Political blogging hit the mainstream in April this year when Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) famously uncovered emails between Gordon Brown’s spin-doctor, Damian McBride, and LabourList editor, Derek Draper. Over the course of a weekend, traffic to both order-order.com and labourlist.org shot through the roof as thousands of people who had rarely, if ever, visited a political blog went to see what the fuss was about. Unique visitors to Guido’s site jumped from 181,000 in February to 348,000 in April while traffic to LabourList more than doubled.
The emails, which were given by Staines to the Sunday Times and News of the World, revealed an attempt by Draper to create a new blog for anti-Tory gossip, which would be known as ‘Red Rag’. It appears that the idea had been dropped by the time Staines released the emails, but both Draper and McBride were forced to resign for their role.
The sorry episode prompted the publication by several Labour-leaning bloggers, including myself, of an 1,100-word ‘ethic for progressive blogging’. The tract outlined that: ‘We believe we must act as ambassadors for the political values we profess’. It went on:
‘We are clear that the left can never win a politics of loathing and mutual destruction, because the faith in politics that we need will inevitably be a casualty of war. The nihilistic approach practised by a few online should not overshadow the greater energy and numbers engaged in constructive civic advocacy. We believe that we can challenge our political opponents without always questioning their integrity.’
This approach to blogging is precisely what a new progressive website, Left Foot Forward, seeks to achieve. The blog is a collaborative and independent project with three primary goals: critiquing small ‘c’ conservative policies, promoting progressive causes and holding the media accountable for inaccuracies and unbalanced or misleading reports. To guarantee accuracy, all assertions will be linked to source material such as an independent report or official data. YouTube will be used to ensure that statements cannot be taken out of context.
The website is explicit about its goals. The ‘About’ page documents the eight themes that Left Foot Forward and its contributors are fighting for or against and each story is colour-coordinated accordingly. These themes include fighting for a proactive rather than laissez-faire economic policy, promoting multilateralism over international isolation, and opposing racism and extremism. The site will also be used as a forum for debate on new progressive ideas that could be included in election manifestos.
So how will it work in practice? To some extent Left Foot Forward takes its cue from the success of evidence-based blogging in the United States. The 2008 presidential election is when blogs like Think Progress and Talking Points Memo came of age. Those websites – described by Think Progress editor Faiz Shakir as ‘rapid response research blogs’ – deal in the forensic assessment of current affairs and politics, reacting within the news cycle to influence public debate and how stories are reported.
Notable successes during the campaign included bloggers catching out John McCain as he flip-flopped on whether he did or did not mind troops being in Iraq for 100 years. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin was exposed for lying 37 times on the campaign trail about her role in the creation of Alaska’s so-called ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. MSNBC’s evening anchor, Keith Olberman, donated $100 to charity for each untruth. This success has paid a dividend as these blogs now regularly receive over one million unique visitors per month.
It will undoubtedly take time for Left Foot Forward to build up an audience or impact to compare with the US blogs. But by bringing together a group of progressive writers from thinktanks, trade unions, campaigning groups and NGOs, Left Foot Forward can help make the runup to the 2010 general election and beyond a period where evidence and fact, rather than opinion and gossip, become the key values of the web.