It’s worth taking a few minutes out to read Will Straw’s speech to the Future-democracy ’09 conference on the topic, “The future of political blogging”.
Will includes a fascinating quote from Tim Montgomerie, the thoughtful if Thatcherite editor of ConservativeHome:
We haven’t yet seen the web really take off as a political force in Britain but the left in the widest sense will probably rebuild online. With Labour close to bankruptcy we will see a huge number of very cheap but very popular internet-based campaigns — national and very local — against Tory spending cuts. These campaigns could hurt the Conservatives but they could also hurt the Labour Party in the medium term as it is dragged to the radical left by purist internet activists.