James Graham (London, Quaequam): I'm not sure that simply exhorting individual Lib-Dems to write for OurKingdom is going to get us anywhere, which is what Anthony seemed to be calling for in his post on Ming. Perhaps he should consider a short - baiting - piece on Lib Dem Voice. The response I got from my articles last week on the policy paper was almost nil. There's a more fundamental problem which even I struggle to get my head around.
Look, for example, at the weekly Top of the Blogs for an indication of where the typical Lib Dem blog reader's head is at: it's all by-elections, rival bashing and solipsism. Stephen Tall - who compiles the weekly charts - expresses similar concerns, although it should be pointed out that to an extent that's true of blogging across the political spectrum.
The reason the Tory blogland is slightly more policy based and lively as OK has been debating is partly down to the fact that they have much more media to feed off and partly because Conservative Central Office is much more geared up to using things like ConHome to get their message across. To an extent, the Lib Dems will always be disadvantaged in this respect because they simply don't get equal treatment in the media; but I do despair of a media strategy that appears to amount to little more than putting out the occasional press release. Every major policy paper launched over the summer (the party is debating five this autumn) has sunk without trace and I struggle to see what the party has done pro-actively to maximise their impact aside from the occasional article in a national newspaper. Compare that with David Cameron's three speeches on crime in the space of a single week last month.
Bottom line? If the Lib Dems had launched that policy paper last week by giving half a dozen top Lib Dem bloggers a preview, you can bet that it would have been talked about a lot more.
