The Tory school of East Anglian diplomacy

In an unprecedented turn of events, the blogosphere was focused on East Anglia for much of this week.

Recent reports of identity thieves finding a rich resource on Facebook were highlighted in the ongoing saga involving the profile on the social networking site of Lib Dem shadow health secretary Norman Lamb. A brief history of which is covered at Lib Dem Voice.

The same IP address was shown to be responsible for tampering with Lamb’s Wikipedia entry and also uploading an anti-Lib Dem video on YouTube. Various Conservative comments have been made from the same IP address across the internet and there have also been 12 comments from eight “different” people on Lib Dem Voice.

After much digging around in the murky world of internet fakery, Mark Pack believes he has found the culprit.

The permutations of the affair rippled across the blogosphere. The Bloggerheads blog pointed the finger at an unspecified Tory. While, Iain Dale, Lamb’s North Norfolk opponent in the 2005 general election, was keen to condemn the culprit and distance himself from the debacle.

As Duncan Barrowman and the Norfolk Blogger stepped up the hunt for the illusive 82.118.116.193, Nich Starling concluded: “It is in everyone’s interests that whoever is behind this is exposed.”

Lamb had had to apologise last week to Norfolk and Norwich hospital after his claims about kitchen hygiene turned out to be unfounded. He was not the only MP apologising for false accusations about Norfolk’s hospitals. On the first day of David Cameron’s fight back he published a list of 29 district hospitals which would have to close their maternity wards due to funding cuts.

One of which was in fellow Tory MP Henry Bellingham’s Kings Lynn constituency. Bellingham then claimed the allegation was false and apologised “unreservedly” to staff at the hospital. In Nich Starling’s post about the incident he backs up Bellingham’s claims despite Cameron reiterating his original statement.

Following the incident, which has been termed the “Dodgy Hospital Dossier”, Mike Ion lists the various responses from hospitals refuting Cameron’s claims.

A week I’m sure the Tories would like to forget as they came out less popular in East Anglia than Alan Partridge following his comments about farmers.

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.

Delving into devolution

Three weeks into the August lull of political activity, and the UK blogosphere finally has something to get excited/agitated about. Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, produced a white paper proposing full-scale devolution. An electronic debate ensued.

If the suggestion seemed a kick in the teeth to Gordon Brown, Elliot Joseph was none too sympathetic: “Over its 300 years a number of enemy powers have countenanced the overthrow of the United Kingdom. Until Tony Blair and Gordon Brown took power in 1997, however, it looked most unlikely that anyone would accomplish it.

“As he steers the country masterfully from one crisis to the next, it will be amusing to watch Brown try to forestall the consequences of his own disastrous policy.”

What rattled Scottish Labour activist Kezia Dugdale’s cage was the way the SNP went about the debate. And rattle it, it did. Her advice to Salmond: “Do the right thing, take a policy to parliament, debate it, seek the cross-party support that you need to do something about it and pursue it.

“Do not create a website devoted to a National Conversation where you set the boundaries of the conversation you’re prepared to take part - whilst also allowing the CyberNATs to inflict their ignorant, narrow-minded venom on the rest of us.”

What seemed to anger Unionists most was not the fact the subject had been broached, more the way it had been. The Thunder Dragon wrote: “I am a Unionist, but the debate over Scottish independence seems that it needs to be had - and sooner is better than later. Opinion polls are showing that the majority of Scottish voters do not favour independence from the United Kingdom.

“They should have this referendum, held with a caveat that this decision would be final if the vote came out against independence.”

The issue of Scottish independence is a thorny one for Labour, and especially for Gordon Brown. Mike Smithson at Political Betting highlights how Brown should learn from his predecessors: “There’s also a general election dimension here. Would Gord go to the country just at the time when this is developing as an issue? The last thing he wants, surely, is for a campaign to be dominated by EVEL [English Votes for English Laws]?

“People often forgot that it was the Scottish devolution issue, not the so called ‘winter of discontent’, that brought Jim Callaghan’s Labour government down in 1979. Gord knows he has to tread carefully.”

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.

August's dearth of news

The silly season is well and truly upon us. Here is a collection of some of the more vapid themes across the UK’s political blogs:

Democracy is an odd thing. Dictators throughout history have warned of giving too much power to the masses and it was only a matter of time before the web – the most democratic platform to date – offered strength to that argument. This week, Tim Ireland started a petition on the 10 Downing Street website calling for Gordon Brown to stand on his head and juggle ice-cream. More than 5,000 people have so far signed up.

Ever wanted to see a band of four MPs rocking out to Teenage Kicks with Feargel Sharkey? No? Well the web is full of wondrous things and you can see that footage courtesy of former whip Ian Cawsey’s Myspace page. Dizzy Thinks discovered this and other gems on the Brigg and Goole MP’s page, including apparently secretly-filmed videos of Bair’s last Parliamentary Labour Party meeting and the last meeting of the former whips.

The West Country often gets stick for not being as sexy as rest of the country, but the region’s residents must be pleased that at last political bloggers are addressing the real issues and giving them some publicity. Kevin Davis, a Conservative parliamentary hopeful in Yeovil, has begun his own campaign aimed at increasing the amount of public toilets. As a rallying call, Davis declares: “Wherever you go in the country it appears that the Lib Dems have something against public toilets. In Kingston they closed them and in Yeovil they are refusing to open them.”

Apparently Ming Campbell has more than 2,000 friends. Who’d have thought? This figure could swell with the announcement by Lib Dem councillor Jonathan Wallace that he will only join Facebook when there are 100 people in the “Get Jonathan Wallace onto Facebook” group – so far there are 56. When he signs up he will join the largest political group on the social networking site, according to reports this week.

Steve Webb MP is using his recess time wisely and has found the Lib Dems are leading the way on Facebook. He concludes: “It is no surprise that it is Lib Dems who have taken social networking the most seriously. Lib Dem philosophy and our way of doing politics sits well with the Facebook ethos of being accessible, removing barriers to communication and reaching out to young people. As the figures show, it’s clearly not an exclusively Lib Dem thing, but it’s good to see our party leading the way.”

However, a closer inspection of the stats reveals Webb’s skewed form of proportional representation – typically Lib Dem – where he has reached his conclusions based on proportion of MPs signed up (Lib – 40%, Lab – 13%, Cons – 12%) rather than actual totals (Lab – 47, Lib – 25, Cons – 24).

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.

Silly season and blogger back slapping

With Parliament now in recess and middle England migrating to France for August, traditional media enters the silly season as news editors look to fill column inches. This period of wild rumours has found a natural home on the blogosphere.

The British blogging scene were salivating for a few hours at the possibility of a triumvirate of big political personalities clashing for the post of London Mayor with the rumour Lembit Opik had put his name in the hat.

With the thought of such a celebrity-driven election, The Daily Referendum suggested: "Maybe Simon Cowell can be signed up to run some kind of 'The Mayor Factor' competition for TV?"

In an interview on ePolitix.com, Ed Davey proclaimed: "Lembit is a good friend of mine, I share an office with him, and if he decided to run he would certainly make one of the most interesting candidates in the race. Would Lembit make a good mayor? I think that Lembit would make a much better mayor than Boris Johnson or Ken Livingstone."

This was picked up by Welsh blogger Matt Withers, who concluded: "Sounds pretty definite to me. Ken v Boris v Lembit, eh? This could get interesting..."

When Lembit finally denied he would be running, it prompted accusations of storms in teacups. Not least from Peter Black AM: "What puzzled me was why Lembit did not kill the rumour stone dead immediately, but then he has always enjoyed the spotlight and clearly wanted to drag his denial out as long as possible."

The summer recess also brings on a bout of annual blog back slapping. In the Witanagemot awards there were more categories than bloggers. Some of the more outlandish categories were "Blogger you’d most like to shag" (won by Rachel from North London) and "Blogger most likely to vote for a donkey if you slapped the correct colour rosette on it" (Iain Dale).

In fact, Dale swept the awards, including the award for most deserving of a book deal. Which is just as well seeing as he is compiling his annual top 100 list for the 2007 Guide to Political Blogging in the UK. This year he is relying on contributions from readers, which you can add to here.

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.