sixball

When I read a few weeks ago that Alastair Campbell and John Prescott were launching a Web2.0 campaign to get Labour a fourth term of office I was naturally skeptical. It smelt like a desperate bit of bandwagon-jumping.  The name ‘Go Fourth‘ seems vaguely amateurish and the obvious Twitter account hadn’t even been bagged.  Utterly irresistable.

I’d like to say I was trying to show up the pitfalls of privately-owned arbitrary namespaces or some such guff. In fact, very few people can resist the allure of a platform and I’m not one of them.  I fondly imagined some kind of satire or spoofing opportunities.

After a couple of weeks I’ve realised a couple of things.

Firstly, there is an active community of political tweeters and I feel faintly guilty each time I get notified one of them has started following me.  Prezza may not have fully grasped Twitter (no following and mostly automatic blog post notifications) but he’s kicking it up on Facebook.  Campbell gets Twitter but has entrusted his official website to monkeys who’s brief must have been ‘make it look painfully authentic, like a rushed Frontpage job’.  I’m saying it’s generally genuine — even if it’s only on the fringe.

Two, I’m not a political animal.  I enjoy robust debates with people with differing firm political convictions for the same reason I like to talk with theists: to find out how they square their circle and force me to test my own logic. Nevertheless, I’m really not interested in the ins and outs.  And I’m no Swift.  It’s pretty obvious they’d be more value in sticking the badge firmly when it belongs.

So, where do I send the password?