My oh my, it’s certainly been getting heated in the Scottish political blogosphere of late. The Glasgow East by-election has captivated us all — and it’s captivated some people a bit too much.

Councillor Andrew Burns can’t remember it being like this during the Dunfermline West by-election. If I was in a cheeky mood I might say that is because Lib Dems are just big soft hippies. (Lib Dem Stephen Glenn disapproves of the current blogospheric Labour–SNP tensions.)

But I think the Glasgow East brouhaha is more to do with the fact that, uniquely, both of the main parties in the running are severely on the back foot. Labour are in big trouble because there is the possibility that this safer-than-safe seat will be lost. This in itself represents a major blow for Labour and they are scrabbling defensively to save something from this election.

Meanwhile, the SNP are in big trouble because they started the campaign by confidently predicting a win. When that possibility is by no means certain, they are going on the attack to try and make sure the victory happens and that a narrow loss (which otherwise would have been a massive coup for the SNP) is avoided.

Jeff has heard it rumoured that the blogosphere will be a prominent feature of the Sunday newspapers this weekend as the fuss over this post by Kezia Dugdale continues to rumble on. In the comments over at Stephen Glenn’s blog, Jeff pointed out that by-elections bring out the worst in all of us (by which he means them). “Delightfully so.”

I’m sorry to say that I’m not so delighted (maybe that is my fluffy Lib Dem tendency taking over). In fact, the rough and tumble of party political debate is one of the things that has made me more apathetic about party politics in recent years.

Two or three years ago I used to get involved in all that verbal jousting with party political types. I’m ashamed to say that I was quite rude once or twice in a manner which was uncalled for. But I did get quite annoyed at the way some people seemed to want to inflame the situation and it was inevitable that tensions would boil over at some point or another. I didn’t really enjoy it. In fact it angered me.

Then I realised what was going on. These people actually enjoy the rough and tumble. They live and breathe it. That is why they became politicians. They love to tear metaphorical lumps out of their opponents rather than debating in a calm manner. If they say something below the belt, they don’t necessarily mean real harm. It is a kind of pantomime. A verbal boxing match.

Then I looked at the nasty election campaigns that political parties so often take part in. The relentless negativity and attacking made me wonder if this is what politicians are really in it for. Just as a boxer chooses to box because he likes to fight, a politician chooses his profession because he likes to fight. Except that a politician doesn’t have the physical prowess.

Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with mental battles. This is what debating really is: a verbal chess game. But it’s okay to do it in a debating society. Is it so cool to do it under the pretence that you’re doing it for the good of the people?

Now onto the right storm in a teacup that is Kezia Dugdale’s blog post. Now I don’t know if the rumour is true or not. I err towards the notion that it’s true. Jeff now seems to think it’s true, and I’m sure he has ways of finding out (relative to me anyway — I have no contacts and no-one ever tips me off about anything *sniff*). Plus I doubt that Kezia Dugdale would post something like that unless it was true.

Clearly, though, her post was ambiguously worded in order to have maximum impact. She made it sound as though the SNP cabinet minister in question (who, it transpires, is Nicola Sturgeon) was completely at fault when it seems as though BBC Scotland were probably equally at fault. Now, according to Tom Harris, Nicola Sturgeon’s big crime is trying to wave the security man away. How awful of her!!

Regardless of the merits of the story (”tittle-tattle” was mentioned in the first comment on Kezia Dugdale’s post, and I wouldn’t disagree with that), I have personally had great mileage out of it as I have been gleefully repeating the story to my non-blogging friends. Incidentally, I have equally gleefully been telling the stories of Labour’s various mishaps as well, before any nats start jumping up and down.

Nonetheless, the story is just a bit of fun really and it doesn’t demonstrate that Nicola Sturgeon has made any serious error of judgement (although, as I said, the original post was ambiguously-enough worded to make you think it might have). In short, it is just a light-hearted sort of “and finally”-style election story if you ask me. A Prescott punch-level story, as Two Doctors points out.

The fact that the next day Nicola Sturgeon apparently asked Kezia Dugdale to retract the post says much more about Nicola Sturgeon than the original post said about Kezia Dugdale if you ask me. What was a minor post on a blog that didn’t say very much about the SNP is now apparently on the verge of being big news (or bigger than it was anyway).

The story has certainly snowballed since then and the Scottish blogosphere has been in about as much of a frenzy as I have ever seen it in. It all reminds me of the Schillings scenario. Wouldn’t it have been better for Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP to take the moral high ground and ignore it?

I have to point out that I quite admire Kezia Dugdale. I am no apologist for Labour, as regular readers will know. But you have got to take your hat off to her. Even though, because of all that rough and tumble that I dislike, no-one enters politics unless they have a thick skin, Kezia Dugdale has to take a lot of flak.

She is practically the only major Labour voice in a Scottish blogosphere that is increasingly dominated by SNP macho-men (dare I call them ‘cybernats’?) who are poised, waiting to throw stones at Labour. I and many others would give up in that situation. You’ve got to give Kezia Dugdale credit for perseverance if nothing else.

Even though her blog is ridiculously partisan and never very critical of the Labour party, you can easily level this criticism at two or three SNP blogs as well (Tartan Hero and Calum Cashley spring to mind). Ideas of Civilisation had a really interesting post about this. Why do people blog about politics, particularly when they are often so polemical?

Related to that, Views from North Britain reminds us that blogging is still a minority activity. So any amount of posting on a blog is unlikely to have much of an effect.

Incidentally, how come Nicola Sturgeon always seems to be at the centre of these internet rumours come election time? I seem to remember during last year’s Scottish Parliament elections the story of her very rude nickname was flying relatively freely…

Update: I have just seen this post from Holyrood Watcher which pretty much sums up the situation.

It was my turn to write this week’s Scottish Roundup (nominations always welcome of course, even if it’s nothing to do with politics). I keep an eye on the Scottish blogs throughout the week in preparation, and towards the end of the week it became pretty clear that one particular wee stooshie had to be covered.

Labour blogger Kezia Dugdale has been involved in a campaign called Scotland for Obama. SNP blogger Calum Cashley was none too impressed. Then a number of other bloggers — SNP supporters among them — decided to take Calum Cashley to task.

I have to confess that I’m not a great fan of Calum Cashley’s blog. To me, it seems unnecessarily confrontational, negative, sarcastic and maybe even a bit boorish. It’s certainly not the sort of thing that would persuade me to vote for him come election time. But despite the response to his most recent post, in this instance I’m probably more inclined to agree with Cashley.

Maybe it’s just a reflection of my increasingly anti-political or apolitical (certainly in terms of party politics) viewpoint (I will consider the roots of this in a future post if I can get round to it). But there is something about the amount of attention that the US Presidential election receives that rubs me up the wrong way a bit. It’s not that I don’t recognise that the position of US President isn’t an incredibly powerful one. But political campaigns in general are starting to really get my goat.

Mostly, it is the implication that a campaign like Scotland for Obama will make a difference. It just comes across as a bit attention seeking. “Look at me and look at how much I care!”

I am pretty sceptical of most political campaigning. Of course, I have my views. But I have never joined a club, I’ve never gone on a demonstration and I’ve never worn any political t-shirts. This is because I know it will make next to no difference.

Come election time, of course, I love it. I stay up all night to watch the results. It’s great fun to cheer on the good guys and boo the baddies. As Jeff says in the tagline to his blog, “Elections - Probably the Best Spectator Sport in the World”. But beyond that, what does political campaigning mean?

Do I need to go on a rally to prove how much I care? Not really. Will the Scotland for Obama campaign make a jot of difference to the outcome of the election? I hardly think so. In fact, as Calum Cashley rightly points out, if enough Americans find out that those pinko Europeans are campaigning in Obama’s favour, if anything it will probably have a negative effect.

I am not sure it’s my position to tell Americans how to vote anyway. I know it has been pointed out in the posts I have linked to above that Scotland for Obama is not intended to tell Americans how to vote. But the point still stands.

Imagine if the boot was on another foot. What if somewhere in America a group of people gathered to express their support for, say, David Cameron. What would you think of it? I would think they were the most enormous fools. I would roll my eyes. I might ignore them. But it would more likely make me even less inclined to vote for Cameron.

The thing is that our viewpoint is unquestionably altered by the fact that we don’t live in America. The issues, the agenda and the political climate are completely different over there.

I know that whenever I have heard visiting foreign students express an opinion about Scottish politics (there is no shortage of this in the Edinburgh Uni politics department) it has often been the most ill-informed bum drizzle. You can’t blame them for that. They cannot possibly have as good a feel for the issues as someone like me who has barely set foot out of Scotland. They are projecting their views on American (or whatever) politics onto a map of Scotland. But it’s a square peg in a round hole.

I recognise that the same phenomenon would occur in reverse. In deference to this, I mostly keep my viewpoints on other countries’ politics to myself. I have my own opinions, of course. I do care what goes on in other countries. But you wouldn’t find me going around the place wearing an Obama badge or anything like that.

I have done a few of those online quizzes that tell you which candidate you should vote for. The results are here and here. When I did those quizzes though, there were a number of questions that I didn’t have the first clue about. In some cases I had not even heard of the issues and I couldn’t possibly have an opinion on them.

The same even applies when you’re in the same country. When I tried out Vote Match London about a quarter of the questions were about issues that I had never heard of, and half of the questions I had no opinion on whatsoever. For what it’s worth, it told me that I should vote for Boris Johnson. Would I vote for Boris Johnson if I was an actual Londoner? I simply don’t know because I’m not a Londoner.

And here is the thing. I am sure that London does not need my help to elect their Mayor. Equally, the USA does not need to hear my views on the Presidential campaign. An argument against this has been put forward by Political Dissuasion:

Would you criticise me for organising a rally against Robert Mugabe’s treatment of the people of Zimbabwe, where people are dying, starving and being jailed for actions and rights that you and I take take for granted?

There is quite a noticeable difference between the USA and Zimbabwe. One of them is democratic and the other is not. For all of its faults, at least in the USA there is a reasonable expectation of free speech, a reasonably free press, reasonably free markets and so on. None of this exists in Zimbabwe. So the people of Zimbabwe need international support so much more. Even then, I would limit myself to saying that I think Zimbabwe should be freer. Once they have the “rights that you and I take for granted”, I am sure they will be able to conduct their own affairs without the help of the likes of me.

The USA needs no help in this regard. They have their freedoms that they take for granted. If I were to stick my nose in, I would most likely be batted away. And if an American sticks his nose into my country’s politics, I would bat him away as well.

There is the other argument that US politics affects us all, which I suppose is true to an extent. But does it really affect us? I have my doubts. The likely winners of the election are much of a muchness. People like to pluck out the Iraq War as an example of how much American politics affects us, but these people forget that most Democrats were all for invading Iraq at the time as well!

Incidentally, I do have an opinion on the US Presidential candidates. As it happens, I favour Barack Obama. But I don’t pretend that this is based on any nuanced policy view. It is based on the fact that John McCain is a baad, baad Republican and that Hilary Clinton is a screeching maniac. Honestly, Clinton drives me nuts. She is like that teacher you could hear giving someone a row from the opposite end of the corridor.

There are other reasons, which I covered here. I really dislike the tone of Clinton’s campaign. You can just tell that she came into the campaign thinking she had a divine right to be President. The message of experience is total bunk. Her sumtotal of experience is limited to being married to a former President. Big wow.

At least Obama’s message is more positive. But here is another area where I agree with Calum Cashley. If the American public buys into all of the hope rhetoric, it is lining itself up for disappointment. We have seen this in Britain in the 1990s. Labour pulled off the exact same trick. “I’m here to save you from those awful conservatives!” Well we all know how that turned out.

The truth is harsher. No matter who you vote for, the government gets in. I’d love to see Barack Obama usher in a new era of hope for America. But if he actually does it I’ll eat my hat.

All of that said, I don’t criticise Kezia Dugdale or anyone else for getting involved in Scotland for Obama. It is a harmless campaign and if the people involved get a buzz out of participating then that is all good. We are all adults living in a democracy. By the same token, Calum Cashley is perfectly entitled to chip in, and I don’t think the points he made were as awful as some people are making out.

If you are a user of the internet (which you are) then you have to be really careful what you publish on it. Even if you think you can’t delete something, you can’t. While on the screen it looks like it’s disappeared, in reality there is a huge probability that all of the data will remain somewhere.

The most well-known example is Google Cache, which is the copy of each document on the web that Google uses to assess whether or not it is helpful to your search. This can also be used by anyone who wants to see what used to be on a page that has since been deleted or changed, if Google’s bot visited the page at the right time.

Another example is the Wayback Machine which literally visits web pages and archives them. Forever. Internet users can — to a point — browse the web as it was even in the mid-1990s. For example, here is the Microsoft website as it was in 1996.

But it is not just huge central databases like Google that can thwart self-censors. Everyday internet users are doing it all the time. Thanks to the popularity of RSS, there is now little chance that anyone who publishes an RSS feed will ever be able to hide their content. Anyone who is subscribed to your RSS feed has access to that content for as long as they want.

If you use a desktop-based RSS reader the files will actually be on your computer. But I use Google Reader, and I have access to every single blog post written by Gavin Yates since the 29^th of May 2007. It looks like the Sunday Herald have as well, and possibly more.

Gavin Yates is Wendy Alexander’s new head of communications, a job which seems to be somewhat of a poisoned chalice. Brian Lironi left the post just a few days after Wendy Alexander took office, seemingly because he was fed up with the new Scottish Labour leader.

Then last week Matthew Marr was given the heave-ho after a drunken performance at the Scottish Politician of the Year Awards (a bit oxymoronic if you ask me). Particular attention was given to the fact that Mr Marr called Alex Salmond a cunt. While a lot of bloggers pointed out that he was probably right, it’s not very good conduct and you would expect much better behaviour from such an important Labour official.

And while Mr Marr was keen to point out that the incident was “entirely out of character”, bloggers lined up to say that it was in character. Mr Eugenides was “reliably informed”, while Osama Saeed and Mark McDonald have both been at the receiving end of one of Marr’s verbal outbursts.

Now Gavin Yates has run into difficulties before he’s even started. Some of what he wrote on his blog has been less than flattering about Labour and Wendy Alexander, as the Sunday Herald story points out.

The thing is, this needn’t be a problem. Surely a bit of reality, a bit of honesty, is what Wendy Alexander and Scottish Labour really need. I do wonder, though, if the culture within the party means that only yes-men are tolerated. This is presumably what drove Gavin Yates to delete his blog. Yet, as usual, it is the cover-up rather than the original ‘crime’ which makes this an embarrassing episode for Labour.

As Will P points out, Gavin Yates’s excuse does not make sense.

My comments have been taken out of context. I wrote them as a journalist in July and they do not reflect my own views. I think Wendy Alexander is a winner as is Andy Kerr.

A blog that doesn’t reflect your own views? Whose views do they reflect then? Nor was this just a few posts in July as he tries to make out. He was critical of Labour as recently as September.

But as I say, there really is nothing particularly damning about the blog posts themselves. Skimming through the archives of his blog, the criticisms he made of Labour were mostly sensible and constructive. He didn’t say anything that is truly embarrassing.

Like I say, it could have been seen as a much-needed dose of reality for the Scottish Labour elite. In fact, his blog posts demonstrate that he has a pretty good idea of the SNP’s strengths as well as Labour’s weaknesses. This ought to bode well for him in his new post.

It is the fact that Gavin Yates felt the need to delete his blog that makes it the story. It has become the forbidden fruit. But in this day and age, once you publish something on the web, there is no going back. I alone have access to 48 of his posts, just by making a few clicks in Google Reader. By deleting his blog, Gavin Yates has created a lot of interest in what he wrote — and access to it is by no means impossible.

Another blogger, Kezia Dugdale, filled the post on an temporary basis. She made the very wise decision of keeping her blog going (although there is seemingly never any danger of her going off-message). Gavin Yates should have taken note. Keeping your blog up there will do less harm than trying to remove it — because actually removing it is impossible.

It is amusing to think that for all the hype about bloggers and their ability to scrutinise, it could be your own blog, rather than other people’s, that is the most dangerous.