Though Cowards Flinch

I don’t normally bother defending other leftish bloggers, because they’re generally quite capable of looking after themselves.

But I thought I might say a word or so about the weekend’s assault by the right-wing blogosphere on Will Straw at Left Foot Forward not just because it’s unjustified, but also because I think the way it has played out has been instructive about the current state of the blogosphere, and how it may just be starting to change for the better, unlikely as that sounds.

First, there’s the ‘substance’ of the assault.

Will Straw banged out a quick post, probably before going off to do something more interesting instead, around Saturday lunchtime.  It wasn’t the most exciting post ever, and I suspect was a bit of a weekend filler.

It was about what he considered to be a discrepancy between Cameron’s commitment on a bank tax and Grayling’s earlier view about a transaction tax.

The right-wing blogosphere was on it in minutes, setting about Will for what they thought was his failure to distinguish between the two types of tax.  Will responded promptly enough with an update to say that he knew perfectly well the difference between the two taxes, but that his point was perfectly valid.

He’s right that his point is perfectly valid (even if it’s not crucial in the scheme of things).  He made it perfectly clear that he was talking about ‘the principle’ in his original piece.  More importantly though, was the fact (at least according to this BBC report) that:

David Cameron has announced plans for a new tax on banks – even if other countries decide not to do so.

Logically, if Cameron is saying the Tories will impose the tax even if it’s unilateral,  there’s an acceptance that an international agreement on such a new tax would be better.

So Will is quite justified in pointing out that, while Grayling argues that one tax can only work if it’s international, Cameron’s arguing that the other tax should be imposed unilaterally.

It’s not the most convincing argument in the world, I agree, but it’s not factually incorrect, and there is nothing to suggest that Will hadn’t clocked the difference between the two taxes when he wrote the post.

But the right-wing hysteriosphere is having none of that.  They smell blood, and they’re in there – comment after comment of vitriol at LFF, and quickly followed up at Iain Dale’s blog with an invitation to readers to heap more scorn.  Read the comments and they become ever less connected to the matter at hand, and more hostile and personally abusive, mostly around the fact that Will’s dad is Jack Straw and that he once took drugs or something.

Is it really therefore any surprise that Will closed the comments on the thread?  I assume what he saw for moderation was more of the same, and worse, and that they fell outwith the comments policy on the site. 

This of course is manna from heaven for Dale’s trolls, who then go into overdrive about how he’s avoiding comments etc. etc., even though he comments on Dale’s site to justify his (perfectly justifiable) position.

And that’s the storm in the teacup, of no interest to anyone outside the tiny proportion of people who make up the blogosphere.

It is, though, an interesting reflection of that blogosphere. 

First, there’s the simply bullying.  As I’ve said, Will doesn’t need looking after, and reacted quite appropriately by turning off the comments and going off and doing something better.  I’d do exactly the same if people come over here and offer the same level of abuse.  I’m pretty thick-skinned – I’m a Labour councillor, I have to be – but it’s just not worth the hassle, and of course Iain Dale’s own comments policy makes it quite clear that he’ll do the same, though he doesn’t offer Will Straw the courtesy his policy suggest he might:

If your post is insulting to me or other people posting in the thread I reserve the right not to allow it through. Persistent abuse of me, the host of this blog by way of spurious allegations or name-calling is liable to result in a ban, either for a period of time or permanently. You may disagree with me, but there is a limit to my patience if my hospitality is abused.

Second, and more importantly, there’s the incest.  

If I’d written something along the lines of Will’s post – and it is the kind of rapid fire, top-of-the-head thing I often batter out – no-one in Dale/Fawkes would have batted an eyelid.   Mostly of course that’s because TCF doesn’t get read as much as Will, but even if it were noticed by these people, they probably wouldn’t bother because the correction of what they consider falsehoods is far less important than whose putative falsehoods they are. 

In this case, they’re those of one of the biggest left-leaning blogs around, and so the ‘points’ scored by an attack on it, however unjustified the attack in actuality, are much greater than they’d score from a more justifiable correction to a less blog-important figure.

In short, the target for attack is more important than what the attack’s about.

Fortunately, though, the blogosphere is starting to change. 

New bloggers are emerging who are less interested in getting invites into the inner circle of blogincest, and more with examining what’s going on in the real world, and – as a proxy – what the mainstream press, more important in terms of readership and influence by far, is putting out for circulation.

Thus, we have have Giles Wilkes commenting on a piece by Johann Hari which, well-meaning though it is, is ruined by the fact that he thinks £25bn per year from stopping tax avoidance will pay of the whole of the national debt in seven years, whereas in fact it will pay off a tiny proportion of the £1.3 trillion (ish) debt.  As Giles point outs out, it’s pretty important not to mislead the public in a national paper into thinking that just catching a few Ashcrofts and squeezing their pips will pay off our debt.

Did Iain Dale notice that, even with the steady source of sources he enjoys?  Course not.  Did Paul Staines?  Nope, don’t think so.  Would they have highlighted it if they’d spotted it.  Unlikely, I suspect, because Johann Hari’s not in the incestuous blogosphere. 

The conclusion?  Giles Wilkes is a better, more relevant blogger than Iain Dale and Paul Staines put together and multiplied by the ratio of debt to deficit.

And in our own small way, TCF is focused on what’s going on in the real world, exposing stupidity and wrongness where we see it.

And I just have a suspicion – based on what decent bloggers like Giles and Paul Sagar are saying about their readership numbers –  that blog readers are starting to notice that there are good, interesting, relevant bloggers beyond the big few – the big few who are becoming increasingly self-referential, and – bit by tiny bit – increasingly desperate to defend their territory and a status based more on their longevity than their quality.

This morning, for example, Iain Dale’s just a little bit narky that he’s not been invited to the blogparty (and of course, he doesn’t mention that Left Foot Forward has been invited).