Politically-aligned blogging

I've recently unsubscribed from Progress, whose tagline is "News and debate from the progressive community". A quick perusal of their website will prove that's not the case - in fact, the first sentence you read will explain that Progress is a new Labour pressure group with a logo disturbingly similar to the current designs of the Democrat/Republican mascot animals (a donkey and elephant respectively - we know who won that PR battle).

That wasn't enough to put me off. I read vile bigot Guido Fawkes and viler bigot David Vance of Biased BBC, and I'm still subscribed to their sites. Their blogs, despite being devoid of anything approaching a redeeming feature still elements which I, as a genuine progressive, actually want to read.

These two bloggers, in their dismissal of anyone trying to help others, have a deep-seated distrust of the left. They spend huge amounts of time looking for every failure the left ever makes. And that's good. Without vile bigots watching our every mood, we'd still be believing that Labour are fighting in our best interests. We'd still be under that horrible misapprehension of having a political party that actually serves our interest.

Progress is different. Have a read through their last 5 posts. I guarantee you'll find:

• A labour councillor explaining how a Tory policy will mildly harm people within their constituency
• A prominent Labour MP with a 4000 essay on their latest policy which will almost certainly never make it into law
• A vague attempt to discredit the coalition as infighting instead of trying to stop their genuinely damaging policies
• An appeal to give to a person's pet charity, with the vague implication that only those with the guts to be out and out Labour supporters are generous enough to truly care about others

The issue here is not necessarily the motivation - Tory policies are causing real and measurable harm to a massive majority of people, and people should be given to charities. But the posts are essentially a mouthpiece for the Labour top- and mid-level leadership to have a mouthpiece, to provide the false impression of grassroots support.

Truth be told, Labour aren't the party of Labour any more. Their constitution no longer covers it, and they haven't fought for it for far too long. Even their rhetoric is anti-Labour, despite a massive portion of their funding from a traditional relationship with the unions. But every article is told within Labour's own image of itself - as a party in opposition it sees itself as the voice of the people, standing up bravely against the combined forces of the coalition as they try to destroy Britain as we know it.

But they're not. While the real progressives fight for our rights, and people like me sit at home and type, the Labour party fight every movement until they succeed before co-opting the movement's rhetoric as their own. For all that the Conservatives are bastards and the Lib Dems shills, the Labour party have become the worst kind of class warmongers, smiling about equality while supporting the 1% every step of the way before claiming every minor civil rights victory as their own.