I’m glad to see the return of MP blogger Tom Harris as part of Iain Dale’s new online magazine; “The Daley: Iain Dale and Friends.” And there may be many who welcome the return of Dale. But how attractive a proposition is the overall venture itself, featuring as it does 60 “retired bloggers”and writers?
Anyone who reads political blogs will surely agree that there is an ocean of material out there; some good, some bad, some insightful and original, others derivative and dull. If there is a problem it is one of quality rather than quantity. There just isn’t enough time to read it all.
From a personal perspective, the political blogs I turn to regularly tend to be individuals with a distinct voice; (in no particular order) Paul Waugh, Ben Brogan, Guido Fawkes, James Kirkup, Dan Hodges, Will Straw, James Forsyth, Robert Peston, Chris Giles, Cathy Newman’s FactCheck, John Rentoul, Gideon Rachman, Michael White and so on*. Apologies to anyone I may have forgotten.
Of these, the ones with a solo blog are more inviting because you don’t have to trawl through other material – which may be of less interest – to find them. Sometimes less is more. The idea of searching through 60 bloggers to find Tom Harris, even if I stumble on other interesting stuff along the way, seems far from compelling. Others may well disagree.
* It hasn’t passed me by that most of these are journalists as well as bloggers. Those I should have mentioned also include Gary Gibbon, Andrew Sparrow and Dizzy Thinks.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey