by Rob Marchant
During 2011 a number of people, often well-meaning, sometimes not so, have questioned the choice of some bloggers at Labour Uncut and elsewhere to analyse dispassionately, and sometimes brutally, not just the Tories and the Lib Dems, but the Labour party under Ed Miliband. The inference being that, as loyal party members who want a Labour government, bloggers should make only supportive comments (which, by the way, those same people often do), and not critical ones.
Some history: at the beginning of the New Labour government in the late 1990s, the UK political internet was in its infancy, and there was really no such thing as blogging in the UK. The only real outlet that party people had was through the traditional media, and largely the only people who could really get arrested in the traditional media were MPs (and with the local press, councillors).
Many of our present-day Labour bloggers were, around that time, part of a machine which had become obsessive about its control over these outlets and for the very good reason that the Tories were good at it. In that world, the party with the most discipline over what went out, and how the other side’s views were rebutted, had a real chance of winning the battle for influence. In the end, taking their lead from the Clintonian Democrats, it was a battle that Labour won conclusively.
