Great fun interviewing David yesterday – though I’ve never been to Birmingham and turned straight round to come home before… The article will be in April’s edition of Company magazine which will be on sale in mid-March.

One of the things we talked about was how politicians are using new media. I came across this website today (thanks to the Coffee House) which is just great.  At the moment the first interview that starts playing is Zac Goldsmith’s but that will change as more candidates upload their videos.

Along with Derek Wyatt’s iPhone app, this got me thinking… Can technology ever win an election? Should it? Is it only politics geeks who go reading political websites, and watching political videos, and searching out political information? How do most people decide who to vote for? Is face to face engagement with either the prospective MP or their hard-working canvassers and leaflet deliverers the most effective way to reach out to people, or are tv, radio, newspaper and internet interviews and spots enough?

The WinkBall website is clearly based on the premise that face to face is better than just leaflets. But it is still after all only on a computer screen, and there’s no knowing how interactive it really is.

I think the real genius of blogs, websites, forums, Facebook and so on is not that it is ON A COMPUTER so you can do it from home, but that you can answer back. Politics used to be all about the politicians telling you what they thought and then you would vote for them and then you might, if you were lucky, see that they delivered what they said. But the way people use the internet means that politicians are much more accountable than they used to be and it looks terrible if they ignore questions or issues that people raise.

That’s why the transparency agenda is so important. Instead of waiting until it’s dragged out, piece by piece, under Freedom of Information or because it’s leaked, the Conservatives’ plans to publish government contracts, data and other information is, as I’ve said before, probably the most radical thing they will do if they are elected to government. It will completely change the relationship between politicians and voters – which, as things stand, can only be a good thing.

So my conclusion, such as it is, is this. These sorts of applications are important because they offer a different and sometimes eye-catching way to communicate. But they are most important because they break down the barriers between politicians and voters in the same way that meeting in person does. It’s not the fact that you can see the person that makes the difference – it’s the fact that you can talk back. In our ever-less reverential society, this is what makes us all accountable to each other.

As an aside, I heard a terrible story about a very well-known Labour MP this week – apparently she does all her surgeries in her local council offices… from behind the bullet-proof glass that the cashiers sit behind. Why she thinks this is in any way appropriate is beyond me – it’s nearly as bad as Harriet Harman’s flak jacket on a constituency tour...

I’m a fan of Left Foot Forward.  It is amongst the list of ‘must read’ blogs.  But in an article a few days ago, they completely misunderstood the nature of the Tory blogosphere.

Sam Coates et al arranged a fairly informal get together for bloggers on Tuesday, at which Eric Pickles gave a short and very entertaining speech. The normally excellent Left Foot Forward added a blog based on a fiction.  According to LFF, the disparate and varied Tory blogosphere will now be marching with the discipline and unity of a well drilled battalion – apparently driven on by 7 AM briefings that they will be expected to parrot.  This is, of course, totally untrue.  Nothing even remotely of the kind was said at the event.  In fact, the independence of the blogosphere was loudly celebrated.

There are two important points here.  The first is that what Will Straw alleged was said absolutely wasn’t said.  The second is that it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Tory blogosphere.  The truth is that the Tory blogosphere is highly independent and highly diverse. The idea that blogs from the progressive centre such as this one will start singing from exactly the same hymn sheet as some of the blogs on the right wing fringe is absurd.

What Straw fails to note and comprehend is that internet and the blogosphere has resulted in the greatest proliferation of sources of news, information and opinion for centuries.  Not since the time of the likes of Cobbett’s Political Register and Marat’s L’Ami Du Peuple has such a range of political opinions (from the sensible to the crackpot) been able to reach a wider audience.

In such an uncontrolled environment as the internet and the blogosphere, central control verges between difficult and impossible.  As Joe Trippi’s brilliant ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ makes clear, the internet and the blogosphere are, by their very nature bottom up rather than top-down.  It is part of the left’s misunderstanding of the blogosphere that they think any kind of central control is even being considered.