Labour and Liberal Democrats fail to grasp the power of the internet in Liverpool
Before I started work at the Liverpool Daily Post in the summer of 2007, I had covered politics in Blackburn for the Lancashire Telegraph.
So naturally when @blackburnlabour started following me on Twitter a couple of months back I returned the compliment.
The local party has also created a great blog at blackburnlabour.org
This is a shining example of what local parties should be doing up and down the land.
It features blogs from Labour leader Kate Hollern and Blackburn MP Jack Straw, and other Labourites from the town.
Blackburn, like Liverpool, has a wonderfully vibrant political scene.
But compare blackburnlabour.org with liverlibdems.org or Labour's Liverpool-labour.org.uk
I couldn't even access the Liverpool Labour website, and the Lib Dem's website was totally out of date (it included a piece on Labour's rat charter, if memory serves me correctly this was a major part of an election campaign while I was still working in Blackburn).
At the risk of sounding like a broken record both major parties in Liverpool desperately need to get their act together and start taking the internet and social media seriously.
Forget engaging with the population at large (although that would be a good thing), this is a completely missed opportunity to sell their policies and get their message across.
6 Comments
Leave a comment
Dale Street Associates
David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
Read My Posts »
This observation might have some force if it were true. But it isn't! Blackburn has one MP and a website. Liverpool has five Labour MPs; at least three have their own websites (Eagle, Ellman & Kennedy). A likely fourth, Stephen Twigg, has a website too. The Lib Dems have no MPs in Liverpool so they have a Party website instead. All city councillors have their own websites. A number of MPs have entries in Facebook; some councillors (eg Baldock & Keaveney) run their own blogs. It didn't take me long to discover all this, but long enough to scotch misinformation when I see it. Check facts first before rushing into print. Isn't that the First Law of Journalism?
David,
Thanks for the comments. You'll find if you check previous posts I have blogged on MP websites, and even did a top five. But on the whole the quality of local MP's websites was not that great, here's the link http://bit.ly/gQ7tD
I've also previously blogged on Louise Baldock's blog and Paula Keaveney's, you'll find links to their blogs on the side of my page.
You are right that each councillor has their own website, but how often are they updated?
But the point I was making was not about individuals, it was about the parties.
You can't surely be defending Liverpool Labour's non existent website?
Blackburn Labour has created a location where activists, councillors and the town's MP come together. It is a one-stop forum where anyone interested in that party in that town can find the latest the party is saying.
By coming together in the way Blackburn Labour has they are stronger than the sums of their parts.
For sure, the quality of local websites is uneven, especially design and updating. But it's far (far!) easier for Blackburn Labour party to come together on a website because the local Party is in large measure the MP. In multi-constituency cities like Liverpool, getting that level of co-operation is more difficult, principally because MPs want (and need?) their own voice. There is a practical issue too. Who arranges, funds & updates the joint website? MPs have allowances that pay for services of this kind, but pooling resources is notoriously fraught with friction. Blackburn doesn't have this problem: the local Party can 'free ride' on the resources of its single MP. Given that Council resources cannot, quite rightly, be used for Party political purposes, the Labour Party in Blackburn is better placed than any Party in Liverpool because it need negotiate with only one source of support, not five or more. Of course, local parties can fund their websites from their own resources - if they have any! Neither Labour or Lib Dems in Liverpool are awash with financial means or the technical expertise (or the time, I guess) to guarantee the maintainance of professional standard websites. Ditto for individual Councillors. Certainly the local Labour Party could do better; the Lib Dems too perhaps. But the internet is full of extinct or under-maintained websites, not to mention unread blogs, self-obsessed 'tweets', and kindred torrents of dross that pour from the opinionated and ill-informed on an hourly basis. If we, the people, truly believe our affairs are improved by the availability of better quality political websites, then we may need to help the parties create and maintain them, certainly at the local level. Alas, if what we end up with is a local version of the heavily-spun guff that appears on all national party websites, we may not be so better off.
David B
You make some good points. Blackburn Labour is a great blog and has a nice personality. Labour has thought a lot about social media in Lpool and tried a few things but the demand wasn't there to the same extent as say Manchester.
That's gonna change in the next couple of months as the Party nationally gets its act together.
Twitter also changes the game a bit as it has an older audience and is less demanding to get into and maintain. Blackburn Labour does it very well.
I would agree that Labour in Liverpool would benefit from a website and we have been talking about it recently. We have had one before, when I first came to Liverpool, but one of the issues is about who maintains such a thing, given the huge size of the city and the party units within it. I guess we need to resolve how we can have regular updates from across the city, which reflect our policies and views etc, and are properly reflective of the party and not the views of the individual authors, purporting to be our line/message. That is easier said than done!
My blog is not a councillors blog, although I do blog about council things often, it is a personal blog about whatever I feel like commenting on, including the price of easter eggs for instance!
I think we should not have websites etc just for the sake of them, but because we have something of value to say or because we wish to take feedback and consult on things.
An impressive share! I've just forwarded this onto a friend who has been doing a little research on this. And he actually bought me lunch due to the fact that I stumbled upon it for him... lol. So let me reword this.... Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending some time to discuss this subject here on your web site.