I’ve never read so many UK blogs as I’ve read this weekend.  I’ve always thought of UK politics blogs as being very aligned one way or the other and some of them of being quite a bitchfest.  I’ve a few in my google reader and sometimes there will be a post which is more thought provoking than normal but I usually look for my overseas political stimulation in the USA.

However this weekend the UK mainstream media have had something to talk about thanks to the actions of a blogger Guido Fawkes an official in Downing Street has resigned.  UK blogging has been dissected over and over again on what would usually be a very quiet weekend.

One of the interesting points to emerge is the fact that many in (Newish) Labour felt that they needed to control blogs – particularly create blogs that supported the Labour government and a man, Derek Draper, who knew little about blogging decided that he was going to do something about it.  The Labour/Leftwing blogs that existed could not be controlled by Labour head office and were critical of the party and the rightwing blogs were leading the way in UK political blogging.

Draper (who was not much good or popular the last time he worked officially as a government spin doctor) came up with the idea for LabourList. He got money from a Labour affiliated union to establish the site and had minsters and advisers blogging away merrily.  Another site which was more gossipy was under consideration which is where the emails that cost Damian McBride came in.

I’m not going to go further into the whole saga here – read the Guardian, Telegraph, Iain Dale etc. to catch up.  However I do hope Irish Political Parties and their new media officers are watching and learning in case they think the way to win the war online is to create blogs which are not candidate or party blogs but aim to support the party’s ideals.  It doesn’t work!

Also I’m going to predict some Irish journalist will be producing a load of rubbish on the Irish blogosphere and lack of regulation and control by the end of the week. And some social media ‘expert’ looking to make a quick buck will be offering opinion pieces to the Irish Times on the issue not really understanding the Irish blogosphere at all or worse still  trying to control it’s future development by their commentary.