Are there bigger egos than Dale and Draper?
The smugness pours through Iain Dale’s article at the Graun‘s Comment is Free site, as Dale tries to assess how much of a competitor Derek Draper’s Labour List is likely to be to sites such as Conservative Home. Liberal Conspiracy is too serious, according to Dale, so there is room open on the Left for a big blog, but the smugness threatens to choke off whatever point Dale was making when he says, “It would be good…to have some real competition for a change.”
In the words of my forefathers, what an arrogant little shoite Iain Dale is. What I’d like to know is this: by what standard can Conservative Home or the Spectator Coffee House be judged as more successful than any individual or collective Left effort? More visits? By that definition, the websites of the mainstream meedja have us all beaten – but the very reason we bloggers write in the first place is that we don’t want to read inane drivel. Quality matters – not just popular appeal.
On that scale, Mr Dale has some catching up to do – as does Conservative Home. The CH site has a lot of details about Tory election efforts and carries the same sort of banner headline attacks on Labour as does the Mail or the Torygraph. This basically reduces it to a more effective, more eye-pleasing version of Labour MembersNet, added to which are some features of Bloggers4Labour. Conservative Home is a hub with a few pretty pictures nothing more – and like B4L, it is a hub where most of the content is pointless.
I mean, does anybody remember the ConHome calls for everybody earning over £150,000 to go on strike, when the government created the new tax band? Can you get more detached from a cogent political analysis? Iain Dale’s own efforts I’ve had a go at on a number of occasions, but truthfully he’s just another part of the commentariat – there’s no attempt to move the discussion on, just an occupation of the same tired, partisan positions with some propaganda occasionally thrown in.
The Left may not challenge ConHome, Iain Dale or even the higher ranked Labour hubs – but on the other hand, a number of sites deserve mention. Top of the list is of course Liberal Conspiracy (where, yes, I have a column now and again). Serious it may be, and indeed it may be a milder form of the political circle-jerk which Draper’s new site is sure to be, but it has had a powerful campaigning role in the past – and is likely to play such a role in the future.
For other sites, where else would we get news of on-the-ground happenings amongst the non-Labour Left if not from Socialist Unity or Splintered Sunrise? Then there are sites unparalleled amongst the ‘popular’ Conservative sites such as A Very Public Sociologist, with its earnest investigations into social, economic and political theory? I’d like to believe that my own site features in that category. Then there are about a dozen well-written, concise blogs by Labour councillors who don’t occupy reknown sites.
Empirical knowledge, theoretical discussion and attempts to understand rather than merely propagandize or add opinion…where does one get these things in the ‘successful’ Conservative blogosphere? There are some honest, well-written Tory blogs out there, but they don’t hold the same Alexa rank as Dale or ConHome. So once again I must ask, what definition of successful is Dale using to assert that ConHome etc would like a challenge, as though there was nothing out there at present?
The challenge is there. The problem is that most thinking Tories (I know that sounds like a contradiction) don’t pick up the challenge – and the Tories that do pick up the challenge are the trolls, as evidenced by the participations on Liberal Conspiracy by some of the popular wing of the Tory blogosphere. So, Mr. Dale and those who think like that, off you wander back to your popular sites and continue to enjoy your smug, populist endeavours. The rest of us are actually trying to do something worthwhile.
As for Derek Draper’s Labour List, it is, as Iain Dale says, a who’s who of New Labour – and the token lefty thing is precisely that: token. With apologies to Ken Livingstone and Tom Miller, any number of the actions of the former and the words of the later move them closer towards the centre than towards an independent and coherent Left alternative. I imagine that in the crunch, both they and their respective groupings – Progressive London and Compass – will toe a New Labour line.
That almost guarantees a limited appeal to the real activists of the grassroots, though it may hover up the rather loopy internet warriors of Labour MembersNet. It is welcome to such people. This is the same Derek Draper who once famously stated, “There are 17 people who count in this government. And to say I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century.” Yeah, an effort by someone like that isn’t going to be a New Labour incest fest at all. Right?
But Draper’s now a touchy-feely counsellor on the Jeremy Kyle Show, trying to make people’s lives better. Sorry, a touchy-feely counsellor on the Jeremy Kyle Show, trying to make people’s lives better to prop up his enormous ego.
Yes, have you seen the title of his upcoming book? “Life Support: A Survival Guide For The Modern Soul” – sounds like complete touchy-feely bullshit.
I recall a fellow called Derek Draper appearing in Adam Curtis’ documentary series “A Century of the Self”, berating New Labour for abandoning the working class and the goal of socialism. I wonder, what became of this fellow?