Voting TaKtiX

Tom Watson asks:

Seriously, I’d be interested to know what people think about this stuff. Is it a new way of communicating or just clever marketing and spin?

Both, I think. As Paul Walter observes:

Does he think we were born yesterday? If you were going to do a videcast would you do it while you were doing the washing up?

It’s obviously staged and intended to make him look like a ‘normal’ person, right down to the flat not being 100% clean and tidy. But, essentially, while it is a little cynical, it’s a sign that politicians are learning and adapting to the new media environment. As Gordon observes at Harry’s Place:

During the last US election the blogs showed how powerful online could be. While it had little impact on the last British election that will clearly change next time around with social media from blogs, community and video sharing all playing a much bigger role.

Out on the campaign trail a great video clips of an off the cuff remark, or in John Prescott’s case a general cuffing, could have a real impact once released online.

Gordon better get moving.

As, indeed, must the Liberal Democrats. It may be cynical, still in beta (and isn’t the perpetual beta the sign of web 2.0?), and it may not, ultimately, get a huge audience, but is that relevent? Does it matter how many people do access the site as long as as many people as possible know that they can access the site?

He’ll be getting interlinks and a fairly high Google presence over the next few months (it’ll take awhile for the pagerank to grow and the sandbox will stop the top results being for there for awhile, but it’ll happen). People will be able to access his archive, and assuming his team know what they’re doing and how to SEO, people will be able to find his opinions on many subjects in an (almost ^[1])

Matthew Sinclair:

Any expanding of the Conservative web presence will strengthen the advantage the right already has on the web thanks to its fine blogosphere. If the two can help each other develop further then we should be able to put the left’s patchy Internet presence even further to shame.

As has been observed too many times already, opposition breeds better blogging. The Labour blogosphere, with a few notable exceptions, is either deathly dull, pious, insane or simply not there. The Lib Dems and Conservatives have a much better online support network and seem to benefit from it as a result. The recent redesign of the (already good) Conservative website is another case in point; they’re taking the internet seriously and learning how it can work as a communications medium. Dave said, he enjoyed reading the comments and feedback on his India blog. I suspect he may not like it as much as the cranks, spammers, trolls and loons get wind of his new site, but direct communication of ideas has to be good for the political process itself, regardless of party, right? And as politics is a competetive process, the other parties will now figure out how to adapt, whether to copy, improve upon or do somethign different, right? Andrew Grant Adamson:

the Conservatives have been giving us a lot of surprises in recent months. The Labour party which faces many more months of stagnation before it can have clear leadership and strategy is allowing the Tories plenty of time and freedom to colonise cyberspace.

One thing I really like about the interent is the accentuation of the benefits of markets, competition and ideas. Will WebCameron work or be a huge benefit? Ask me again in 10 years. Will it affect public discourse and will the other parties attempt to compete? Of course.

Ultimately, any improvment in the way politicians interract directly with voters has to be a good thing. Right? Even if it is horribly contrived complete with interrupting baby…

[1] It’s very slow to load, even on my friends T1 line, there’s no way I can look at it at home on dial-up.