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Best of British/Semi-connected?
Posted Colin Byrne on April 22nd, 2008 | Filed under Current Affairs, Personal, Politics, Technology, The Media
Earlier this week over lunch three of us, a journalist, a colleague and myself, discussed Britishness in the light of St George’s Day. We were all the kids of immigrants. The only difference was I was white, and the debate in the past has been stereotyped about being about race rather than culture. My lunch guest was Sunny Hundall, one of the UK’s most innovative political and cultural bloggers. Sunny blogs and writes (The Guardian etc) on race, culture, technology and politics and is leading the way in political blogging breaking out of party political strictures.
On Britishness, we agreed that the US had a better approach to bringing together a seemingly disparate national community around common values – though they are enshrined in a constitution, a bill of commonly held rights rather than institutions like the Royal Family, which many see as heritage symbols rather than daily life, today and tomorrow.
Reading Billy Bragg’s interview in The Evening Standard last night (which the paper’s clunky site won’t let me link to yet, despiute it being a day old), with rising star columnist Johann Hari of The Independent, Billy recalled holding up a Union Jack on stage and his audience hissing. The flag had in the past been hijacked by extremists. He wanted to reclaim it for the multi-ethnic working class.
I remember in a past job persuading the Labour Party high command that it was a good idea to proudly display a Union Jack at an election press conference. Some felt uneasy. And when we told them we planned to play ‘Jerusalem’ as the rousing close of the Party conference, otherwise sensible politicians told me the anthem was ‘reactionary’ and ‘smacked of public schools’. Blake, reactionary???
Back to the lunch. We talked about this week’s piece on politics and new media in The Economist, which unfavourably compares blogging on the Left with the early adopter success of the Right, and argued that, compared to the more vibrant US political blogging and online fundraising scene, UK politics was missing a trick.
As the article points out, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and Conservative Home all rank way higher than left wing equivalents in terms of followers. Guido and Iain have become influential media names in their own right, moving easily across print and broadcast as well as new media. Sunny’s contention is that, beyond the few household names and David Cameron’s ‘Webcameron’ initiative, there is little evidence that the Right are better utilisers of new media.
We discussed several possible reasons for the seeming Right-of-Centre leadership in the blogging in the UK:
- Guido broke a mega news story which was followed up by the mainstream press
- Iain makes no secret of his blog being a platform for a wider media/comment career and he does it very well
In Opposition you have less communications resource outside of election time, so you embrace cheaper or free media more wholeheartedly
- The Conservatives are in Opposition. In Opposition your job is to kick seven bells out of the Government. Therefore the goalmouth is wider. It’s about attack rather than defence. Labour bloggers are nervous of being seen as disloyal, so their content is less interesting, in some cases timid.
Sunny’s Liberal Conspiracy group blog avoids this by working outside of party political structures. It brings people of all politics and none together to campaign on specific issues rather than in support of one party or another. It is a model more akin to some of the hugely influential political blogs in the USA.
On this theme, how the Internet and blogging opens up ‘the power of organising without organisations’, I am enjoying the new book ‘Here Comes Everybody’ by the wonderfully named Clay Shirky, an NYU professor (published by Allen Lane/Penguin). I thought it was going to be another ‘me to’ book following on from ‘The Tipping Point’, The Long Tale’, ‘Microtrends’ etc (confusingly the cover is very similar to Mark Penn’s book) but it is an interesting read, told through good stories, and as much about organisational psychology as blogging. Quote: “Most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of getting together and getting things done.”
Sunny and others are showing how this can be done here as well as in the USA.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
….and of course financial support from rich and powerful backers makes a difference to the right wing blogosphere. Not that I’m bitter…..
April 27th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Not to mention that the Labour Party sees the web as a medium that is antithetical to its desire to micro-manage its media presence.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:37 am
[...] liberal left has it’s own heroes. One is Sunny Hundal, written about by me here and also by Colin Byrne, head of Weber Shandwick and former right hand man to Peter [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 8:07 am
[...] by Sunny on 27th May, 2008 at 9:07 am A few weeks ago I had lunch with Colin Byrne, the highly perceptive head of Weber Shandwick, along with my friend Rakhee Vithlani. Both love [...]