The Taxpayers Alliance made some disparaging (and almost definitely unjustified) remarks yesterday about a government vacancy for a Deputy Director of Digital Communication1. In response, Alex Foster on Lib Dem Voice had this to say:

Neither the TPA nor the Conservative Party can see the point, instead frothing at the mouth and making the dim conflation that Web 2.0 is the same as Twitter. But both need to realise failing to understand something is not a reason to condemn it out of hand. If you too are not clear on Web 2.0 – try Wikipedia. It really refers to cumulative changes that have happened slowly on the internet over the last five years or so. Many web users may not be aware that things have changed. But almost everything you do on the internet these days includes Web 2.0 technology. If you’ve bought books from Amazon, watched something on Youtube, written a blog post or used web-based email you’ll almost certainly have used the technology.

You know, it’s always encouraging to see Lib Dems who get the idea of using the internet in politics – I’ve been shot down by enough of them to know it’s not the party’s default position. It’s comforting, too, to see that Alex has lost none of that wonderfully condescending attitude that Lib Dems are famous for, nor the ability to state the incredibly obvious (‘are you listening at the back?!’) in a way which assures you that they, and they alone, really understand what they’re talking about. That they are the intelligent ones.

But really. To be that condescending, and simultaneously that wrong, is quite a stunning feat, and one worthy of greater attention.

First of all, he’s conflating the Taxpayers Alliance (a free market lobby group) with the Conservative Party (a mainstream political party). Not such a heinous crime, I suppose, but from there he goes on to make the rather fallacious argument that because the Taxpayers Alliance are against government spending on a Digital Communication post, the Tories need ‘schooling’ on digital engagement.

This strikes me as particularly strange, because as I recall it’s the Conservatives who are generally considered the ones to beat in terms of digital engagement. It was the Conservatives, after all, who built the rather excellent WebCameron, a social discussion site and blog with the personal involvement of David Cameron, well before ‘Web 2.0’ was the de facto buzzword and well before Facebook and Twitter became the talking points they are now. It’s the Conservatives who’ve done things like making their expense claims available online in a variety of usable formats. It’s the Conservatives who really take advantage of the internet in ways which usually make the Lib Dems scream foul play since the Tories have the advantage of having more money than them.

I’d say the major difference in general approach toward the Internet between Conservatives and Lib Dems is that the Tories tend to try use the web to try and bring new people into the party (things like Cameron Direct, WebCameron, and their various single-policy micro-sites are cases in point) whereas the Lib Dems tend to focus their attention mainly on engaging with people who are already Lib Dems. Neither party has a perfect approach – I doubt anybody ever will, in fact – and both do some things right and some things wrong. At the moment, though, the general consensus seems to be that the Conservatives have the upper hand in matters Web 2.0. That’s certainly the impression I’ve been given in my local area.

And so it’s somewhat jarring, really, to read a Lib Dem trying to tell the Tories what’s what over ‘digital engagement’. Particularly in such a smug, condescending, unengaging manner. It almost sounds, well, hypocritical.

Don’t you think?

  1. It appears to be a misunderstanding over the role – the post is about looking after websites, not digital engagement. I do find it strange, though, that we have a minister for ‘Digital Engagement’, but no Ministry of IT. Particularly since so many government IT projects are so poorly managed and expensive. Perhaps it’s just yet another example of the priority being on the message, not on the solution. [↩]