Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Over on ConservativeHome there is a reader's interview with Matt d'Ancona, editor of the Spectator and orchestrator of its brilliant Coffee House blog. In one exchange Matt responds to a question on how bad things are by telling his questioner to cheer up , after all, who are on the intellectual offensive? "Look, for instance, at ConservativeHome and the Right’s spectacular intellectual dominance of the blogosphere".
I know what he means - I say through gritted teeth. Yes, the right dominate the blogosphere.
Take yesterday, the start of the new political season launched by Brown with an all-barrels display: withdrawing from the centre of Basra, positioning himself on the Today programme and the Telegraph, declaring his position unequivocally on the Euro-referendum, developing his "new politics" with cross-party recruits and announcements on citizens juries. What does the left think of all this? You'd expect a mixture: amidst rubbing of hands with glee an urging an immediate election (or not); warnings of betrayal; a pointing to the independent declaration by the Scots on the same day that their Executive is now "The Government" points to the missing national question in the Prime Minister's programme. That's just a start. It's a feast of issues for progressive and democratic politics.
Hello, is anybody out there? The Fabians? They have a conference called 'Democracy Day' this coming Saturday 8 September (The name has an honourable tradition going back the Democracy Day Charter 88 launched the week before the 1992 election). What do they say about Brown's Democracy Monday? Zero. What about Compass, the most audacious of Labour's campaign groups dedicated to renewal - the name of its journal (declaration of interest I am an editorial advisor)? It is climate change and Nina Fishman on the deep future of social democracy that grabs them, along with their campaign to nail Boris. A reshaping of British democracy takes place and... nothing from Compass.
To try and test Matt's claim more thoroughly at around 7pm yesterday I went through all 27 of the "leaf leaning blogs" listed by Iain Dale. There were two registrations of mental life. David Osler of Dave's Part disliked the Brown stab at appealing for consensus and said he does not want to be unified with right wing Tories. At the same time, he adds, if Brown is going to do this, why not - hee, hee - broaden his appeal leftwards to the 20 per cent of the population who share Dave's view? And Peter Kenyon responded to the proposals for citizens juries, like many he was astonished that this participative measure was being launched next week and he wondered who had "got the contract".
Even firing from the hip it was the professionals, especially on the right, who made the running. Benedict Brogan of the Mail quickly blogged,
"consensus, consensus, consensus: why do I have an urge to reach for my Luger? One man's consensus politics is another's Establishment stitch-up (look at state funding for political parties for example). Mr Brown has pre-empted the obvious attack on citizen's juries by saying they will enhance representative democracy rather than replace it. That alone deserves consideration: surely Parliament is where policies and the facts that support them should be examined and tested?"
Brogan hit a note of nervousness on the right about Cameron's own repositioning. Dizzy saw the obvious parallel of Brown's actions with with Sarkozy, using patronage to divide the opposition under the flag of national interest. Edland and miscellanysymposium put Brown's moves together with the Tory pledge not to cut overall spending and feared the re-emergence of Butskillism and identi-kit party politics that does not challenge the welfare state.
I'm not saying all this represents deep thought. But there is a lively responsiveness, an attempt to think about the struggle for power and office and what it means that is lacking on the left, liberal-left, centre-left and far-left in England's blogland.
Of course it is not helped by the media, but why should it be? It should be setting the agenda. On Newsnight Ed Milliband passed the Jeremy Paxman test with ease. But he was not probed on what the government means by participation at all. Rather than the interviewer probing minister on the problem while the minister attempts to reassure that all is in hand, it came across as Jeremy saying nothing had changed, as rudely as he could, while Ed communicated a sense that there might be something amiss in the world outside the studio that needed to be addressed in a new way.
Is the government as new as it claims? At least Peter Facey of Unlock Democracy was able to take issue with what it is doing for a few seconds of Newsnight film. The Brown approach to Citizens Juries, he pointed out, is to select the topics and retain control of the agenda. What if citizens want to discuss issues the government doesn't, such as immigration, the fact that their votes do not count, or even the national question? Citizens juries may be a better - because more deliberative - form of consultation, but will they strengthen our democracy with more democracy, to paraphrase the Prime Minister? Facey's question was not put to Ed. But nor has it been debated by the left on-line.
I've gone on a bit but the question is a huge one. Where is the democratic influence on the government going to come from if there isn't a better range of radical criticism? It is not that the right-wing blogosphre in the UK is super-intelligent. CoffeeShop, for example, failed to respond at all to Alex Salmond's White Paper, one of the best written challenges so far to the Brown way. (But this will start me off on another track). Fact: ConservativeHome, Iain Dale, The Spectator coffees, PoliticalBetting, Guido F, DizzyThinks, where is there an equivalent vitality on the left apart from Pickled Pepper? ( I mean Pickled Politics - thank you Iain! - either way it's hot) Where is there a left news service with a quarter of the energy of OpenEurope?
No, let me alter that. There is a very lively left blogosphere, try to find your way around the Telegraph's website compared to the Guardian and the cascade of comments on CiF. There is the Wintagemot network whose nationalism discomforts the traditional left. Then there is No2ID and Taking Liberties. But there does not seem to be an engagement between these debates and central issues of government and opposition and the fate of the country. What's going on here?
