The Observer is reporting that LabourList.org - the webchild of Derek Draper - is nearing launch day. You can view a Beta version of it here. The Observer's Gaby Hinsliff:
"The site may be run on a shoestring - its base is currently the TV production office Draper shares with his presenter wife, Kate Garraway, he is not being paid and it is still looking for long-term funding - but aims to take on the mighty conservativehome.com, the website started by the former Conservative staffer Tim Montgomerie, which is increasingly influential in modern Tory thinking, and has acted as an early-warning system of grassroots unrest over some policies. Labour aides have long envied the popularity of Tory bloggers like Montgomerie or Iain Dale, while Labour bloggers have had a chequered reputation: David Miliband's pioneering blog was widely panned as dull, while the transport minister Tom Harris's was so interesting that it was blamed for him getting the sack during the last reshuffle. The party is seen as having been slow to respond to the open, free-ranging nature of politics on the web, the opposite of the famously control-freak tendencies apparent during New Labour's rise to prominence."
Big name writers will include Alan Milburn, Ken Livingstone and David Lammy. Even Peter Mandelson is named as a contributor - suggesting that it may be loyal to the leadership rather than to the movement. LabourList joins a long list of sites - eg LabourHome, Labour Matters, Labour Outlook (now defunct) and Liberal Conspiracy - that have attempted to champion the Left in the same way that ConservativeHome has championed the grassroots Right.
Iain Dale worries that LabourList will need independent funding. Not necessarily, at least in the early stages. This site had no funding for the first year. It wouldn't have continued to prosper if Stephan and Rosamund Shakespeare hadn't have purchased it but it got on the map without any funding.
Tim Montgomerie
"The mighty conservativehome.com"
Wow!
How much did you have to pay for that Tim & Jonathan?
Posted by: Westminster Wolf | January 10, 2009 at 16:31
Does Draper have any time for "LabourLink", given all the posts he writes on here for various people?
Posted by: Super Blue | January 10, 2009 at 16:40
It might get him off of this website if he has his own to administer. Bye-bye Mr Draper, or is that Mr Stone?
I won't bother looking at Labour List of course, not my scene and I'm simply not interested, but good luck to him and those who do post there.
Posted by: Steve Foley | January 10, 2009 at 17:01
One thing that Draper has already achieved is the paranoia of SuperBlue and others.
Anyone with a contrary opinion is dismissed as a troll.
It is easier to shout troll than engage with another's argument.
Posted by: Sammy Finn | January 10, 2009 at 17:07
ConHome "which is increasingly influential in modern Tory thinking, and has acted as an early-warning system of grassroots unrest over some policies".
I wish!
Anyway, Tim, you have every right to feel proud of the impact ConHome has so far made.
Posted by: David Belchamber | January 10, 2009 at 17:52
The left will never quite get the hang of the internet. The internet is about freedom of expression, individuality, de-centralised opinion, dissent and being innovative; all things that Labour hate.
Labour hate the internet because it's the one thing they don't control......yet.
Don't be surprised to see new laws being proposed to censor the internet, impose regulations on blogs and snoop on our e-mails. The EU's use of censorship and the introduction of RIPA should serve as a warning.
So, while we all laugh at Draper-Stone and Draper-Finn, we might want to consider that one day they'll be the only "approved legal" blog on the web.
Posted by: Cleethorpes Rock | January 10, 2009 at 17:53
Can I emphasise that Jack Stone has been knocking around since 2006 (or 2005?). That said his earlier incarnation was, I believe, a different person (who was a UKIPer at the time but has since rejoined the Tories). Unfortunately the link to the UKIP forum where the said individual was boasting about his activities no longer works.
Posted by: RichardJ | January 10, 2009 at 17:59
Just for the record I am not Stone or Finn. I have, however, unashamedly been inspired by what Tim M. has done here, by the way, though I hope that in a couple of years we might be, dare I say it better? I think our daily e-mails are already better than conservativedaily - but you'll have to wait for monday to find out - and sign up of course!
Posted by: Derek Draper | January 10, 2009 at 18:11
Cleethorpes, they probably already snoop on emails. But I don’t think the day will come when they will be the only “approved legal” blog on the web. Simply because the technology to read people’s hearts’ and mind has not yet been developed, and the only way they can snoop and hope to control us is by allowing us to express ourselves.
Posted by: Walaa | January 10, 2009 at 18:29
Hey Derek. Maybe you should pick your battles. Your attack on Boris on your silly website seems to have backfired.
If all politicians were as "bad" as you make Boris out to be, we are in safe hands.
Boris has delivered on most election pledges he made, while your Livingston troll, who is currently on Chavez's payroll, is busy protesting on the streets of London with the the Galloway Troll.
Posted by: True Blue | January 10, 2009 at 18:34
Thanks Derek. I wish you luck with the project and hope that we'll learn from you as you've been "inspired" by us - as you are kind enough to acknowledge.
My advice to you: Don't just recycle party lines. LabourList will only work if you represent the breadth of opinion within your party and wider movement.
Posted by: Tim Montgomerie | January 10, 2009 at 18:40
It won't work as anyone smart enough to use the internet is smart enough not to be a labourite.
It also means that there can be written arguments which never works well with the lefties which prefer to use emotional verbal exclaimations to override sense to "win" an argument.
Not sure about the funding thing though... if he writes it himself, what apart from the hosting costs are needed?
Posted by: Norm Brainer | January 10, 2009 at 18:44
I have never believed in anything put forward by UKIP. The trouble with those on this site is that can`t believe that anyone holds a different opinion to themselves.
Hopefully those who use the new Labour site will treat one another with more respect than those using this one do.
Posted by: Jack Stone | January 10, 2009 at 19:08
I too wish Draper luck with this venture. Labourhome is a very dull site where it seems genuine debate is discouraged. It would be good to have a genuine challenger to this site.
Draper will be making a mistake if he forces everyone to sign up as Labourhome do. If it merely becomes a propoganda tool for the Government it will fail and it will deserve to.
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | January 10, 2009 at 20:03
Cleethorpes Rock - have you paid any attention to the US elections cycles?
Fair play to Tim and Derek for the gracious exchange.
Posted by: Jim Dodd | January 10, 2009 at 20:07
I did play close attention to the US election. My fiancé is American and her brother worked for Obama, so I did visit a campaign HQ and learn a bit about how they're doing things over there. I would say that the US liberal left and the left in the UK are slightly different and so comparisons are difficult to make, but Obama's web operation was top notch, probably in no small part due to the work of Howard Dean four years ago.
As for Derek's new website- best of luck. There doesn't seem to be anything on the left to match ConHome. I'm sure the site would be stronger for representing the different strands of opinion- as the best debates on here often generate a lot of heat!
Posted by: Cleethorpes Rock | January 10, 2009 at 20:25
I hope his site is a success - and it's an odd feeling to be the recipients of love-bombing for once, isn't it? :-)
Posted by: Graeme Archer | January 10, 2009 at 20:48
"Labour aides have long envied the popularity of Tory bloggers like Montgomerie or Iain Dale, while Labour bloggers have had a chequered reputation: David Miliband's pioneering blog was widely panned as dull, while the transport minister Tom Harris's was so interesting that it was blamed for him getting the sack during the last reshuffle. The party is seen as having been slow to respond to the open, free-ranging nature of politics on the web, the opposite of the famously control-freak tendencies apparent during New Labour's rise to prominence."
That comment is all you need to help you figure out why Labour has failed so abysmally to get a grip in the lively political area of the internet.
And this effort will fail too if its not seen as open, interesting, free ranging and without a hint of Labour's control-freak tendencies.
Posted by: ChrisD | January 10, 2009 at 20:59
On the subject of Labour sites, does anyone know what has happened to Labours Go 4th project which was meant to launch in October.
Posted by: caroline nixon | January 10, 2009 at 21:01
A Labour Blog will never work - because Labour (and its supporters) don't listen.
Blogs are two way - with a party that fundamentally refuses to admit that it has anything to learn or ever makes a mistake a blog is doomed from the start.
The left has nothing new to say - it just endlessly whinges that they have all the answers, but noone has implemented them properly yet (yeah right - in fact they have been implemented, they just dont work!).
The only blog that the labour party would approve of is leadership announcements followed by endless comments of total support.
Can you imagine a left wing blog putting up with the equivalent of the trolls we get here? Socialism is fundamentally flawed and cannot survive scrutiny.
I hope labour sink huge amounts of money into this doomed project.
Posted by: pp | January 11, 2009 at 10:05
Enumerating Labour policies reveal them to be hopeless. The only way Labour policies get air time is as soundbites. The truthfulness of internet will kill off the Labour Party in the same way the economy killed off Marxism.
Posted by: Robin | January 11, 2009 at 10:08
How long before a LabourLost.org spoof appears... ;-)
Posted by: GB£.com | January 11, 2009 at 10:29
It hasn't taken Draper and LabourList long to start binning posts that are critical of Labour.
Draper: "we can dismiss these people as the impotent irritants they are. In fact, I am already so bored by them that I will henceforth be taking advantage of our fantastic “trashcan” facility"
Draper (in response to a comment about 'Tory trolls'): "indeed rob, i am increasingly putting them straight into the trash can"
http://www.labourlist.org/48738b63-061b-05e4-61b6-a36f9ccc5f5d
What hope for the future of the site, if dissenting voices and off-message posts are so flippantly banned?
ConHome flourishes because it tolerates a wide range of opinion.
Indeed when challenged on the comments board that most of the contributers are mainstream party figures, Draper responded by proudly ponting out that KJen Livingstone was soon toake an appearance.
What a hotbed of radical thinking and discussion the site will turn out to be!
Posted by: James | January 11, 2009 at 15:42
pp @ 1005 > "Can you imagine a left wing blog putting up with the equivalent of the trolls we get here?"
See my previous post.
You are quite right, and it hasn;t taken long!!
Posted by: James | January 11, 2009 at 15:43
James - oh so true.
And now 'pre-moderation' is in operation, posts have to be individually approved before publication (or maybe it is just mine?).
My new prediction is that non-labour bods will now be slagged off and blamed for a campaign to kill the site and stifle communicaiton.
Labour/socialist/brown/etc can't understand (or maybe just cannot afford to admit) that they are so unpopular and discredited that the response they get online is a genuine representation of public opinion.
Posted by: pp | January 11, 2009 at 23:14
p.s. in case there is any doubt, my comments about pre-moderation apply to labourlist, not here! Fantastic work Tim, and your contributors.
Posted by: pp | January 11, 2009 at 23:16
Having read a few of the posts on that site, I can say, I think that site is already an embarrassing disaster for the left.
The problem with Labour and blogging is that blogging shows the ideas in your head, and Labour's way of thinking is retarded, so what we're going to see is stupid articles.
Control freakery, denial of reality, and the general stupidity of the articles are a bad start. Start as you mean to go on? The left is a joke.
That site tells us "vote Conservative", even though that's not its intention.
Posted by: David XL | January 12, 2009 at 07:41
I have just read the first few lines of Mandy's offering on nulab's appalling dollyblog...
Peter Mandelson said...
"First, let me make something clear. In government what matters above all else is not what you say but what you do, blah, blah, blah di blah di blah..."
When will these silly sods realise that starting things they say / write with 'let me make something clear' you just know that what will follow is pure party political claptrap and you stop listening / reading.
I don't need any of these wazzucks to tell me to clear my mind of what I think about them and their policies so that they can fill it with the rubbish they are spouting. I know what I think and I know what I think about their policies and what they do about them.
My rant applies to most politicians regardless of party affiliation, but particularly the nulab loosers, because they all do it.
+++End of Rant+++
I feel better for that!
Posted by: Ian | January 12, 2009 at 21:24
A grassroots alternative to LabourList has launched today. LABOURIST.org has the same content (which Derek kindly agrees to share) but without the heavy handed comment moderation. We welcome open and lively debate from everyone, not just the Labour-minded.
Posted by: The Editor | January 16, 2009 at 17:54
Most of the blog comments I've seen Laboulist are entirely negative about the site. The mistake it's making is that so many of the threads are wholly devoted to (often not very intelligently)attacking the Conservative Party. They would be much better off discussing Labour policy in my opinion.
I suspect this Labourist site has come into existance to draw off all the negative comments. Otherwise why have two sites with exactly the same content?
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | January 16, 2009 at 18:05