Is LabourList getting better?

A while ago I pledged to stop reading LabourList. I felt that they were just an arm of the Labour Party central machine as was evidenced by the extremely partisan and uncritical stance taken in almost all of the early posts. This seemed to be its raison d'etre under the stewardship of the partisan attack dog Derek Draper.

However I have noticed that since Draper was deposed (and I went back on my pledge and included them in my RSS feeds again - I thought I'd give them a second chance), some of the posts on LL have started to be less partisan and more constructive. Even, whisper it, critical of the Labour leadership.

This one yesterday from Brian Barder about the ridiculous stance Labour is taking on "Labour investment vs Tory cuts" is an excellent example of what a grassroots blog should be doing. Brian is a longstanding Labour member who has clearly had enough of the nonsense being spouted by Brown on this issue and is trying to get the leadership of his party to engage with what the real debate should be, i.e. where the cuts should fall.

So, whilst I was forthright in my criticism of LabourList in the past, I thought it was only fair to give them to credit for seeming to take on board comments like those I made and actually do something about it!

If they carry on like this, who knows it might even become properly reflective of the grassroots of the Labour party which would doubtless make for very uncomfortable reading for Brown et al.

I wonder what Derek Draper thinks about this...

Derek Draper should go - now

Blimey!

I've been away for the bank holiday weekend down in Devon and so have only just got to a computer. I only had intermittent coverage on my iPhone so have not been able to follow the blogs as closely as I mormally so. I didn't actually need to read the blogs however to see what has happened as it was the main headline on the BBC News yesterday and has been rumbling on today.

There's not much point in me going into detail about McBride's resignation. I don't know much about him but everything I have heard makes him sound like exactly the sort of person that we do not need in politics and I do not lament his passing.

However, when it comes to Derek Draper who was the recipient of the e-mails and co-conspirator in this sleazy episode, I do have some experience. He responded to a comment I left on LabourList when it first started up and either him or one of his cohorts also commented on a post I made a couple of weeks ago when I accused him of damaging the blogosphere.

After this weekend's revelations I now very strongly feel that he is not fit to run a website so closely associated with a major political party.

Draper has posted an entry today on LabourList entitled "Apologies and Regrets". The tone is moderately contrite but I am afraid there is still too much self justification and attempt to spin his way out of things.

I don't like to kick a man when he is down but there seems to be no indication that he is going to step down so here is a quick fisk:

Since the beginning of this year we have worked hard to build a Labour supporting presence online. 99.9% of that time was taken up by setting up LabourList and trying to build it into our version of ConservativeHome. I am proud of what we have achieved in those three months. But of course I regret the 0.1% of my time that I spent thinking about how we might set up a separate left wing “gossipy” site. We had been looking at the success of the right across the blogosphere and seen how effective their more scurrilous elements were. To be honest I think we were a bit dazzled by what they get up to.

But why Derek? Why have you been so dazzled by the sort of bile that the more scurrilous elements of the right in the blogosphere pour out? Surely a blog closely associated with the Labour Party should be arguing the case for the policies on their merits, not trying to smear opponents.

But in the end both myself and Damian McBride came to believe that such a site would be wrong. That is why when you look at LabourList tens of thousands of words have been posted since those emails were sent back in January and the site we had kicked around the idea of - Red Rag - remains completely empty. You can see where my energy and passion has been going.

But Damian did write and send those emails, I did respond hastily and stupidly and now, thanks - it appears - to someone hacking into my private emails, they are in the public domain. Damian has paid a heavy price for writing them but I have to stress one important point: without the hacking they would never ever have seen the light of day. They were destined for the trash can. But we should never really have considered the idea and I am sorry we did. We got ourselves drawn into the most negative part of the blogosphere when we should have been concentrating exclusively on the more positive aspects as a model for LabourList.

Indeed. Also, from what I have read I doubt you were hacked. E-mails are very easy to forward on and unless you completely trust everybody who could have seen them then I suggest your first instinct should be that you have a leaker.

So I am sorry. I am particularly sorry to the individuals mentioned in those juvenile emails, and especially sorry to Nadine Dorries, George and Frances Osborne and David and Samantha Cameron. I can understand why they – and others – may be sceptical but all I can do is absolutely promise that these stories were just daft ideas that never – and would never have - got off the drawing board.

So in those last three months we have had some successes and made some mistakes. The most obvious being this silly idea that the smears and slurs of the right-wing blogosphere could be challenged through setting up an alternative Labour supporting gossip website – whether it contained the infamous stories in Damian´s emails or more harmless tittle tattle.

LabourList has a lot of work to do to grow and support progressives online. I want to draw a line under this email affair and make it absolutely clear that we will be doing that by discussing issues, policies and campaigning. Dozens of people have posted and thousands of comments have been made, the site grows every day, and gets richer and deeper too. That is because LabourList is about ideas and not smears.

As I have posted before, LabourList seems to be used primarily as a way of diseminating Labour Party propaganda and latterly to execute Draper's blogwars which have so spectacularly backfired on him.

On that note, though, while I do think it is right that we hold our opponents accountable our tone has sometimes been wrong. On the specifics of Iain Dale I do think he should have condemned Carol Thatcher when she used the term Golliwog but I have never said he was a racist. From what I know – and hear of him – I don´t believe him to be prejudiced at all, and actually a rather decent guy, just wrong about that particular issue. If I ever suggested other than that I apologise to him too. It may also surprise you to hear me ackowledge that, from what I know and hear, Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes is also not a racist, though we did, rightly I believe, criticize him for hosting racist comments on his site, alongside other offensive material.

Lots of self justification here.

Maybe this affair will encourage the whole blogosphere, right and left, to commit to a new start, where offensiveness and personal attacks are avoided and debate is elevated not dragged down into the gutter? Maybe this can be a turning point at which we all redouble our efforts to tap into the internet´s positive potential rather than allowing its more peurile aspects to come to the fore? But that won´t happen without many many more people getting involved and taking blogging out of its ghetto.

Maybe it will Derek, but I think that your aims can best be served by you withdrawing from the blogosphere. You came from nowhere late last year and have tried through various tactics to get well known in the blogosphere and to influence things. You have succeeded in that, but it has all blown up in your face and it is you that has dragged things down. In that context this paragraph is sanctimonious tosh. Hand the reins of LL over to someone who understands blogging and can do a proper job.

For those who have suppported LabourList and feel they have been let down, I apologise. I would encourage them – and others - to stay with us: read the site, get involved, make some comments and write some posts. Join the community and make it what you want it to be.

That was always the way to build Labour´s case on line not getting distracted by silly plans for tittle tattle and gossip. I did realize that in time, but should have done so even earlier.. However I really am proud of LabourList and what we are trying to achieve and I rededicate myself to that 100%.

No, it's too late now Derek. You are damaged goods and you need to step back.

For me, the worst aspect of this whole episode is the revelation that one of the intended smears was to suggest that George Osborne's wife was suffering from mental problems. Draper's response to this suggestion was to say that it was "Absolutely, totally brilliant". Derek Draper is a psychotherapist who had a nervous breakdown following the lobbygate scandal in the late 90s.

That he of all people should react to a suggestion regarding a plan to smear an innocent party as being mentally ill in this way tells me all I need to know about him. He hasn't changed and it is now clear to me that he is incapable of changing. He must step down from LabourList.

PS: I know I promised not to post about LabourList any more, but after this weekend I felt I had to! I will now redouble my efforts not to again.

UPDATE (06/05/2009): According to Iain Dale, Mr Draper is indeed now leaving Labourlist for pastures new. Not before time.

Derek Draper is damaging the blogosphere

I stopped reading Labourlist seriously a few weeks ago once it had become clear to me that it was largely a conduit for Labour party propaganda. If I wanted to read Labour party press releases and centrally coordinated attacks on opponents I would subscribe to them.

In Labourlist's first few days I posted this on one of their initial threads:


Hello.

I wish you luck in this endeavour (I am a Lib Dem activist and blogger) however I do have a couple of concerns.

Firstly the list of contributors seems to largely consist of very mainstream party figures. If a blog like this is to be successful, it cannot always parrot the party line. There has to be space to be able to question and constructively criticise your own party's approach. I hope you can find the right balance here.

Secondly, and I don't wish to get too personal but I am fearful that with such a divisively partisan figure as yourself Derek as the driving force behind it, there is a risk that the blog will reflect this too strongly. I saw you on BBC News 24 a while back and I was shocked at how unwilling to even engage in the discussion with your Tory opponent you were. You just kept shouting things at him like "Same old Tories!" and similar and also kept grossly misrepresenting your opponent's position on things. It was exactly the sort of performance that turns people off from watching political "debates" in my opinion. I hope you can curb these instincts and allow proper debate to occur on here. I know you will have problems with Tory trolls but not all Tories are in league with the devil and they often have valid opinions that merit debate. As do we Lib Dems and others from across the political spectrum. If you can engage in this way, the blog is much more likely to be successful.


To his credit, Draper did respond to my post:


mark. there will be more contributors added and many of those will be non-mainstream. we already have ken livingstone and another key left of centre figure is joining us tomorrow. i don't think that bbc 24 appearance was my best and will try and raise my tone (it'll slip occassionally though, i'm sure) - but the tone of this site should always be welcoming to constructive comments like yours...


However since then I have seen no evidence that he has followed through on the general thrust of what he promised. Every media appearance he has made has been as bad as, or worse than his News 24 appearance I referred to. He has been rude, hectoring and unwilling to listen to anything his opponents say as well as deliberately misrepresenting their positions. Also, there are numerous comments in threads on there that I have seen in a brief scan today that imply that censorship has been taking place on the site against people who post negatively about the Labour Party.

And then today Iain Dale has revealed that a very articulate and thought provoking piece written by Labour Party member Shamik Das criticising Jacqui Smith and submitted to them at about 4:00pm yesterday has at the time of me writing this (about 9:45am the next day) still not been published on Labourlist. Dale has (slightly mischievously) published it himself on his own site now.

Either Draper has deliberately censored the publication of an article that is critical of Jacqui Smith in which case Labourlist is not an independent grass roots site, or if he claims he has not got round to publishing yet due to time constraints then he does not have enough time to devote to this enterprise. Things in the blogosphere move fast and it cannot take many hours or even days to get things published if you want to be fresh and relevant. As Dale has shown, someone else will publish it anyway and you will be caught flat-footed. The old rules of the spin machine no longer work in the digital world and Draper would do well to heed this.

I think Labourlist needs someone else less partisan at the helm if it is ever going to be taken seriously as a force in the blogosphere.

UPDATE1: Labourlist has now published Shamik's article. It was posted at about midday today.

UPDATE2: This is now officially my most popular post ever by quite a long way largely due to Iain Dale having included it in his Daley Dozen yesterday. Thanks Iain! Also, Labourlist is still at it - publishing press releases and trying to pass them off as blog posts as I have detailed here.

UPDATE3: I now feel very strongly that Draper needs to resign as editor of LabourList following the "Sleazegate" revelations.

Fawkes vs Draper - but which one is best?

Only one way to find out...

FIIGHHTT!

On a more serious note, neither of them covered themselves in glory in that discussion. Draper was his usual hectoring aggressive self (and was even inconsistent at least twice contradicting himself). Staines did not do well either. That is the second time I have seen him being interviewed now (the first time being his infamous Newsnight appearance) and he does not come across well as an interviewee.

There was also too much blogocentric talk referring to people and things that only bloggers and Westminster insiders would understand. I doubt many non-blog involved people will be rushing to find out more about political blogging on the strength of this.

I did like it though when Neil shouted at Draper to "Shut up!". It's about time someone did!