The infamous Charles Hardwidge

It seems that LabourList has resurrected that American blogging icon, Charles Hardwidge again. If you ever feel like a laugh and how it's possible that someone can be quite so utterly deluded in all aspects of life, please feel free to view the blog.

Under Dolly Draper, the website was the epitome of New Labour - an example of an ignorant chancer with delusions of grandeur, trying to pretend he was the real thing. To be fair to the new editor, Alex Smith, the site is much better than Draper's bastard web-child although the content is often obtuse, reeks of naive student politics and anti-Tory rhetoric.

Still, do a search for old Charley’s comments and be prepared for a treat. Most of them consist of the following, failsafe format:

1. Liberally scatter your post with management meta-speak
2. Make a completely unrelated quote on Taoism
3. Have another hate-fuelled dig at the Tories

He does come across as one of life’s losers in perpetuam: the chap that thinks he knows it all, uber-confidence over ignorance, poor interpersonal skills, failure to understand business, talks the talk but sadly in life with his attitude, has failed to accomplish anything at all, despite his worldly wisdom that he likes to pontificate frequently.

Sadly, it appears that after his fantastic impersonation on Guido’s site (whoever that was, hat’s off to you – had me convinced for a while!) he’s now a bit touchy about people reproducing his comments – such as LabourList’s new “Comment of the day” feature and has threatened to call his lawyers .

And just to torment the poor fellow some more, the site posters are now running a sweepstake on when he will return to the site for the upcoming election next year!

Quality gold.

Why LabourList will fail

As I haven't been there for several weeks, I had a quick look at Dolly's Labourlost blog, you know, the one that is "a place for labour-minded people to come together online and discuss politics".

Except that there isn't a great deal of discussion going on, just posts that mirror the labour party message du jour. Nothing about ID cards, crime figures, gordon's culpability of the demise of the horn of plenty etc Just a daily piece of propaganda from the labour bunker.

The whole raison d'être of a blog is to provide a platform to encourage discussion. To argue. To throw ideas around. To share viewpoints. To score points and to expose some other not necessarily tasteful human behaviours.

The problem with the old question: "why are labour so appallingly unsucessful at everything, including blogs?" can be answered with one word. Control.

Everything about labour can be distilled down into top down control.

You have a problem? Don't worry, the state will look after you.

Not sure what to eat? The state will tell you what you must and must not eat.

It's in their mindsets. It's in their DNA. It's their tribalist genes. The control. A blog without moderation and discussion is anathma to them. They can't allow people to disagree with the party line. They can't allow people to discuss freely their ideas. You must believe with all your heart that the state is right. And punishment for those that dare to differ and be individual.

So back to the image at the top of this article. This was in response to the drearily, obviously written by a wonk, Kerry "I agree with everything labour say and do without argument" McCarthy article about the argument for the privatisation of the Royal Mail.

Out of the pitifully small handful of replies that tried to deride labour's obvious attempts at spinning this awkward dilemma, only one person touched on the real reason behind this and...

... was promptly deleted as it was off-message.

That’s not a blog.

That’s Pravda. And we’ve already got one of those in Portland Place, London.