Ellee Seymour

Ros Taylor has enjoyed some “naval gazing”, comparing the innards of ConservativeHome versus the new Labour version; she is the Grauniad feature writer who called me yesterday.

She concludes:

“The first two waves of British political blogging - led by neoconservatives and Tories - were motivated by decisions that genuinely gripped the political classes: the war in Iraq and the Tory leadership. Those Labour neocons are now in retreat and will remain so until they find a foreign policy crusade that they feel they can win. In the meantime, LabourHome has to make do with the rather more abstract question of how Labour should reinvent (or “renew”) itself in time for the next election. Around that question lie a multitude of issues of vital interest to a few and marginal importance to the rest: nuclear power, the role of the private sector in the NHS and education, Trident, civil liberties, Iran, the environment, local finance, and so on. Unless and until one of these - or another talking point - seizes the imagination of Labour supporters, LabourHome is going to have a hard time attracting them.

“If a disaffected ex-Blairite were to set up a blog, and use it to gather support for a change of leader or direction, that might change. For the time being, however, the fear of breaking ranks and damaging the party is too great. For all the disaffection among the Labour ranks, the sense of party discipline is strong. It may be that Labour will only truly feel at home on the web when the party is back in opposition. ”

Now there’s a challenge for Labour…

“Just for the boys?” - what a great headline. And here is the G2 report in today’s Guardian about the dearth of women political bloggers.

I’m amazed that no female Tory politicans have embraced this, that I seem to be their authoritive voice on this subject - and I only started blogging five months ago. I do concur with what Ann Widdicombe says on Iain’s podcast, and the whole culture of blogging is inherent to my personality - but I surely can’t be that scarce a breed.

Here is an interesting extract from the report:

“Georgina Henry, the editor of Comment is free, says the dearth of women who blog about politics reflects the “disproportionately male” world of politics. And the “aggressive” tone of online political debate certainly doesn’t help. There is a particular impatience expressed towards female commentators who blog about political subjects that are considered mostly of interest to other women, such as childcare, work-life balance or raunch culture. “Women who write about the social agenda often get slaughtered,” she says.

“And there is little doubt that this bad-tempered and belligerent tenor of debate puts women off, even those who might be willing to play by the locker-room rules. When blogs were at the margin of political debate, this mattered less, but now that both Labour and the Tories want to use them to reach out to grassroots supporters, it really does.”

I’ve come across a few of these aggressive male bloggers and find them a real turn off, they are not communicating, just verbal bullying. It’s totally arrogant of men to dismiss the views of women who want to discuss life balance issues, juggling work with bringing up the next generation to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted members of society; this should never be undermined.

The report focuses on six os us, including Lynne Featherstone’s blog for the Lib Dems and Antonia Bance, a Labour councillor. This is a thought provoking extract from the F Word blog included in the G2 report:

“Girls in Cameroon are routinely having their breasts beaten and ‘ironed’ by their mothers, in a misguided attempt to prevent them from having sex. This tells a number of stories: first off, never be surprised when humanity comes up with yet another brutal thing to do to girls. But also, proper sex education is the only way forward.” (Jess McCabe, June 23 2006)

*Thanks for this link from the Daily Pundit.