What are the top 10 UK political blogs?

Iain Dale’s full article is HERE

Iain Dale, whose blog is No 1,  provided us with the top 10 (500) UK political blogs – a year or so out of date;

 

The GUIDE TO POLITICAL BLOGGING 2007 is now available. You can buy it from Politico’s (£9.74) or Amazon (£14.98). This is the final list which will be published on this blog (ok ok… I get the hint).

When compiling a list of top blogs last year, due to constraints, I did it all myself. I scored each blog with ten criteria and out of that came the rankings. Naturally, it was all very subjective. With more time available this year I asked fellow bloggers and blog readers to come up with their Top 20 or Top 10 blogs. These were then fed into a spreadsheet, and the list of Britain’s Top 500 political blogs emerged. In some ways, it is similar to my own list last year in that many of the recognised names appear at the top of the chart. But there have been some significant new arrivals since last year’s edition was compiled, several of which feature high up the chart. Before the analysis let’s look at a few facts.

* Out of the Top 20, fourteen of the blogs are on the right and only two are on the left
* Out of the Top 100, 42 blogs are on the right and 27 are on the left
* Out of the Top 500 154 are on the right and 153 are on the left
* 9 LibDem blogs feature in the Top 100 and 50 feature in the Top 500
* 4 blogs written by full time journalists feature in the Top 20 and 50 are in the Top 500

So the lesson is that although right wing blogs still dominate the upper reaches of the chart, left of centre blogs are showing signs of coming to life and challenging the right. I full expect to see three or four left of centre blogs join the ‘big boys’ over the next twelve months, although at the moment it is difficult to see who they might be. Kerron Cross is best placed but keep an eye on Rupa Huq.

Sceptics may well point to the fact that a right wing Blogger (ie me!) organised this poll and therefore the results might well be skewed in favour of the right. Indeed, the fact that people voted my blog the top blog of all, would tend to add weight to that argument (although
I should say I got 60% more votes than the second placed blog Guido Fawkes, and double that of third placed blog Dizzy Thinks).

However, before rushing to judgement too quickly, reflect on the fact that of the 500 people who sent in their lists, nearly half of them were clearly left of centre voters. The Top 100 blog structure very much reflects that of the football leagues. There are four blogs who, in terms of influence and traffic, are way ahead of the others – Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome, Iain
Dale’s Diary and PoliticalBetting.com. They are, if you like, the Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal of the UK blogging fraternity. You then have a few teams who might challenge in a good year – Dizzy Thinks (Everton), Devil’s Kitchen (Newcastle) and Recess Monkey (Spurs) – a few new comers who fizz into their first year with huge promise –Spectator Coffee House (Bolton), Norfolk Blogger (Wigan) and Ben Brogan (Reading) – and then a whole group of clubs wo are quite happy with a mid table position – Croydonian (West Ham), Archbishop Cranmer (Middlesbrough) and Tim Worstall (Manchester City) spring to mind.

There are several blogs emerging from the equivalent of the Football League Championship –Caroline Hunt, Bob Piper and the Watford supporting Kerron Cross among them. But it is further down the leagues that you find several blogs with Premier League potential. The Liberal Democrat supporting Quaequam blog, right wing ranter Donal Blaney, The Waendel Journal and Trotskyite Dave’s Part would certainly be among them.

The challenge for all the blogs outside the top echelons is to build traffic. There is a lot written about the growing influence of UK bloggers, but there are only five or six blogs which could be said to have a mass audience. They are Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome, Iain Dale’s Diary, EU Referendum and Political Betting. Each of these blogs has a daily readership into five figures and monthly page views of several hundred thousand. Few other blogs manage more than 1,000 daily visitors. Blogs like Dizzy Thinks, which I happen to think will break into the big time in the next twelve months, have steadily built traffic over the last year but may need one big hit to make the breakthrough.

Quality of writing and insight will always win through in the end. The last twelve months has also seen several journalistic blogs spring to the forefront. The Spectator Coffee House blog is one that I thought was destined to fail because between five and ten people write for it. I thought it would be difficult for it to obtain ‘personality’, a key ingredient for success for any blog. How wrong I was. Within a few months it established itself as a daily ‘must read’, way ahead of any other mainstream media group blog. Ben Brogan is another print journalist who has taken to blogging like a duck to water. The secret of his success is that he provides snippets of insight which would never make it into the Daily Mail. His readers know he is ‘in the know’. Similarly, Nick Robinson’s success as a blogger is because he writes about things which would not make his news bulletin, or he provides added insight to an item which did. There was a time when Adam Boulton’s blog was streets ahead of Nick’s. Not any longer.

No one knows where UK blogging is going to be headed over the next twelve months, least of all me. All I do hope is that next year I will be asking you all again to vote for your Top 20 blogs. And when you do, I imagine that there will be quite a few changes at the top of the leaderboard. So here’s the Top 500.

1 Iain Dale’s Diary
2 Guido Fawkes
3 Dizzy Thinks
4 ConservativeHome
5 Political Betting
6 Devil’s Kitchen
7 Croydonian
8 Nick Robinson
9 Spectator Coffee House
10 Ellee Seymour