Iqra’i

Iain Dale is the undisputed king of British bloggers. He’s also a committed conservative and has a long career behind him of print publishing, political journalism and activism. So when he failed to be selected for the “A-list” of centrally-approved electoral candidates to be fast tracked into a winnable seat, many were shocked. Did Central Office not realise just how potent internet celebrity can be when fighting a campaign? Or were they warning that a searchable history of independent minded critique is a major bar to promotion under the party standard?

The perfect irony is that the “secret” list of local candidates with this central sanction was leaked to the outside world only thanks to…another leading conservative blog, ConservativeHome - which incidentally, is behind this wonderful campaign against anti-Americanism. ConservativeHome is more successful as a massive source of information on the movement, with a range of different feeds, while Iain Dale has the cult of personality of a star solo commentator and more name recognition outside political circles. That fact that both can thrive, along with Guido Fawkes, a superficially anonymous parliamentary rumormonger, shows that there’s still plenty of space in the market.

That’s the story behind today’s column by Dale in the right-leaning British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. With his usual delicate tact, Dale politely suggests that the Conservative Party has been so suspicious of the independence of bloggers that it has focused on distancing itself from the community rather than integrating within it.

They may be Conservative but they won’t trot out the party line like a robot. So CCHQ views them with suspicion, so much so that they have now deleted any links to Conservative blogs (apart from ConservativeHome and those written by Tory MPs and councillors) on their website. How very short-sighted…[given that] Conservatives.com gets fewer hits than many of the top blogs…and blog readership is increasing by between 30 per cent and 50 per cent each year.

Of course, any organization which views independence as the problem fails to understand the internet. The aesthetic of the internet is defined by its slight distance from ‘real life’, and the accompanying sense of liminality. Any media that can be produced by one guy with an computer draws its identity from its grassroots feel - and you won’t integrate into the online community unless your fellow bloggers feel you are one of them. And a blog depends on the online community with a strange paradox - bloggers compete for market share all the time, but you won’t get anywhere unless people respect you enough to link to you, repay citations with a spot on their blogroll and welcome you as part of a cultural network, rather than a set of pedestals for individuals. The system is based on mutual self-congratulation and hat tipping. Which is why a blog has to have the sociability of an individual, rather than an organization - particularly in this super-cynical age in which retaining a PR officer is enough to make any media bunny distrust an institution. The Dems and the Republicans have official blogs but they’re not picked up much by the rest of the blogosphere - yesterday’s live video feed of the Democratic Convention had only attracted nine comments at the time of writing. Their successes come from their support of independent, personable bloggers, bringing bloggers together at special ‘bloggers briefings’ from major think tanks and policy departments, facilitating live-blogging and minute-by-minute reporting with Twitter feeds of campaign events, and lending approval to new media support centers like Techrepublican.com and the Republican Technology Council.

Dale’s is a timely call for the Conservative Party to embrace the blogosphere.

Once the US election is out of the way, the Tories need to recruit the Republican Party’s best internet brains and use them to drag their web operations into the 21st century.

So maybe that could translate into jobs for Nicky and me?