According to Iain Dale, the ‘right-wing’ blogosphere needs new blood:

Left-of-centre blogs take up four of the top 10 places and seven of the top 20. Last year there was only one left-wing blog (Tom Harris) in the top 10 and four in the top 20.

So does this indicate the inevitable ascendency of the left and the retreat of the right? It’s possible, but if you judge a blog by quantity of readers I understand that even Left Foot Forward is still only getting about a third of the traffic levels of ConservativeHome.

The comparative decline of the right is not because existing right-wing blogs have been performing badly, it is because there has been no new blood. Norman Tebbit apart – and he has taken to blogging like an unemployed person takes to a bike – there are very few notable new right-of-centre blogs.

Charlotte Gore with her piercing laser kitty eyes knocks this down easily enough:

The point is that if the ‘Right Wing’ blogosphere seems static it’s probably because the ladders that helped the existing blogs to climb have been pulled up (and the primordial soup of voter angst that gave birth to the ones who created those ladders has long since disappeared), while the Left Wing blogosphere is creating its own rival and alternate power/ladder structure – patronage from Iain Dale not necessary a bonus in those circles.

According to Iain Dale, the soaring left-wing blog this year is Left Foot Forward led by Will Straw. Thank goodness we have a progressive answer to Cameronish Tory elitism there, ie one who had a famous political father and was President of the Oxford Union!

Several points.

First, no serious conclusions at all can be drawn from Iain Dale’s Total Politics annual blog surveys unless the detailed results are published. Only some 2000 people voted for a selection of blogs. I suspect the results show a classic Long Tail result, with a tiny number of immensely popular blogs and the rest far less read.

Second, it takes time to build readership. Some so-called bloggers are paid journalists using their newspaper website to pump out more stuff, so they have a naturally high reader base to start from. One good thing about Iain’s annual survey exercise is that it does give some modest prominence to individual writers (like me), pecking at their keyboards and trying patiently to build up readership solely by hard work and the odd new insight.

Third, Guido argues rightly that either you provide real news (usually stories some people don’t want the public to hear) or you’re just another chatterer. There is only so much time for people interested in politics to follow stuff about it on the Internet, and already there must be far too many suppliers for that limited pool of readers. So how could ‘new blood’ make any quick impact in this area unless it is backed by publicity money from somewhere and/or lots of friends in the wider media and political classes who give it free puffs and invites to events? See Left Foot Forward.

Iain Dale:

Who did BBC News have as their studio guests for 90 minutes? Mark Pack from Lib Dem Voice and myself. This seemed completely natural to them. There was a time when they would have instantly called on a newspaper political editor. They still do of course, but they now regard bloggers as suitable equivalents.

Bloggers have left the subs bench and are now playing on the main pitch…

No. Some politically inclined bloggers (a tiny proportion of the total) have managed to build enough of a following to get those sorts of invitations regularly, in effect to become an Official Member of the Chattering Classes.

Nice for those who get that profile, which of course plays back into increased online readership. And good luck to them – they will have worked hard to get that prominence.

But it’s not really a big deal – it’s just the MSM pretending to be more pluralistic by expanding the familiar echo chamber a little. If anything it serves to show just how determined the media remain to exclude libertarian and other more contrarian anti-Big Government and anti-Big Media opinions (see also Climate Change passim).

Still, this year I shot up the charts and got two shiny new Total Politics badges to wear.

Better than a slap in the face with a wet fish, as my late father would opine.