Labour harness Kerry’s online energy
By Alex Stevenson
Labour has unveiled its secret weapon against Conservative dominance of the blogosphere – Kerry McCarthy.
The party has appointed the Bristol East MP as its new media campaigns spokesman to give it the electoral edge when it comes to fighting the general election online.
Ms McCarthy, who has been a whip for the government since Gordon Brown’s job-saving reshuffle this spring, will expand her nagging remit to act as a focal point inside Labour HQ.
She will “ensure that more MPs and ministers are engaging properly online,” a spokesman said.
“I’m keen to make sure more of our own people know what tools and platforms available so that they can use them to the full,” she told blog LabourList in an interview published today.
“I’m also hoping that I can help some of my more reluctant colleagues in the House of Commons get more comfortable in this area. I’ve had some interesting conversations in the Commons tea room recently, helping Liam Byrne and Jim Knight ‘get’ Twitter and now watch them go!”
Ms McCarthy’s own online credentials are impeccable. Her blog is the very model of a modern political communications tool and her twitter account is updated regularly.
She rejected the suggestion the Tories are ‘better’ at social media than Labour, however.
While admitting they have “celebrity bloggers” like Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes, she insisted “this is quite different from the Conservative party being great on the internet”.
Ms McCarthy added: “They seem to focus on eye-catching gimmicks like ‘Be our friend on Facebook’ that cost them half a million pounds, yielded little in way of results and has been criticised by a number of senior voices in the party.”
Further initiatives are due to be launched in the near future, including a fact-checking site from Will Straw called Left Foot Forward and a wiki from Red Imperative helping Labour members “monitor” their Tory rivals.
