Is anyone apart from Guido making money from blogging?

Some money. Not pictured: My hand

In a somewhat below-the-belt post on The Speccie yesterday Douglas Murray highlighted how Sunny Hundal (who is quitting full time writing for Liberal Conspiracy) was not making a living from blogging.

This has led me to ponder whether any independent blogging sites* are actually making enough money to support full-time people and be self-sustaining. Liberal Conspiracy wasn't. Left Foot Forward, LabourList and ConservativeHome all have full time staff but also have external backers. Lib Dem Voice is run by volunteers, none of whom draw a salary from it.

The more I think about it, the more I think the answer is none. Apart from Order Order the Guido Fawkes site. That does appear to be profitable enough to support full time staff. Although even there they have straddled the mainstream media by publishing a column initially in the Sunday Star and latterly in the Sun on Sunday. Also, it is worth noting that Guido very much goes down the tabloid sensationalist route (albeit punctuated by occasional deep level economic posts to show what Paul Staines is really capable of).

I know that one of the reasons Iain Dale stepped down from such heavy blogging a few years ago was because even at its peak it was not bringing in enough to sustain a living.

I've already highlighted previously how I have never made any money from my online writing despite now having been at it for 5 years and winning awards and acclaim.

So have I got this wrong? Is anyone other than Guido making money from blogging?


*I am not including sites like CiF, Coffee House, or any other magazine or newspaper blogs as they are not independent and I suspect are cross-subsidised from the main papers although I'll be happy for anyone from them to set me straight on this.

Left Foot Forward shows its bias

When Will Straw first set up Left Foot Forward in 2009 he asked me to be a part of the inaugural team of contributors with a particular focus on drugs policy and electoral reform. Having learned all about how LFF was to be an evidence based blog with a left-leaning agenda I was happy to be a part of it although over the last few years I drifted away from contributing.

I was however somewhat irked in 2010 when LFF published a number of pieces relating to research done by Tim Horton of the Fabians and Howard Reed of Landman economics which did its best to try and comprehensively destroy the argument for the Lib Dem £10K tax rate funded by a mansion tax. Their arguments were that it did nothing to help the very poorest (because they pay no tax), only around £1 billion out of £17 billion goes to the lowest earners, households in the second richest decile did better than the poorest and that overall it would increase socially damaging inequalites.

Despite lots of people arguing in the comments (which I cannot currently locate) that they were missing the point, that the change was essentially progressive and had lots of good aspects to it, especially the mansion tax aspect the LFF editorship seemed to have no truck with this. I was particularly irritated because I suspected that had Labour announced a similar policy they would have given it a much fairer wind. Of course I had no proof of this so I let it lie.

Then today, Ed Miliband announces a plan to reintroduce the 10p tax rate for low earners paid for by, yes you've guessed it, a mansion tax. This is very similar to lifting low earners out of tax. There are of course some differences and I would argue that a higher starting rate is even more progressive (as this analysis suggests) but they are close policy stablemates. And the mansion tax seems pretty much identical to how the Lib Dems wanted to fund their policy. So you would have expected LFF to come out dead against it straight away, exactly like they did when they published their "Think again Nick!" analysis on the £10K rate and mansion tax.

Not a bit of it. The first piece they have published on this subject is this post which highlights the 5 reasons why progressives should support the mansion tax. They also praise Ed Miliband for his "differentiation" on 10p with Gordon Brown.

I tweeted about this pointing out their hypocrisy. To be fair they did tweet back saying they would be publishing a piece later highlighting some of the problems with the 10p rate. But that doesn't change the fact that their initial reaction was to be broadly supportive of policies that three years ago when proposed by a party that is not Labour they were arguing against using analysis resources to explain why. There was no balanced argument back then, just attack, even naming the pamphlet in a way that seemed like a campaign targeting the leader of the party proposing it.

I have no problem if Left Foot Forward wants to be biased towards the Labour party. But if that's what they are going to do they need to be open about it rather than claim to be "evidence based" when they are actually actively looking for evidence to support Labour and to attack Labour's opponents.

Left Fisk Forward

Will Straw has written a piece for Left Foot Forward today entitled "Electoral reformers should oppose the coalition’s gerrymandering" where he highlights four reasons why electoral reformers should oppose the proposed government bill to change the boundaries and put the AV to a referendum.

I won't reproduce the entire post here for the purposes of fisking but I will take each of the points that Will raises along with a synopsis and address them here:

1) The Bill prevents equal representation

While everyone accepts the principled case for equal-sized seats, time must be taken to ensure that the equalisation is of those entitled to vote rather than those already registered to vote.

This has been the mantra of Labour regarding the resizing of constituencies since Harriet Harman first raised it at PMQs a few weeks back. The redrawing of the boundaries cannot be completed until everyone who is entitled to vote is taken into account, or at least many more of them. The thing is though that all the other times that the boundaries have been redrawn, including the most recent occasions in England Scotland and Wales between 2006 and 2008 this did not happen. And that was under Labour. I agree that we should do our best to maximise voter registration but not at the expense of these other reforms. I see no reason why this issue is suddenly of such critical importance after 13 years of government when they could have done something about it. It is almost as if they are just looking for a reason to oppose the bill.

2) The Bill gives the Liberal Democrats a partisan advantage

Two parliamentary seats – the Western Isles (SNP) and Orkney and Shetland Islands (Lib Dem) – have been exempted from the need to meet new quotas because of their low population density.

Will also goes on to list a few other Lib Dem seats that will be spared from being broken up, all of which are very sparsely populated.

I'm sorry but is he having a laugh!? In 2005 Labour got 35% of the vote and 55% of the seats. the Lib Dems got 22% of the vote and less than 10% of the seats. In 2010 we got over 23% of the vote and got even fewer seats still than 2005. The current system gives a massive partisan advantage to Labour and is hugely tilted against the Lib Dems. I know from conversations with Will that he is not happy about this and wants to see it changed. Even with these changes (including AV), the Lib Dems will likely get nowhere near their proportional share of seats. And Labour will still very likely get far more than theirs.

There are good reasons to exempt the constituencies he lists from the process as they have very low population density and increasing the size of these constituencies still further (without increasing the number of MPs for the seat) would cause real problems.

We are not trying to gerrymander anything.

3) The Bill does not correct distortions in the electoral system

In essence his point is that fiddling with First Past the Post will not help with proportionality.

I agree, it won't. As Will very well knows what the Lib Dems wanted was STV with multi-member constituencies. We were never going to be able to get that. The Conservatives will not go for it (at the moment) and Labour could not have delivered it. There are too many Labour MPs who would not allow even a referendum on this through. So the Lib Dems have got the best deal they could. An agreement to a referendum on a change to AV which is at the very least preferential and ensures that the ridiculous situation at the moment where MPs can be elected on around a third of their vote (or less) in a constituency will be over. It will also reduce negative campaigning as candidates try to appeal for second (and third) preferences from their opponents.

In short it is not perfect and is certainly not proportional but it in some key respects it is better than what we have now and can be used as a springboard to STV later. After all we would already have the preferential voting. We would just need multi-member constituencies.

So I agree with Will on this one but my question to him is, where is the alternative proportional system proposal that can win enough support in the house to get a referendum? He is making the best the enemy of the good. AV is politically possible at the moment. Further change is not.

4) A smaller House of Commons will be be less representative

As Sunder Katwala has outlined on Next Left, “a smaller Commons will almost certainly delay and slow down progress towards gender equality in the House of Commons.”

There are all sorts of measures that can be taken to ensure better representation. The parties themselves have a particular responsibility to ensure they are picking a diverse range of candidates in winnable seats. More encouragement needs to be given to those from under-represented groups to stand. I also firmly believe that if we were to get STV then we would see more diversity anyway as the parties would find it in their own best interests to offer a diverse set of people in each constituency (and as I have said AV is a stepping-stone along that path).

By Will's logic here we should see even more MPs in order to increase the granularity and improve representation. I do not think that is the right way. We have too many MPs and both parties now in government wanted to see them reduced.

I think the thing that disappoints me the most about the attitude of many in Labour, including Will who I very much respect is that on this issue they seem to have approached it from the start-point of "what can we do to scupper this?". If it wasn't these four arguments, they would have found some others to object to it and vote against it.

Although he is in a minority within his own party, I was pleased to see a post from Labour blogger Anthony Painter today entitled "Labour’s tactics driven opposition continues. Disappointingly." who thinks his party are being wrong-headed about this:

“...from Labour’s point of view, that element [cut in number of constituencies] of the legislative package will, in all likelihood pass whatever I’m afraid. It is AV that is up for grabs. Labour has the opportunity to show that it can embrace reform and pluralistic politics. It can show that it is not stuck in the past; a defensive party unable to confront the future. And it is the right thing to do from the perspective of democratic accountability.”

Spot on. I only wish more in his party felt the same way.

Will claims at the start of his post that a "yes" vote on AV should be supported, but the truth is as Anthony points out that the tactics being engaged in now could wreck the whole thing.

As I said in a brief Twitter conversation with Will on this subject earlier today, every time there is a chance for electoral reform, Labour do something to prevent it. We saw it in 1998 when Jenkins was kicked into the long grass. The pattern is continuing. This is one of the reasons why I could never have considered joining Labour. As a party their heart is not in any change to the electoral system.

Budget day Live Chat

From 12:00 noon today I am participating in a Budget Live Chat coordinated by Left Foot Forward across a number of other blogs.

You can join us from 12:00 noon below, budget itself starts at 12:30pm:

Lib Dem tax proposals - £10,000 could be a winner

I have written a piece this morning for Left Foot Forward which summarises the Lib Dem tax plans that were announced yesterday and also initial reaction from within the Lib Dems and outside.

One thing I didn't say in the piece is that putting aside the arguments of how it is paid for, I think the £10,000 starting threshold for income tax will turn out to be very popular as it is a concept that people can easily grasp and is clearly designed to benefit the least well off in the working population. I would not be at all surprised if this idea was "borrowed" in some form by Labour and perhaps even the Tories between now and the election...

I give Melanie Phillips a good fisking

On Left Foot Forward.

It's in response to her article today in The Daily Mail entitled "Fatuous, dangerous, utterly irresponsible - the Nutty professor who's distorting the truth about drugs". I'm not linking to it again, the LFF post has a link to it.

After all the nonsense she's written about MMR over the years, you think she'd be a bit more circumspect about blundering into scientific areas like this....

Why I am writing for Left Foot Forward

A new collaborative blog has been started in the last few weeks under the editorship of Will Straw (yes, that Will Straw). It is called Left Foot Forward and its aim is to advance the cause of progressive politics through the use of evidence and to counter reactionary and conservative (with a small c) claims in the media.

A little while ago Will asked if I would be involved. I have had a few debates online with him via Twitter and blog comments so I had an idea of where he was coming from. After some deliberation I decided that I would contribute to it.

The way the blog is structured is such that most of the contributors have specific areas of expertise and act effectively as correspondents for those topics. In my case we have agreed that I will be the correspondent on drugs policy and also electoral reform. Regular readers of Mark Reckons will recognise they are two of the issues I cover most on here.

The main reason I have agreed to write for them is because I suspect in a few months time LFF will be pushing its way to the upper echelons of the blog lists and I would like as wide an audience as possible for the evidence that is out there on these two topics. Although I will not be able to editorialise as much as I do on here I can point to the evidence which will I hope allow readers to draw conclusions similar to my own.

I don't expect I will agree with everything that is published on LFF. Indeed I have already spotted one or two pieces on there, the emphasis of which I did not concur with. However that is in the nature of a collaborative blog.

I am looking forward to producing articles for them and indeed have already done a few which you can read here, here and here.

I think I am currently the only Lib Dem to be contributing but I know Will is keen to get input from other Lib Dems who may be interested. See the link at the top for contact details.