The Conservatives and the Welsh Blogosphere

Iain Dale’s annual listing of Welsh blogs is welcome in that it shows where there is political activity on the blogosphere and by which party. Whilst Conservative blogs seem to do well across the UK, the same cannot be said of Wales.

Congrats to Cardiff Blogger, the top-rated “Conservative” blog in Wales. I hate to admit that I haven’t been a regular visitor to this site but it will go on the blogroll later this week.

However, apart from the usual suspects such as David Jones, Glyn Davies and yours truly, there was no other Conservative presence in the top 30. Perhaps I should have voted!

More seriously, such a weak presence is unacceptable, especially as little seems to have changed since last year, when I commented that the Welsh Conservative Party really has to do more regarding its presence on the Welsh blogosphere, although this evidence from Mr Dale shows that the call has fallen on stony ground, especially amongst the vast majority of the three MPs, twelve Assembly Members and the 174 local councillors which make up the Conservative Party within Wales.

Maybe I should be making more effort on behalf of the party to drum up support for a proper Conservative web presence in Wales but I do have a full time job, two newspaper columns to write every week and a new business that I am developing, never mind two young sons!

We'll see.

In the meantime, I repeat what I said last year

“Many will say that they don't have the time to do this but we are all busy people and one of our hardest working shadow ministers, David Jones MP, makes the effort to blog nearly every day.

Others will say that there is nothing to write about, so why do I get at least ten press releases every day from the Welsh party? Some have told me that it is a waste of time because the blogosphere is not read by locals i.e. voters and yet blogs such as Oscar's Thoughts in Conwy are regularly commented upon by local Tories.

More importantly, the press - both local and national - will do regular trawls of blogs to look for new stories. It is time for every councillor, candidate, AM and MP to reconsider their presence on the web in Wales.

David Cameron has led the way with innovations such as webcameron and I would argue that, at a UK level, we are the best advocate of the use of the web as a communications tool and there is no reason not to do the same in Wales.

C'mon, Welsh Conservatives, we can do better than this!”