The next general election will be won and lost on the internet

Most elections produce a defining campaign event. In 1979 it was Margaret Thatcher’s enlistment of Saatchi & Saatchi and the ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ posters. In 1987 it was the party political broadcast that became known as ‘Kinnock The Movie’. The year 1992 is remembered for the Tories’ devastatingly negative tax bombshell broadcasts.

The next campaign is likely to be remembered as Britain’s first internet election. It will certainly be the first election when a large proportion of stories is broken by bloggers. It could be the first election when the best political ads are made on the home computers of political geeks rather than in the glassy offices of expensive advertising agencies. It will be the first election when the mainstream media aren’t just fact-checking the politicians but when they’ll get bias-checked themselves. As Google’s CEO recently told Matthew d’Ancona on The Spectator’s Coffee House blog: in this new political era everyone has a camera-phone, everyone is a blogger, everyone is a reporter.