What I mean by the title of this post is that, whatever Iain Dale decides to do regarding his parliamentary career, I think Iain Dale has been greatly successful in engaging people, of all ages, with political issues, whatever their political persuasion, through his blogs. I hope very much therefore that they continue. I understand that the blog is undergoing a re-vamp, so I am looking for the ‘new look’ indeed.
I really like “The Seven Day Show” on Tory Radio with Jonathan Sheppard and Iain Dale (link here). Congratulations to them for reaching their 50th edition. Their podcast is brilliant, and plays very well on my iPad as it happens. I think the show’s very entertaining – and actually the analysis is very perceptive and thought-provoking, even for an ardent Labour member like me!
Iain Dale is the second most popular blogger at the moment (link here). An issue that has interested me recently is the fact that Tom Harris, who has been a Labour MP since 2001, and was a minister at the Department for Transport from September 2006 until October 2008, has decided to give up blogging. He says very clearly in his ‘About me‘, that: “FIRST of all, this is a blog, not my parliamentary or constituency website. If you want to know about my work in Glasgow South or in the House of Commons, …”. Iain Dale has recently been discussing his fellow blogger Tom Harris giving up blogging. In an article entitled “So Farewell Then Tom Harris” (link here) dated 15 November 2010, Iain writes:
Lord knows I understand his reasons, but what does it say about the political blogosphere that it has forced someone like Tom to give up. He’s a brilliant writer with a fantastic sense of humour who provides insights into politics that you just don’t get elsewhere. I know he was hugely disappointed at not being appointed to Ed Miliband’s front bench team – a completely baffling decision, in my opinion.
Clues about Tom Harris MP giving up blogging are indeed given by Tom himself on his blog in a post (link here) dated Tuesday 16th November 2010.
I want to see Labour win the next election and I want to make some kind of contribution to that victory, even if that contribution is simply shutting my face. This response was taken as an indication that I have been leant on by the party to stop the blogging. I don’t think MPs should use words like “bullshit” on a publicly available blog, and I’ve always tried to be careful not to lower the tone in such a way, so I won’t say “bullshit” now. But what a load of b******t.
Indeed, apparently Ed Miliband has encouraged him to keep going:
Never, at any point in the whole of my blogging career – including the period when I was a minister – has anyone in the Labour Party asked me to stop blogging. Not once. The last conversation I had with EdM ended with him telling me: “Keep up the blogging.”
However, Tom Harris’ full-time job is being a full-time Parliamentary MP. I would humbly submit that Iain Dale, having had attempts to be a Parliamentary candidate, appreciates that he is not invited to do paper reviews on Sky News in this capacity (as I am sure he does), but is brought on TV as one of the country’s very top bloggers. Indeed, he has even written books on blogging, such as this one (link here).
If on the other hand Iain would like to re-attempt to be a parliamentary candidate, it might worth considering discontinuing the blog. I like enormously though his full articles (not so much the short ones) The danger with that particular strategy, of course, is not being a parliamentary candidate or a blogger at the same time, but, in Iain’s favour, his business interests are successfully diversified in Tory Radio at Biteback Publishing. As for the issue about whether Iain feels it’s worth the hassle any more, I think possibly yes: the people who criticize Iain are obviously idiots (I disagree with Iain’s opinions in the main, and object to the fact that the Daley Dozen never continues any Labour blog posts unless they’re blatantly anti-Labour, but actually these posts are not written by him anyway). However, Iain is by any objective standards superb at something which I know David Cameron and Ed Miliband feel passionate about, which is making politics relevant to real people.
I’ve only met Iain once at a Total Politics event which I remember clearly for Steve Richards’ Mandelson impression, so I hope will not mind this post.
