by Sunny Hundal

If there was one important point to note about Hannan-gate last week, it was that right-wingers had little or no opportunity to re-shape or hit back at developments in the media. The row started off as a broad defense of the NHS (#welovetheNHS) and some broadcasters (notably Channel 4) went down the route of ignoring Dan Hannan MEP initially and focusing on attacks by the American right on the NHS.

But by Friday afternoon and the weekend he became the central focus and the Tories were very badly on the defensive. By this point the libertarians and Tories who had previously tried to ignore the growing noise gave in and started whining that people were ignoring the issues while only focusing on personality. This is typical from from bloggers who spend half their time rating MPs on their performance at PM’s Questions. But what did you expect? They start accusing others of being ‘Stalinist’ while saying they want a ‘sensible discussion’.

But a new precedent has been set and you’ll see right-wingers increasingly (and desperately) trying to change the narrative and pretend all this wasn’t a big deal.



But everyone could see that the poster-boy of the new Tories had been shot down by people-power on Twitter. The Labour party was left scrambling to play catch-up and capitalise while the Conservatives issued one denial after another to prevent the fall-out becoming massive.

There has been a long-running narrative pushed by the UK right that they are dominant online. This has a grain of truth because they have more resources, more time and are focused much more on Westminster politics. And of course they’ve been in opposition for ten years and are angry so it’s easier to vent that at the highly disciplined right-wing sites

But the emergence of Twitter challenges all this and works better for the left because people don’t need lots of resources to make themselves heard. They don’t need to maintain big blogs full time – they can simply join an online network with very little barriers to entry. Thats means a grassroots campaign like #welovetheNHS can become big without needing lots of effort.

Furthermore, Twitter affects journalists and politicians differently too. Whereas previously the Westminster bubble would only look at a few Tory blogs and get talking points from them – in Twitter they’re exposed to a wider range of opinion. This means Guido and Dale aren’t the only people getting heard.

They know this, and this is why they’re now in damage-limitation mode. If you look at this by Guido and this by Iain Dale – these are both attempts to turn around the narrative and re-assert their dominance. We have more followers on Twitter and more blog visitors so people should only listen to us. Ignore all this hoo-haa – they say.

But as I said the precedent has been set and there’s no going back. The near monopoly of the right to shape opinion online has been broken.