Welcome Paul/Guido

Right. Paul Staines has left a superb comment on my post below about politics and bloggery. Assuming this is the Paul Staines who is, in fact, uber-blogger Guido Fawkes, this demands to be taken further. In response to my own opinion that politicians are now too debased by journalists and bloggers, Paul/Guido says, 'If our politicians were honest men with noble goals they could not be debased.' Well, yes. But he also dismisses my argument that British politicians are less corrupt than those in most developed countries by saying, 'The degree of corruption is not the issue.' But, of course, it's the issue - how else are we to judge whether they are worthy of debasement, whether there is honesty and nobility? Unless, of course, Paul/Guido is arguing that only absolute purity will protect the political system. Such an argument would, of course, be borderline crazy and, if applied, would result in a very unpleasant world indeed.
Paul/Guido also refers me to a post by Stephen Tall which, in turn, responds to the remarks of Matthew Taylor about the malign effects of blogging. Tall is a Labour apostate and he says the patronising assumptions behind Taylor's argument are why he left. In this, I absolutely agree with him. New Labour does not trust the citizenry and regards them as infants, worthy only of bullying and condescension.
But the deep flaw in Tall's position - and, for some time, it was a flaw in my own - is the failure to recognise that Labour's attitude to the people was the inevitable outcome of its acceptance of the power of the press. Once that had happened, hyper-democratic populism was the only possible political discourse. Everything was to be judged by instant, visceral reaction. Of course, the politicians are at fault in this, but, just as importantly, so are the people. Why did parents not demonstrate outside failing comprehensive schools or patients outside filthy NHS hospitals? Because they too had accepted the new agenda, they were willingly infantilised. Politics for the people, the press, the bloggers and the politicians had become nothing more than a gossip-laden Westminster soap.
Libertarian bloggers, says Paul/Guido, 'want to expand the non-political, non-governmental space in society. ' This suggests a discourse of ideas, debate and real reporting. This would, indeed, expand the civic space. But. of course, that is not what we get, we get a constricted hell-hole of gossip, distasteful abuse and back-stabbbing, all of which feed directly back into the New Labour policy of making sure that real politics can be concealed beneath the daily chatter. They are all inside Labour's big tent, riding the same roundabout. Outside, only a few are anxiously watching the gathering thunderheads.