I was recently struck by a terrible thought. One which chilled me to the very core of my being, sent a shiver up my spine, and caused me to need a cup of tea and a biscuit, just to calm myself down.

The thought was this: it would make a great deal of sense for me to vote Liberal Democrat at the next General Election.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I couldn’t. I can’t. They’re a self-described bunch of Social Democrats. They’re Europhiles, or at least they would be if they ever attended a commons vote on Europe. Their opinion on virtually everything seems to be ‘well, Yes, and No’. They’re bleeding heart lefties – not do-gooders, well-meaners. They’re still, even now, considering the possibility of forming a union with the Labour Party, for Christ’s sake. They’re a joke, aren’t they? It was funny back in the 80’s but they’ve surely grown up by now, haven’t they?

Well, yes. All this is true, but we live in the real world here, and the most important thing at the next General Election is, of course, crushing Labour.

I live in the Derby South constituency. Derby South has been a Labour constituency since its inception in 1950. My MP is Margaret Beckett, voted in in 1983. When the rest of the country gave up on Labour and let their full support to Thatcher, the people of my area decided Margaret Beckett was the person who best represented them. Clearly, there is work to do here.

Her majority is just over 5,500, meaning that if Labour get a good drubbing at the next election, as we all hope they will, she could be reaching for her shiny new P45 come May 6th, 2010. A prospect made all the more likely since she’s yet another of the greedy little piggies who’s been keeping three houses at the expense of the taxpayer.

The most likely beneficiary of such an event would be the Lib Dem candidate, the one who only received some 5,500 fewer votes than Ms Beckett at the last election. It makes some sense, therefore, for me to hold my breath, screw up my eyes and vote Lib Dem – simply to avoid splitting the vote and letting Ms Beckett keep her seat and her three houses. It’s not an ideal situation, but tactically speaking it does indeed make a lot of sense.

What I needed was some information about my local candidates – something to make a final decision with. “To the internet!”, cried I, and I set forth to learn more.

A moment’s Googling brings me to the Derby City Lib Dems web site.

Well, that was an eye-opener. At least they have one, I suppose.

And there’s a little bit of info about public toilets on there, which is nice.

You know, I could go on about it, but I’ll cut to the chase. My local Lib Dem site hasn’t been updated in 2009 at all. In the past 12 months there’s been a grand total of six news items posted. I tried to find information on my local Lib Dem PPC and I couldn’t. There isn’t any. After a lot more searching I discovered to my incredulity that there isn’t one.

Isn’t that lovely.

Well done, guys. You’re really bloody useful, aren’t you.

But hey, I’m sure the Conservatives are no better – politicians are all the same, after all, and it appears the Derby Labour Party don’t even have a website – top result on Google for ‘Derby South Labour’ is this page. Why should the Tories be any different.

Ahem.

My local Conservative PPC is a fellow called Jack Perschke. He has a blog. He’s written about his beliefs. He’s on Twitter – and not just a Press Office, it’s actually him. He wrote a pretty good piece for ConservativeHome about what the Damien McBride affair says about trust in politicians. Hell, he’s even been asking for suggestions on what he should do if elected.

Wait a moment, I should repeat that. He’s. Been. Asking. Voters. What. They. Want. The bloody cheek, eh! Shameful!

Here’s the point: Everybody gets all caught up in this ‘digitial engagement’ craze, and it’s a term bandied about by a lot of people who don’t really understand what it means.

The Lib Dems have congratulated themselves on ‘digital engagement’ for years because they have a strong and active community of bloggers and party members who are connected with each other online and do an excellent job of organising themselves. Unfortunately, this approach seems to have been almost universally inward looking, and they make almost no effort at all at making it easy for the outside world to come in and see what they’re up to.

This is incredibly important. Its importance cannot be overstated. You see, when I (like many many others) want to make a decision on who to vote for, the first thing I’m going to do is go to Google and type in the name of my constituency followed by the name of each of the three major parties.

And if I can’t find out, within three clicks of that Google results page, who your candidate is and what the party stands for, I’m almost definitely going to give up and go somewhere else. You made it hard for me, so sod you. Look what happened: you just failed to get your message across, and now if I vote for your party I’m doing it without really knowing anything about you.

Okay, most of Jack Perschke’s site has, shall we say, room for improvement. Okay, a lot of it is style over substance. He doesn’t say anything I couldn’t have written on this blog, and he’s certainly no Tom Harris, but at least there’s something there. At least he seems to care. To be trying.

Hell, at least he exists!

It doesn’t even really have to be particularly good. It doesn’t have to be polished. The point is, when I search ‘Derby South Conservatives’ on Google I find a page full of information about this chap who does indeed appear to be intelligent, reasonably interesting, and to a large extent human. He has an opinion. If I want to ask him a question or find out more, I can leave a comment, or go on Twitter and ask him.

Digital engagement doesn’t mean all those fancy things that the Lib Dems think it means. Digital Engagement is just about making things easier for me. I want to know what you have to offer; your job is to tell me. It’s not flaming rocket science.

From what I can gather, the Tories are offering a slightly dull-sounding but reasonably switched on guy who wants to know what my opinion is on what he should do in parliament. The Lib Dems are offering me news from 6 months ago about the state of the public lavatories.

Have a guess who I’m more likely to vote for.