SNP Home? Nationalist List?

Back in the heady days of the Spring Conference I fell into a thoroughly engaging conversation with Alan Smart (of Aye We Can) on the future direction of Web 2.0 and the internet for Team SNP. I have been meaning to revisit this topic ever since and that day has now arrived. I'll say in advance that a lot of this post will stem from (or even directly lifted from) Alan's thoughts back then.


The Conservative Party is clearly winning the political online war with a concerted effort in getting their message out through the broadband cables and wireless dongles. Perhaps the strong scent of power is concentrating minds or maybe being of a righter-wing persuasion just makes you better at such things but they are streets ahead of the rest.

When the hiring of Samuel Coates as the face and brains of the Tories' web and blog operations is news in itself and the likes of Tim Montgomerie and Paul Staines are political household names you know that online politics has moved up to a new level of influence. I don't think I need to say anything about the blogging behemoth that is Iain Dale whose wide-reaching and well-deserved reputation speaks for itself.

Despite the Tories being ahead, Labour have hardly been slouches in the area of Web 2.0. Say what you like about Derek Draper (and most of us have) but he left an impressive legacy in the shape of Labour List with a relatively brief set-up period at his disposal. Experienced Labour Cabinet ministers rubbing shoulders with spotty Labour activists as they share their ideas about the best way forward for the party has been a masterful success and will no doubt come into its own in boosting morale and maintaining enthusiasm levels in the run up to May 2010.

The leaflet stuffers of today are the party leaders of tomorrow and Labour have ensured a steady stream of talent is being stacked onto the conveyor belt for the next generation by keeping them entertained and enthused online. How many Yousuf Hamids, Kezia Dugdales, Wes Streetings or Jo Swinsons would have chucked it by now and went off to chase the greenback as a management consultant if they thought they were on their own in the political wilderness?

In Scotland, the picture is notably different with no one party fully grasping the potential of Web 2.0 as a campaign tool and a talent breeding ground. Perhaps money is even scarcer up here, perhaps there just isn't the same enthusiasm as down south or perhaps the 59 Scottish Westminster seats, control of Holyrood and an independent/unionist nation are not motivating enough factors for our Scottish parties, as the prize of Westminster clearly is for their UK counterparts.

When it comes to online warfare, for a party that likes to look back with misty eyes at the likes of Bannockburn and Culloden, the SNP are barely on the battlefield.

It's all very well having your party leader invited to dinner with the Prime Minister and pushing hard for an equal platform in any TV debates that may be on the horizon but true parity with the main parties comes from having an equally robust structural design beneath you bursting with energised activists. A canvasser in Arbroath will be more likely to get out there and knock doors if he or she can come home afterwards and read about the exploits of a like-minded leafletter in Inverness.

The main party website is decent but probably long overdue a facelift. From what I remember, the members section has space for blogs and comments but generally just twists in the breeze with infrequent scatter-shot posts from faceless (and often even nameless) members. At least the addition of this function at the website's inception suggests that someone, somewhere has concluded that an active online presence propelled daily at a grassroots level would be a positive boost for the party's energy levels and general morale. However, there's only so far that the rat-a-tat-tat rapid succession of HQ press releases can do to fire up the troops.

The website aside, the two operations that could most closely pass for an 'SNP Home' or a ' Nationalist List' medium are the Scots Independent newspaper and the Destination website.

Scots and Independent

This newspaper is a great read and truly deserves a wider readership. The font and presentation may make it look like it comes from a library's centuries-old archive rather than it being a dynamic, modern publication but there is an impressive spectrum of SNP voices who contribute to each monthly edition, not to mention reflective, consistently engaging content.

Perhaps its presentation can often be the newspaper equivalent of a shortbread tin and consequently the paper will struggle to reach out beyond the core SNP membership but it has battled on admirably for a long time now, longer than many would have predicted I daresay.

In terms of the newspaper (or its sister website) becoming an 'SNP Home' of sorts, there is of course a valid concern that it is preaching to the converted though if that serves to further galvanise a party then there is nothing particularly wrong with that.

In the print format however, there are obvious barriers to a dynamic, free-flowing debate that would engage and enthuse. Reading the paper silently in your home does not create the sense of 'togetherness' nor spark the activation energy that the likes of LabourList and ConservativeHome have achieved.

Destination

Destination is a thoroughly impressive site. The content is engaging, intelligent and wide-ranging. Crucially, each article has depth which along with the editorial team's persistence, has ensured the site's survival. Even the colourful presentation is a strong feather in its cap as it is an immediate indication that the website is slick and created with details in mind.

However, the distinct lack of comments and 2-way exchange is a drawback as it arguably makes the site far too 'safe'. And the fact that it is updated every few months is of course the main reason why it is not currently a real candidate for a website for SNP members to coalesce around on a regular basis.

Of the two, if the SNP ever wanted to go down the road of Conservative Home or Labour List or Lib Dem Voice, then I reckon Destination has the preferable template. Opening up the tight knit band of contributors to a wider pool and adding extra space for constituency information, policy debate and PPC personality profiles would mean it would be pretty much there in terms of weighty appeal.

Of course, all of the above is based on the wobbly premise that an advancement in the SNP's online presence is required. Perhaps the loose, informal array of 'nat pack' bloggers as is the status quo is as good as it should ever get. Anything too centralised or too formal may well harm the very essence of what Web 2.0 typically achieves at its optimum.

After all, even if we may have to wait for Iain Dale's top 40 lists to confirm this, there is little doubt that pro-SNP (or at least sympathetic-SNP) bloggers are running the Scottish blogosphere table at the moment in a similar way to how the Tories are bossing the UK scene. Indeed, the lop-sidedness of it all is so much so that I hope the balance shifts dramatically in the near future with a Scottish Tory or Scottish Labour resurgency. The Lib Dems, to be fair, are very well served with numerous highly capable internet scribes, though they do share in the SNP's suffering of not having a well-known personality, an MP or MSP for example, to drive the whole blogging hierarchy forward with them.

As much as I agree that if nothing's particularly wrong then don't fix it, I just wonder if the SNP could step it up a little bit with those higher up the food chain taking a lead. Tom Harris, Alastair Campbell and John Redwood have shown how it can be done and although there are occasional MSP bloggers in Anne McLaughlin and Jamie Hepburn and potential MP bloggers in Richard Thomson, Julie Hepburn and Osama Saeed, more surely can be wrung from the potential that cyberspace offers.

John Prescott certainly sees that potential. He stood in front of a packed room at the last Labour Conference and championed blogging and online campaigning as the future, that Labour needed to embrace this new style of canvassing and not look back. The former Deputy Prime Minister said activists had a duty to "get up to speed with it all" and he has led from the front with Go Fourth.

If 'JP' is correct, who would lead the SNP charge? Mike Russell would make a great figurehead for an internet presence and I personally think Nicola Sturgeon would prove highly popular if she extended her persona to the web, not that she isn't busy enough already of course. There is a big team of nationalist list MSPs who, let's be honest, won't exactly be rushed off their feet with workoad and could lead the charge. There must be someone highly visible and suitably technologically whizzy in the party's ranks that can pick up the Web 2.0 ball and run with it during either the 2010 or 2011 election campaign.

In the 2007 election the SNP were praised for their use of the internet in the election campaign but from what I saw that amounted to a few YouTube videos and relying on word of mouth and email forwards to do the rest. The virtual world has changed even since then and I'm not convinced that the Facebooks, the Twitters, the blogs and the web at large has been embraced as fully as it should be. People are moving online in their droves and in theory it is free to reach them and involves less time and frustration than tramping around street corners on a frosty winter's evening.

If the wise and learned individuals in the media and political circles are correct that future elections will be fought more and more online then I reckon it will pay to prepare for that eventuality as early as possible and the SNP are slipping behind in front of our very eyes.

The SNP grassroots has 'got what it takes' so maybe 'it's time' to bring SNP Home home, with a dot sco domain name too of course.

Anyway, they are my thoughts on the matter, hopefully readers will wish to share their own...?