It wasn't always this way.



Eleven years ago the Conservatives launched WebCameron, a pioneering attempt to do online politics in an age before smartphones and universal broadband, which involved a full-time photographer and videographer following fresh-faced new party leader David Cameron around in his day-to-day life. The films, which reached a relatively tiny audience in a pre–social media age, showed Cameron relaxing with his family, talking about policies, and producing material that felt at home online.

And it was Labour under Gordon Brown that didn't get the internet, resulting in painfully awkward YouTube videos and mockery in the House of Commons.



Want to watch a Conservative party leader ad-lib a talk about food standards while stroking a cow? This sort of material was being uploaded to the Tory party's YouTube channel, in a tightly-edited two-minute package, way back in 2007. In retrospect it's not radically different in form to the official videos that did so well for Jeremy Corbyn.

A decade on, the same Conservative YouTube channel is being used to dump unedited 20-minute speeches by government ministers that are attracting a few hundred views.