Here is Bagehot at the Economist on why the Internet’s role in UK politics is mainly destructive:

But it, and especially YouTube, are at least becoming an important destructive element in British politics, able as they are to cultivate that most poisonous and final of political responses: ridicule.

Take three recent YouTube appearances by Gordon Brown (all of which were also featured on "Have I Got News For You", a popular satirical game show, last week): there’s the one of him not shaking the Downing Street policeman’s hand; the one of his oddly self-cancelling apology over his henchman’s abortive smear campaign; and of course the bizarre smiling self-inflicted humiliation of his flawed and now partly abandoned plan to reform MPs’ expenses–an utterly cack-handed bid to reclaim a patch of high-ish moral ground, undone by its hurried amateurism as well as Mr Brown’s disconcerting screen presence.

The point not mentioned here is that the UK voting system does not feature a direct Presidential vote for individuals across the country as do eg the USA and French systems. The Prime Minister is just one among many other MPs, who has to woo a local constituency.

Hence the sense of positive Obama-style excitement which comes from everyone across the country having a say in choosing the Top Person (and then an interest in supporting that person, for a while at least) is not there in the same way.

But everyone can join together in the negative excitement trying to bring down someone in power. See the Number Ten petition which is going to get daily more embarrassing for the Prime Minister as the numbers edge up in the months to come before it closes (32,523 votes this morning, up by 200 in the past 30 minutes…).

Likewise Euro-scepticism – the Internet is a space which exaggerates the role of those with energy and raucous wit and verve, which in the UK on the issue of the European Union tends to be the people who find something to dislike in it.

One general trend will be for politicians simply not to appear in any uncontrolled environment for fear of an inadvertent word or grimace or gesture being recorded by a passer-by on a telephone camera and being splashed over YouTube in seconds.

This is already part of the US scene in many respects. It works less well over here, as Prime Minister’s Questions and other such traditions force people out into the open every week to answer tough questions. See one of my first ever postings last year on this very subject.

So ‘control’ can not succeed in the UK as much as its proponents might hope. A single viral YouTube video coming from nowhere can cause huge damage, as Dan Hannan’s success has shown. Part of the Smeargate disaster for Labour lay in the 100% wrong idea that a ‘controlled’ Guido-style but Leftish site could be created to order (or indeed to Order-Order).

Which is why another trend will be a return to ‘authenticity’ – people who don’t care about such ‘control’, who make a virtue of ignoring spin and any negative publicity and sell themselves warts and all. John Prescott an improbable e-trailblazer here?

Of course the real future lies with those who articulate a redefinition of government towards a new sense of partnership with the public. Most of modern government is based up on a Do what we tell you – or else approach recognisable by every despot down the ages. This is another reason for the EU’s unpopularity -.its apparent intrusive bossiness is equalled only by its remoteness.

Surely the Internet allows a quite new vision to emerge at last?

Bring it on, Libertarians.