Campbell discovers the joy of the web
Photograph: Matthew Fearn/PA As a self-confessed technophobe Alastair Campbell never had much time to spend browsing the internet while toiling away for Tony Blair in Downing Street. He, of course, let other people do it for him - hence perhaps his difficulties over the infamous "dodgy" dossier on Iraqi weapons - cut and pasted from an old PHD thesis on the internet.
As he told BBC listeners this morning, his former boss was just as bad, "a pen and paper person", whose computer screen in the No 10 office remains "pretty idle let's be frank".
The reason for this entertaining confessional by the former No 10 communications director was to publicise an essay he'd written for AOL on how the internet is changing political communication and campaigning. His thesis is that a third of young people are now getting their political information from the internet and that this is a challenge to both the mainstream media and politicians.
"It's not a revolution but its getting there," thinks Campbell, who said British politicians are way behind congressmen in the United States in grasping the potential benefits of talking directly to their electorate and bypassing the mainstream media.
Here we come to one of Mr Campbell's pet obsessions - how the newspapers spin news as much he ever did. He argues that a "conventional wisdom" develops in the media. An intellectual aristocracy exists among news editors and commentators who decide, with no reference to wider electorate, what the top story is that day and what is important.
Voters, he believes, particularly the web-savvy under 30s, now recognise this and so will go off in search of facts and comment related to the political subject they're interested in. If politicians don't engage they will fall even further "behind the curve" argues Campbell.
He points to three ways new technology is changing political campaigning. Firstly, in the building of campaigning networks, like that which exists to get basic messages to 10s of 1,000s of Labour party supporters aimed primarily at encouraging them to campaign for the party. Secondly, in fundraising - the Labour party in 2005, he said, was able to raise substantial sums through well targeted emails encouraging people to donate; and thirdly, local information: one of the most popular features of the Labour 2005 campaign he said - not least for campaigners - was a post code search function that distilled massive national facts, figures and statistics, to local examples of real change and progress in news schools, hospitals and jobs.
What he failed to mention, and likely to become an ever larger part of future campaigns, especially if Campbell is involved, is negative viral campaigns. George Galloway's recent stay in the Big Brother house prompted the appearance of this website, not identifiably a Labour party site but chiming with their anti-Galloway "get back to work" message.
Such websites are ideal for mocking opponents (Prescott should probably avoid punching someone in 2009) but also for creating new campaigning groups created solely to make headlines - as the gunboat veterans were used in the 2004 US election.
So far politicians have restricted themselves to self-publicity, posting regular blog entries on their own websites, or, in the case of Liberal Democrat leadership contender Chris Huhne, getting a supporter, in this case Claire Rayner, to throw him softball questions. In the run-up to the next election expect web use by the political parties to become far less bland.
