Douglas Carswell's Blog

Spin becomes unspun?

For years, politics has been dominated by spin. Operating at the highest level of politics and the media, spin doctors have fed stories to the media, presented facts selectively, and put the emphasis on presentation rather than substance. There is something ever so slightly spivish about all this.

Could it be that at last spin in becoming unspun?   Perhaps what we are seeing with “hackgate” is a further breakdown in power of the old order - that tiny, powerful spin doctor elite who decided what “the story” was each day. 

The commentariat is being democratised. If Guido Fawkes or Daniel Hannan or Coffee House or Left Foot Forward or a host of other commentators – each directly accountable to tens of thousands of readers - says that something is newsworthy, it become so.  It is no longer a narrow clique of opinion formers that decides what is or is not politically "thinkable".  Rather it is the collective thoughts of a much broader commentariat and wider range of citizens.         

Painful for spin doctors. But if it leads to a more authentic, less spun (and less spivish) way of doing politics, it'll be good news for the rest of us.

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