The Lib Dem blogging world has just found its first star. "Can I be the last person to post that I won Lib Dem Blog of the Year last night?" wrote the Lib Dem councillor for Headington at 10.57 this morning. Stephen Tall could be forgiven for the belated post. He could barely fend off the mainstream media and his fellow bloggers at the Lib Dem bloggers' party last night: recording devices and cameras were thrust in his face every few minutes, and the BBC's correspondent interviewed him for the Today programme this morning. He was also on Channel 4's podcast this morning.
Stephen's blog, A Liberal Goes a Long Way, emerged top of a shortlist that also included Andy Mayer, Peter Black, Millennium Elephant (whose stuffed representative insisted on being photographed with your correspondent), Jonathan Calder's Liberal England and the Apollo Blog.
The absence of women was noticeable. But there was one exception. Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green and the first parliamentarian to blog ("I am the blogging queen", she said) presented Stephen with a glass paperweight - which he dropped, fortunately onto carpet - and a copy of Markos Moulitsas's and Jerome Armstrong's tome on the grassroots political revolution in America, Crashing the Gate.
The 29-year-old, who is blogging from the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, has already received an invitation from Vince Cable, the party's Treasury spokesman, to talk through the Lib Dems' tax plans. The party leadership is anxious to win a key vote tomorrow that would see the 50p tax rate for high earners abandoned in favour of a package of "green" taxes and a levy on 1% of the value of taxpayers' property. The Lib Dem blogosphere, which now includes the Lib Dem Voice, has been abuzz with debate on the proposals.
Also under discussion - although mostly off the record - are questions about the Lib Dem leadership. Is Ming Campbell capable of inspiring swing voters in the way that Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown did? How long will he stay? And who might succeed him? Some Lib Dems are keen for the socially liberal wing of the party to reassert itself - if not in the form of Simon Hughes, then in that of a younger pretender.
Stephen himself backed Campbell in the leadership contest, and took the political media to task at the weekend for concentrating on the issue. "Perhaps our news journalists could try raising the bar during conference season, instead of just propping it up?"
Ahem. Your correspondent stuck to just one gin and tonic last night, Stephen, but point taken.
Stephen stressed on his blog this morning that official recognition would not neuter him. "I'm a liberal first, a Lib Dem second - fortunately, though, there's a fair Venn diagram relationship."
Traffic on his blog has "gone slightly mad" since the announcement, Stephen told me this morning. But his new-found fame has not yet tempted him to seek a parliamentary seat. He filled in an application form for a seat six years ago and does not wish to repeat the experience. "I love being a councillor," he says. "I admire the people who do it, but I think they're all mad."
But he is only 29. "Never say never," he added.
