Time for some eCampaigning
It would seem that the Brown Government has taken up President Obama’s online campaigning baton. Numerous Labour and Labour surrogate sites seem to have been popping up out of nowhere.
Labour List is apparently a place “where Labour minded people come together”. It has been around for a few weeks and is currently a beta, although it is updated at an extremely high-frequency. It’s due to be formally launched on the 12th of February.
It was founded, according to the About Us section, by New Labour identity, Derek Draper and numerous Labour characters such as Liam Byrne, Andy Reed, Hazel Blears, Keith Vaz, Ken Livingston, Ed Miliband to name but a fwe. The actual list of contributors is huge and even Ken Clarke makes an appearance as a blogger, albeit Ken Clarke the Regional Director for the London Labour Party, not the other one.
GoFourth is John Prescott’s site which aims to propel Labour to a fourth term, hence GoFourth. The site’s USP include blogs and vlogs from the former Deputy PM himself. It was initially dreamt up in 2008 (although Prescott didn’t start posting until late January 2009) by some well-known Labour names; John Prescott, Glenys Kinnock, Richard Caborn and Alastair Campbell and aims to “create a broad grassroots movement to secure a progressive Fourth Labour Term.” Prescott also explains he once bought Tony Blair a singing fish to cheer him up.
Alistair Campbell has also launched his own site suitably called, Alistair Campbell.org. Alistair is in the unique position of not being in the Government, but is still as feared by most Tories as much as any other Labour head kicker, so his vlogs will be interesting to watch. After posting his first blog only four days ago, he intends to;
I’m looking forward to it.
On Alistair’s links page, there is yet another Labour site, CampaignTV, which claims to be the home of progressive politics on the web. This site is video after video of pro-Labour and anti-Tory imagery. It even rekindles footage of John Major from old Spitting Image episodes.
All this of course comes after the Number 10 website upgrade midway last year to include a number of social media additions including twitter feeds, flickr and facebook posts and so on.
We already knew that Labour has a crack team already in place to win over the voters occupying the digital space, but they are certainly trying to get their message out to as many people as possible by as many people as possible. But could all these voices effectively be drowning each other out?
If anyone can think of any huge leaps the Conservatives have made into the digital world, apart from the odd tweets from the Conservative Party, please let me know, but otherwise I think they are being left seriously behind by Labour in this department.
Tags: alistair campbell, Brown, campaigntv, conservative, election, election strategy, gofourth, Gordon Brown, john prescott, labour, labour list, number 10, online campaigning
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Comments (6)
February 9th, 2009 at 11:27 am Posted by Pauliea
Impressive stuff from Labour. Irrespective of your opinion on what the party stands for they are ahead of the game when it comes to using technology to engage with voters.
Any insight into what the smaller parties are doing in this area? And I am including the Libs in that btw!
February 9th, 2009 at 1:21 pm Posted by Pete
“If anyone can think of any huge leaps the Conservatives have made into the digital world, apart from the odd tweets from the Conservative Party, please let me know, but otherwise I think they are being left seriously behind by Labour in this department”.
Nick have you heard of webcameron or conservatives.tv? Cameron direct? How about Ian Dale? Guido…. Have you really used the Conservative Party Web site?
Don’t get me wrong my friend, I’m no Tory. But your research is very thin, and your analysis incorrect.
Hi Pete, thanks for your comment, it’s great to see some political discussion on our blog.
In reply to your points, web Cameron, conservatives.tv and cameron direct are all part of the Conservative website, rather than completely new sites like the ones I listed in my blog. I didn’t list those or the Labour site as they are part of the current setup and while they do include new elements of social media sections, they aren’t new.
I also grant Iain Dale’s blog is very good, is comparable to Alistair Campbell’s blog and Iain is undoubtedly a Conservative, however his website isn’t branded by the Conservative Party and he doesn’t outwardly state he is going to give Gordon Brown a few whacks like Campbell suggests he will give to Cameron. He has also been blogging for quite a while, hence his own personal influence and as such it is a personal site, not a Conservative one necessarily.
As for Guido Fawkes, again that has been around for a long time and again isn’t Tory branded. He even takes the occasional shot at Tories, for example the Daniel Kawczynski MP (www.order-order.com/2009/01/kawczynski-whining.html) complaint about the police. I’m sure that the Labour sites listed above will be unlikely to have a go at one of their MPs unless they’ve made a pretty significant mistake.
So I do grant that there is a Conservative influence in the blogosphere, as well there should be, there doesn’t seem to be a outward effort as of yet. I’m sure they do have things in the pipeline however and I wait with excitement to see what they come up with.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:29 pm Posted by Darren Lilleker
Not sure if all of this demonstrates Labour are ahead of the game, or that they have taken up Obama’s campaign baton. Where is the evidence of the £1000s rolling into party coffers for example? In terms of support they managed 5004 on Facebook; this does outstrip the Conservatives who have less than 3000 across three different groups or the LibDem Facebook race which struggled to top 1500. Labour have definitely stepped up their e-campaigning but perhaps what is lacking for all the UK parties is any sense of involving citizens in the way Obama did. The Conservatives copied the wall of supporters; the LibDems go out to where ‘the people’ are (Facebook particularly); Go Fourth is gaining some volunteers but all these are limited. What seems to be lacking is the pull factor, that something that grabs people’s interest and makes them want to log on to a web presence. British parties do not have that to anywhere near the extent Obama did, but then can any politician have that amount of pull? If not can anyone really carry his baton? The online environment is highly challenging and offers some political potential but it cannot solve the problems parties face with engagement on its own!
February 10th, 2009 at 3:34 am Posted by Hugh McKinney
Darren you make some good points. Do you think Britain is really ready to enbrace this type of social media and messaging as opposed, or even in conjunction with, traditional campaigning?
February 10th, 2009 at 7:30 am Posted by PaulieA
I think they are certainly ahead of the game in the UK and almost certainly took their lead from Obama in the US.
What is interesting for me here is that in the business world, the internet and then web 2.0 made it much easier for smaller firms to think big and compete with larger rivals. Could the same be true in politics? Could say, the SNP steal a march on Labour by engaging with the electroate using social media?
February 10th, 2009 at 12:47 pm Posted by William Heald
Im not sure if Labour is making significant headway with online campaigning - only time will tell. But if latest polls are to be believed the conservatives have maintained a healthy lead; with the Lib Dems even making up ground.
I think the sudden surge in Labour internet activity is highly interesting. They have seen Obama-mania; see the importance of blogging and the internet for politics nowadays and have suddenly rolled out their own version. But is it as innovative as Obama’s? Im not sure. I don’t think Alsitair Campbell and John Prescott’s internet campaigning will pull in the sort of passionate response that Obama’s did. It is unlikely. Surely Labour HQ would have been wiser to introduce some young, up and coming champions of the left rather than Blairites headlining the new online campaigning craze?
Is it the Brownosphere or Blairosphere?
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