Welcome to the Online Goldfish Bowl

guido fawkes Sat Jun 24, 2006 at 05:51:31 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

When Alex Hilton invited me to post on here it reminded me of when Alastair Campbell was invited  by a newspaper to give the Tories some advice on presentation, except Alastair got paid for his thoughts.



So, for free, here goes.  As I understand it LabourHome is intended to emulate the success of ConservativeHome, loyalish but not slavish.  That is a difficult balancing act, made even more difficult by the established New Labour tendency to extreme control freakery in all media matters - something that stifles free thinking and you should ignore.  Just as CCHQ nervously looks on ConservativeHome so will Downing Street look at LabourHome and they will have to get used to it.

Seems to me there are major difficulties ahead for you LabourHomies, not least of which is that you will in the not too distant future have a leadership contest which may not be as amicable as the Dave and David show ended up being.  On here will be where the activists will play it out in front of lazy journalists looking for a quote.

ConservativeHome shows the Tories pretty much as they really are, will it be the same here?  Most Labour activists that I meet detest Blair for the war and his irrevocable accomodation with Thatcherism.  That recent Compass commissioned poll showed that even Labour supporters want Blair out and many even want the party out of government.  Whereas with the ConservativeHomies all but the small recidivist Heffer-tendency want Cameron to win. (Heffer is off to UKIP anyway.)

ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie runs an orderly operation.  It is not democratic, it is edited.  Lightly and fairly pluralistically, but it is still edited.  Here my understanding is that it will be a grassroots Kos-style process of self-editing and self-selection. Objective observers will agree that Kos continuously degenerates into Yahboo politics  and "Bush eats babies" drivel.  Bear that in mind and let it be a warning.

Tim gets up early to go through the papers and fillet them for his audience - that is a value added service that makes it a must-read site.    My site is a must-read because you know that if there is a scandal it will be there, no sordid story will be missed, no muck will be unraked.  That is my USP and probably your guilty little secret too - my servers show that webmongers in Downing Street and Labour HQ are obssessive readers.

What will be the USP for this site?

My guess is that you won't have any comment or opinion articles that are any better than the Guardian's Comment is Free.  So the most interesting subjects will be discussions about the party machine, policy direction and personalities.

This will be of great interest to us enemies of New Labour as well.  We'll be watching you, every blog you make, every vote you take.  Welcome to the Goldfish Bowl...


tags: , , (all tags)

Display: Sort:
Welcome to the Online Goldfish Bowl | 2 comments (2 topical)

Re: Welcome to the Online Goldfish Bowl (#1)

by admin on Sat Jun 24, 2006 at 05:56:26 PM GMT

I hope no-one minds me bouncing this to the front page - Guido makes some interesting points about how this site could succeed or fail


Re: Welcome to the Online Goldfish Bowl (#2)

by johninnit on Sun Jun 25, 2006 at 04:49:16 AM GMT

Some very good steers there I think - hopefully one day this site will get to return the favour!
I'm maybe not quite so concerned about the dangers of becoming a UK Kos, with all that entails, as the US liberal-blogohemishphere is a bit more of a pressure valve than ours, and not something we need so much in the UK. As I see it, over there a much less pluralistic media makes blogging the last, desperate hope for a lot of political voices. Over here, if anyone wants to read 'Blair eats babies', they only need to pick up the Guardian ;)


Welcome to the Online Goldfish Bowl | 2 comments (2 topical)