What’s Labour’s internet operation like?

Two reviews out today. One from Christine Bennett in The Observer:

Although a commitment to democratic engagement with the online public is now compulsory for any party official, LabourList’s fondness for joyless affirmations of party solidarity, along with official reports on the modern equivalent of tractor production and Draper’s corrections of perceived thought crimes, can easily make it appear, to visitors from the free world, to have less in common with Obama’s style of civic engagement than with Vladimir Putin’s…

On each new, Obama-inspired Labour website, there is a patch of nothing where a picture of the party leader should go. Up to a point, the reticence is understandable. How thrilled would you be to receive a personal email from Gordon? Or keen to join my.gordonbrown.com? But a movement with no ideas and no leader? They must have skipped the last Obama lesson. People aren’t as stupid as was hitherto believed. They’ll notice.

You can read the full piece here.

And one from Paul Canning on The Wardman Wire blog:

The best of Labour’s online responses thus far has come from the unlikely pairing of John Prescott and Alastair Campbell.

You can read the full posting here.