Most Welsh politicians are extinct dinosaurs … they just don’t know it yet. They are the ‘living dead’ in terms of understanding or participating in the online world. Even the most web aware of them such as Adam Price or Peter Black have not taken on board the staggering changes in the way politics will be done in the near future. They just cannot keep up. You hear politicians and county councilors of all ranks and political flavour boasting in private or off the record that they just ‘don’t understand email’ or this ‘Interweb thing’ as if it is something to be proud of and which should be left to ‘techies’ as a menial task not worthy of priority status. Well, if they keep acting and thinking this way they are doomed.
See Andrew Sullivan’s excellent analysis of the Barack Obama phenomenon below.
That’s another staggering benefit of this kind of open-source, web-based operation: the personal drain on a candidate is lessened. He can spend less time at rubber-chicken dinners, fewer soul-sapping hours begging for cash on the phone, less time schmoozing possibly cheesy characters (remember how much trouble Al Gore got into in 2000?) and more time honing speeches, working on policy, engaging the media.
Now I accept that Welsh politics bears no resemblance to US politics but there are lessons to be learned if one accepts that true democracy can only really be achieved when people start to use the tools provided by the Internet (blogs, social networks) to force their political masters to attend to their wishes ie. listen. Isn’t that what Gordon Brown, Rhodri Morgan etal have said they want to do, following their terrible election results? Listen? Well again this is totally the wrong (auditory) sense to use. They shouldn’t listen… nobody is talking any more, people are communicating differently these days (by email, IM, text, blog, social network etc). They should be reading their screens (or more likely the printouts from blogs and webpages).
People will start to evaluate the political candidates of tomorrow by the quality of their websites, their social networking (Facebook) profile and by their blogging ability. Whether this is a good or bad thing is hard to say but it is the shape of a new reality.
People will start to evaluate the political candidates of tomorrow by the quality of their websites, their social networking (Facebook) profile and by their blogging ability.
But this could also be an impediment to a political career.
My blog, which has been going for some 14 months or so, basically contains the thoughts that I would previously have shared with family members, close friends and drinking buddies. It is basically an online pub rant.
If I fancied throwing my hat into the ring for the next election, at any level, what I may have told my wife or my friend or the lads down the Dog & Duck wouldn’t stop me from being nominated.
The fact that I have told a wider audience that Ieuan Wyn is a wimp, Mike German is a waste of space, Rhodri Morgan is a prat and Nick Bourne is a bore means that I have peed on my chips as far as being nominated by any party is concerned. The parties know that if I was selected my words would be used against me by the opposition.
The down side of the web is that many potentially good young people with an interest in politics may find themselves disbarred from the political process because of over-enthusiastic comments that they have made which will be cached forever.
Alwyn. You are quite right. Incautious blogging rants are already a serious impediment to a career, and not just in politics. Recruitment agencies for all sorts of jobs are scanning candidate Facebook profiles and the blogosphere as a matter of course. There are considerable risks attached to using the Internet.
You call yourself a ‘miserable old fart’ … the political blogosphere may yet end up as the exclusive preserve of people like you who don’t care or maybe don’t have anything to lose by ranting online.
I anticipate that very soon there will be ‘the revenge of the politicos’ – there will be new bills in Parliament or Senedd to limit the freedom of the Press online. These bills will inevitably be proposed and passed by those who have been most damaged by blogs… New Labour.
So, Alwyn, enjoy the current relative lull in combat… the war will soon start again.
30 Plaid Cymru councillors in Carmarthenshire stormed out en masse during the first full council meeting after the May 1st elections. They were protesting against what they saw as a derisory offer of representation in influential positions on the authority considering the party’s ultra successful showing; they won 14 extra seats, the biggest gain for any party in all the nation’s 22 local authorities.
Plaid leader Peter Hughes-Griffiths branded the ruling Independent/Labour coalition’s deal a token gesture after it offered the party just three positions on ’scrutiny committees’. The proposal was therefore declined and his party walked out of County Hall during the meeting, which was held to elect the new leader and committee chairmen.
He said, “As a group we have rejected the crumbs offered to us by the Coalition, as we feel that it is not a fair reflection of how the people of Carmarthenshire voted. We have done everything possible to try to talk to the Independent and Labour groups to find a solution that is best for the people of this county, but we have been totally ignored”.
Despite winning 42% of the vote, Plaid weren’t offered a single place on the executive board (Cabinet) and, out of 32 chairmen and vice-chairmen of various committees, the party was only offered just two scrutiny committee chairs (housing and social justice) and one vice-chairman’s role (education and children’s services).
The fact is that Labour was totally rejected by the people of Carmarthenshire and lost 14 of their 25 seats. They were reduced to a rump of 11 yet, thanks to Council leader Meryl “Mugabe” Gravell’s desperate attempt to cling on to power, they still share government with the self-styled “Independents”. This is completely unacceptable in a democracy therefore how about a run-off, Zimbabwe style, between Carmarthen’s Coalition of the Cronies and Plaid’s Movement for Democratic Change ?