Bit of a surprise – I’ve been nominated as one of the most influential European centre left blogs by Social Europe Journal. They are running an online poll about the issue, and you can vote here.
Firstly, I find the notion that my blog is influential broadly on the centre left is a bit odd. What I write might be reasonably followed in Brussels, but anywhere else? A consultancy ranked this blog 5th most influential in Brussels, but Total Politics ranked it 44th among UK Labour blogs, and 260th in the UK (up from 278th the year earlier – woo hoo!), and is anyone outside the UK and Brussels circles actually reading it?
Secondly, the list seems to take a rather wide definition of what would be called centre left! Some of these blogs studiously steer clear of party political partisanship.
A Fistful of Euros (www.fistfulofeuros.net)
Åsa Westlund (www.asawestlund.se/blogg)
The Cedar Lounge Revolution (www.cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Coulisses de Bruxelles (www.bruxelles.blogs.liberation.fr)
Dear Kitty. Some Blog (www.dearkitty.blogsome.com)
Erkan’s Field Diary (www.erkansaka.net)
Glenis Willmott (gleniswillmott.blogspot.com)
Grahnlaw (www.grahnlaw.blogspot.com)
The Honeyball Buzz (www.thehoneyballbuzz.com)
Irish Left Review (www.irishleftreview.org)
The European Citizen (www.theeuropeancitizen.blogspot.com)
European Tribune (www.eurotrib.com)
Eurosocialist (www.eurosocialist.eu)
Jon Worth’s Euroblog (www.jonworth.eu)
Kreisie (www.kreisie.lv)
Nachdenkseiten (www.nachdenkseiten.de)
PES Re:new (www.pes.org/renew)
Social Europe Journal (www.social-europe.eu)
Perhaps the whole exercise simply demonstrates that the European centre left needs to step up its blogging efforts?
Declaration of interest: I do web tech for Social Europe Journal but am not involved editorially. I have also done tech work for Åsa Westlund’s blog.
I read your blog and I’m an American… sorry if that gives your site a bad name.
Well I’ve just stumbled across it today and it looks rather good to me (I also blog on UK and European politics). I shall bookmark you.
just to clarify, we didn’t nominate any of these blogs. Those are all reader nominations…
Hi Jon,
I completely agree with you. We left as many nominations in as possible (even if they are only “broadly” left-of-centre – and sometimes only “broadly” European in focus) to get an overview over the left-of-centre landscape. This is an important part of the exercise and it hasn’t been done before.
But you are right, 18 nominations is not a great deal of blogs!
I suspect part of it is “not being read by the people who read Guido, but being read by the people who actually influence things sometimes”.