Mandy dumps on LabourList

Mandy, at Labour's bloggers breakfast, offered some homely advice on campaigning in the age of the internet:

I do, however, believe that just because we are moving into new media, we do not jettison some of the old soundbites of the past. I feel "the hand of history" on me as we move along on this journey into new media. We are still going to need carefully crafted, repeated messages. The difference is that the message has just got to be richer, has got to be more original, it has got to be more creative and there's got to be more plurality, from a greater range of people.

Instead of just forcing [the message] through the old media, we have to bring it alive in the new media ... To compete, to get noticed, what we are saying really needs to stand out. It has to have the qualities of freshness and humour and originality that we did not necessarily have to have when occupying the old world. The other thing it has to have is an immediacy ... If we have none of those things, we are going to be cast aside. People are just going to look away, not pick up what we are saying, not think about the point we are making ... It's not about making an entirely false choice between the old command and control ways of the old media and the inchoate, online anarchy of the blogosphere. It's about finding a way of combing both of these. We will still have to have slogans, we will still have to have soundbites, well-chosen, and they need to be repeated.

He is full of himself with “the hand of history” stuff but he does make some important points.

I trust dreadful Draper was listening and learning!