as the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, TalkLeft, Wonkette and others. The fury of American leftwing bloggers with the Democrat elite for backing the Iraq war is still palpable. Were the primaries held in the blogosphere, Hillary Clinton could forget it.

In Britain, the position is reversed. There are a handful of left-of-centre blogs worth reading, notably the e-despatches of Tom Watson MP, Sunny Hundal's Pickled Politics and the (officially independent) OpenDemocracy. But the British left has not blossomed online.

In contrast, the right-of-centre British blogosphere is thriving. No political journalist or politician worth his or her salt fails to pay at least one visit a day to Tim Montgomerie's ConservativeHome, Iain Dale's Diary, Guido Fawkes, the Daily Mail's Ben Brogan or - if I may be allowed to say it - the Spectator's ground-breaking Coffee House team blog.

Vibrant energy

The vibrant energy of these and other right-of-centre sites has its roots in the freedom that comes with opposition and, more specifically, the 2005 Tory leadership contest.

Lasting from May until December, this protracted competition, with all its twists and turns, produced a range of sites, official and unofficial, that were used by the various campaigns and their outriders to seed stories, fly flags and gauge opinion.

At times, the bloggers were more important to the race than the mainstream press; and when it was over and David Cameron installed as leader, the Tory movement had developed a serious taste for online mischief, a demand that was quickly met by entrepreneurial bloggers. Print journalists spotted the trend and have since joined in the fun.

The Cameroons understand this phenomenon and have tried to surf the wave rather than resist it. I recently spoke to a very influential web guru who said that no politician of his acquaintance is more astute when it comes to the potential of the new media than George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.

Yet, if the Tories win the next election, they will face the conundrum described by Trippi. Those in power, of whatever political hue, always want to control what is said, to impose message discipline, to centralise ideas. In the era of Rove and New Labour they have succeeded, taming rightwing blogs in America and leftwing sites in this country.

But, as this early era of web politics draws to a close, and we move further into the Trippi trends, I have a hunch the old methods will collapse. Of course, there will always be spin doctors and political control freaks. But they are now up against an uncontrollable force in the cacophonous glory of the web, the fabulous anarchy of the political bloggers, networkers and wiki-folk. This is the new media breed who will play a seminal role in the politics of the 21st century. Those who ignore it - or try to take it on - face a very rude awakening.

· Matthew d'Ancona is editor of the Spectator