A bizarre pingback found its way onto my blog stats page yesterday, and once I got around to clicking through it I made a happy discovery: Tory pundit Iain Dale revealed this to be the 88th of the “Top 100 Left of centre blogs” in Britain (right below Michael Meacher). Brilliant! I’d like to thank Jesus, my parents, and the Tories. I eagerly flicked through for familiar names, finding very few, and finding one in particular highly conspicuous by its absence. Where, pray, was Lenin’s Tomb, which surely has more claim than most to the (essentially meaningless) title of “Top Left of centre blog in Britain”? Its absence from the top spot I was prepared for, but as I scanned down past a million or so blogs with the word “Labour” in the title, things started to smell a little off.
In response to comments from myself and “Septicisle” (one of the few familiar handles, who also said of his own Obsolete blog’s ranking: “I’m not sure if there’s anything more meaningless than being the 72nd best left-wing blog in the country, but thanks anyway.“), Iain revealed that the Tomb had in fact charted at number 206, and another commenter explained the discrepency:
John Angliss said…
If this is a result of the e-mail you sent out entitled “Top 50 Labour Blogs”, then there’s no wonder that Lenin’s Tomb wasn’t included. Many of the best left bloggers are outside Labour… “Left” didn’t appear in the email once, whilst “Labour” appeared three times, so I assumed this was merely confined to Labour bloggers. Apologies to those who got missed out because of my mistake.
Well, that would certainly explain it! Indeed, the apparent interchangeability of the words “Labour” and “Leftie” in Iain’s writing had already done a lot to discredit him in my eyes. I often forget that the concepts of the Labour Party and the Left are even compatible; in fact, as blog’s like John’s Labour Left Forum reveal, grassroots opposition to the corporate takeover of government is at least as important within the party as outside it, but a focus on the (New) Labour party would still exclude virtually the entire blogging Left.
A bit rich then, surely, for Iain to crocodile-weep at the lack of Left-wing engagement with the blogosphere. I would have written the whole thing off at this point - after all, aren’t “expert” pundits exactly what the blogosphere is all about sidelining? - but for two things: 1/ my own vanity - a list, with me on it, that will be published in an actual book of all things would you believe! - and 2/ the fact that my first day in class (economics diploma) had mainly been spent fuming at the idea that faulty inferences could be drawn from the mathematical models we were studying with out due care being paid to the consequences of the unrealistic assumptions upon which the model was founded. I’ve had enough, dammit, and it stops here!
After failing to find details of the list elsewhere on the internet (I’m rubbish at Google, all things considered), I left the following comment on Iain’s blog, where at time of writing it wallows in the moderation queue, and sent it in an email too, just to make sure.
When reading any survey, we need to know a bit about the methodology behind its compilation; otherwise, I suspect everyone present will agree, it may as well have been plucked out of thin air.
Based on comments from Iain, Bob and John, it seems clear that the group of bloggers who compiled the list were unclear as to whether they were choosing the best blogs on the Left or the best blogs associated with/originating from within the Labour party - and that despite the title of this post, “Labour” was the predominant interpretation. If so, I would suggest that this confusion alone puts this closer to the Iraq Body Count than to the Lancet.
Some other things could do with clearing up, such as, were the list compilers given specific criteria and if so, what? More importantly, how was this group selected?
If the group was selected by Iain Dale from among his “leftie” acquaintances, then he has been able to greatly influence the results simply by filtering (unintentionally, one would imagine) the participants along the lines of his own prejudices.
If, on the other hand, the group was self-selecting, then it still cannot be said to be neutral. From where were these volunteers canvassed? On this blog? In the pages of the Telegraph? It seems likely, in any case, that most of the participants came from among those who regularly follow and engage with the Westminster punditry.
The views of this group are certainly valid, but it excludes a significant plurality (perhaps even a majority) of those who consider themselves left of centre: those who, be it from revolutionary ideology or from a cynicism born of recent political experience, give very little credibility (and, consequently, pay little attention) to anything that comes out of Westminster.
No study is perfect, and I recognise that if this one is presented with no pretence at being comprehensive or conclusive, with its methodology (and any consequent systematic biases) made clear, then perhaps we can still draw some meaningful conclusions. However, when the list is presented with no such qualifiers then we can’t really infer very much.
For example, it’s now pretty clear why Lenin’s Tomb was excluded from the list. Rather than an anomaly, it seems that blogs like the Tomb - unaffiliated with the Labour Party, distant from the Westminster punditry nexus - will have been systematically discriminated against. With such bias excluding at least one of the most popular and lively blogs on the Left, one can’t really infer an overall weakness of the blogging British Left from the list.
Still, it’s nice to be noticed. I look forward to any clarifications you can provide.
Needless to say, any such clarifications will be reproduced here in the comments section.
All this aside, to anyone who did participate in the survey, and who voted for me: thanks. I’m certainly not immune to flattery, even if it does come through Iain Dale, and it is very nice to be number 88.
It was, if I remember rightly much the same last year. I certainly didn’t vote, and if I had Lenin’s Tomb would have most definitely been in there somewhere. I think as you point out that if anything the Tomb is just *too* left-wing. After all, if Iain maintains that Dave’s Part is “extreme left”, we’re going to be in trouble.
Hi Septicisle,
I don’t actually have a problem with surveys that focus on the “centre-” or “Labour-affiliated-” Left (though I’m bemused as to how I got on there), as long as they’re presented as such. No-one would be surprised that the Left with which Iain Dale is familiar isn’t necessarily the whole picture, and to be honest if he’d said “my” or “our top 100″, instead of “the top 100″ I wouldn’t really have had anything to say on the matter.
Anyway, ever the Tory gentleman, Iain acknowledged my question within minutes and wrote back this morning:
What an amicable fellow. He’s wrong, though; remember, this bit of fun will soon (unless I’m very much mistaken; expect corrections below if so) be printed in a glossy little paperback in bookshops across the nation. I replied:
i don’t actually often read lenin’s tomb but you might have got me interested
i look forward to reading the next back and forward emails (if they come)
Interesting discussion,
Yes it is not without importnace, becasue the conclusion that Iain, as a celebrated pundit, promotes is that there is little left of centre blogging.
Which reinforces the idea that there is an ideological consensus in society as a whole that coincides with the political consensus in the Westminster village.
i don’t really care that my blog ( http://www.socialistunity.com/ ) is not in Iain’s list, or that Lenin’s isn’t.
But I suspect that as the SU blog gets around 1700 unique visitors a day, and Lenin’s Tomb even more, that we are actually more representative of left blogging than some of the others who do make his list.
Hi Andy.
That a “respectable” pundit (especially a right-wing one) would try to detract or distract from the discussions of the masses is almost trivial. We get an elitist polemic like this one in CiS or something about once a month; Iain’s list is a much more polite, more subtle, and at this point probably more effective example.
The idea of a blogosphere is now too prevelant to be rubbished away with snobbery, so now we have the next stage: (attempted) co-option. But I think Iain’s approach (blogs are great; believe me, I’m the expert) may be self-defeating; as the more people come round to the idea of using on the blogosphere as a source of information the less they will come to respect the idea of elite pundits and self-appointed experts. I hope so, at least; misrepresenting the people to themselves is a dirty, but timeless, trick, and deserves to fail.
Your own alternative list was interesting, I’ll be investigating some of the names on there as and when time allows. I think to an extent the idea of rankings and league tables is incompatible with Leftism, and correspondingly it’s interesting that you include plenty of disclaimers about both the subjectivity of the list and the arbitrariness of the ordering, while Iain gets straight into what we can “deduce” from the position and nature of the “highest new entries”.
Yes - rankings are pernicious.
That is a correct criticism, but at the same time there needs to be some way of saying, “hey, I like/agree with/enjoy this more than I like/agreewith/enjoy this”
But only if we recognise that this is subjective and does not reflect intrinsic worth.
What of course would be slightly less subjective criteria would be rankings based upon the number of comments, and the seriousness of debate in those comments, or on the number of regular readers, etc.
Absolutely, when obtained, presented and interpreted responsibly, both objective and subjective rankings can be useful. When misinterpreted or unduly emphasised/marginalised, any source of information can be dangerous. In this case, I’d like to underline your earlier point: Iain’s post (indeed, it’s a whole series of posts, on the blogging right, the LibDems and the “non-aligned bloggers” - getting a clue about how Iain sees the political world?) serves to falsely “reinforce the idea that there is an ideological consensus in society as a whole that coincides with the political consensus in the Westminster village.“
“I’m not sure if there’s anything more meaningless than being the 72nd best left-wing blog in the country…” Being the 73rd, presumably?
Iain has now published his list of the best political blogs overall. Two main points:
I’m not in the top 300 (though I might have made the top 500, “you’ll have to buy the book to find out”, he says. The book costs a tenner).
More importantly, Iain is making one or two disclaimers as to the subjectivity of the list, but still holds it up as an example of how much healthier the Right-wing blogosphere is than the Left.