HOWARD DEAN (remember him?) may have used the internet effectively to raise money for his abortive bid for the American presidency in 2004, but in Britain the marriage of politics and the internet has been less successful. While the Daily Kos, an American weblog aimed at Democrats and liberals, can get more than a million hits a day and makes money from advertising, successful British blogs have only just begun to emerge.

The key event was the exposure of John Prescott’s affair with his diary secretary in April. Further allegations of subsequent affairs of the Deputy Prime Minister were published by the Guido Fawkes blog, and linked to by others such as Iain Dale, which — when picked up by newspapers — helped to boost traffic dramatically. Iain Dale’s blog, for example, got 20,000 to 30,000 hits a month at the beginning of the year; the figure is now ten times that level.

As a result, Britain’s top political blogsites, Fawkes, Dale and Tim Montgomerie’s ConservativeHome, all figure in the top ten UK blogs, competing with the rival attractions of football, erotica and quirky videos. And all three hail from the right of centre, which is curious because leftwingers own computers too. While they may have started as vehicles for a political point of view, they are beginning to break stories regularly, becoming the central point for gossip in the Westminster village.

That in turn has helped to propel them to the next level — trying to make money. Six political blogger sites (the three on the right, plus Labour and Liberal Democrat sites) have done a deal with MessageSpace, the advertising network for bloggers. Theirs is the perfect audience for lobbyists, for example, as MessageSpace can target advertising depending on where the reader comes from — a lobbyist’s ad can, for example, be viewed only by those who come from the Downing Street servers. The bloggers are hoping to make a few thousand each a month, enough for the bills at least.

It is interesting to ask why the right seems to have more of the audience in this new medium — as in some of the old media. The Daily Telegraph outsells The Guardian; and The Spectator has more than double the readers of the New Statesman. But attacking the government of the day always makes for better reading — America’s Daily Kos is anti-Bush, after all — so there is no reason why the right should remain perpetually ahead in the blog stakes.

There are plenty of left and Labour blogs out there, but many political sites are simply trying to impress the electorate. There is some value in telling voters that the bins will be collected on time next week, but interest will be limited outside Acacia Avenue. To reach a significant audience, a blogger has to serve more than a narrow political purpose, and take on some of the muckracking required in successful journalism.

The big political bloggers are now receiving regular tip-offs — often from journalists unable to get the story in question into their own newspaper or bulletin. That sort of approach helps to bring in readers but does not sit well with party political loyalty, which has been placed at a premium in new Labour. The forthcoming leadership election may change all that; at a time when the party needs genuine debate, the right mix of politics and journalism may find a left-leaning audience.

• POLITICS on telly is governed by a strict set of impartiality rules, but that doesn’t apply on the internet. Next month, 18DoughtyStreet Talk TV will begin producing four hours a night of opinionated political programming online, setting aside the traditional requirement for balance. It’s about time somebody tried to challenge the orthdoxy of the BBC and the regulators, at least to discover if there is an audience out there.

  The channel is the creation of Stefan Shakespeare, once an adviser to Jeffrey Archer and a founder and director of the online pollster YouGov. Its bosses are promising opinions from both left and right, but again the men from the right appear in the ascendant on the channel. Not everybody will agree with that, but with the costs of setting up an online TV station now so low, another group can foster the opposing point of view.

  Now that anybody can broadcast themselves, the ability to regulate television via a prescriptive set of rules is going to weaken to the point of collapse. Even Ofcom, the regulator, recognises as much, expecting gradually to turn into a version of the Office of Fair Trading, tasked with consumer protection and the odd major inquiry. Step by step, television is breaking free of the order imposed against the backdrop of the Cold War.

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