Gordon Brown, for all his faults, was a successful Labour leader. His uncompromising ability to manipulate, control and ride the power structures within the Labour Party not only led to his Coronation (that was David Miliband’s mistake, obviously, letting people have a choice), it also allowed him to survive repeated attempts to dislodge him. Brown’s weakness was that he couldn’t translate his mastery of the Labour Party into mastery of the British People.

Great news for us, obviously. Bad news for Brown.

Ironically many Labour members and supporters love a soft, squishy, caring leader – especially one that consults and empowers them. They’re not exactly keen on these Totalitarian dictator leaders themselves, for obvious reasons, but the more oppressed, silenced and ignored they are, the better chance their leaders have of getting into power. It’s a mighty pickle, alright. That’s, perhaps, why they voted more for David. I mean, David, if nothing else, looks like he’s probably a mean, cynical bastard behind closed doors and perfectly capable of keeping Labour under control.

It’s not surprising that typical dreams of an incredible grassroots progressive movement amount to, in reality, “lots and lots of teenagers and students delivering leaflets and giving us money.”  Loyalty! Unity! Solidarity! These are all buzzwords for shut your mouth, do what you’re told and stop fucking things up for ‘everyone else’. That’s what Brown achieved (if not the ‘incredible grassroots movement’ part of the deal). He got everyone singing from the same book and everyone knew who was Boss Of Labour.

But, lo, it came to pass that Labour (well, the Unions) elected someone who, despite his Red Ed epitaph, is no wannabe Stalin. He’s cuddly. He’s soft. He cares about what you think and wants to nurture you into a squishy world of love and puppies.

The Labour Party is going to eat him alive. My prediction is that he’s not got the authority or the power to hold Labour together. Factions are going to start openly fighting with each other because, for the first time since the era of the TB-GBs, there’s no Clunking Fist keeping their more embarrassing and electorally disastrous tendencies in check.

Of course, I’d love to be wrong… but Socialism is a game for fearless ruthless hard-men with a book of “favours owed” and “secrets known”, not fresh faced newbies with hearts of gold and brains of putty.

So Ed Miliband, the Agent Of Change, has emerged triumphant. He inherits a party in Opposition at the “Tories cleaning up the mess” phase of the Labour Power Cycle and very happy about this he will be.

The calculation – that after 5 years the deficit will be fixed and, at this point, there will be no excuse for further cuts, he’ll be able to argue that the Tories and Lib Dems are a bunch of bastards and that the public should vote for him so that he can grant public sector workers more money.

I heard the news in the company of a “wannabe” Labour member who is thrilled with this news. I am too. Lovely!

Few game franchises excite political nerds quite like Bioshock. The first game was set in the 50′s, in a city under the sea called Rapture, owned and run by a man called Andrew Ryan… Andrew Ryan.. which is sort of an anagram of Ayn Rand, you see? And that’s relevant, because the opening lines of the game tell the player about the political motivations for escaping the confines of dry land – and their Governments.

The result? Well, liberated from ethical or legislative constraints devastating biological technology is created which, whoops, accidentally sends its users a bit mental. Well, a lot mental. Try psychotic, in fact (it’s a computer game, you have to have meat to hit with things otherwise people feel they’re denied the ‘game’ part of a game… pity really). Add to this a ban on immigration, emigration and trade with the outside world, aiding the inadvertent creation of very powerful and rich smugglers, and the beautiful and courageous Objectivist paradise quickly descends into hell. Oh, and this technology that’s sent everyone mad? It depends on exploiting little girls. Oh yes. Moral compass THAT!

Now, this is still a video game, yet it has a compelling and absorbing story, and appears to have been written by people who’ve read books and the result was… brilliant. It’s my favourite game of all time. Except for Rock Band 2. And Tetris. And Flight Controller. It’s ONE of my favourite games of all time. Ahem.

Happily Irrational Games, the creators of this fine work, have announced a new game in the series which they call Bioshock Infinite, set on 4th July 1906 and, quote, it’s about “American Exceptionalism”. Be still my beating heart! For reals? First Objectivism and now a study on Nationalism? Yay! And I can shoot things in this world and unlock XBOX achievements while I’m playing, too? I can? YAY!

And yes, it’s for real. They’ve released a “Gameplay trailer” which is nothing of the sort really, but the opening moments feature a mural of George Washington clutching the Liberty Bell and Moses’ Ten Commandments tablets, with the slogan, “It is our Holy Duty to Guard against the Foreign Hordes”.

And this is real? And we’re going to be able to buy this? Like, whoa. Bring it on! A minute or so later you come across a politician giving a racist speech. You can pop a steampunk cap in his Victorian ass. Seriously, I’m in love already.

The only game I could possibly get more excited about would be one set in Philip K Dick’s counterfactual world of “The Man in the High Castle” where the Nazis have won and America is split between their control and that of the Japanese. That… that would be great. Games like Bioshock seem to make the chance of that sort of game existing seem more likely than ever. It’s just a pity that the vast majority of games are so horrendously dull by comparison.

Sadly games take forever to make and Bioshock Infinite is due, I believe, in 2012 if we’re lucky. Arse. What am I supposed to do until then?

Politics, let’s face it, brings out the worst in people. It certainly brings out the worst in me. Watching the Labour Leadership contest unfold has had me rubbing my hands together in barely concealed glee muttering “mu ha ha ha!” I can be open minded and non-partisan about just about anything… except Labour.

I don’t, if I’m honest, wish them well. If its members were to find themselves accidentally eaten by marauding rabid gerbils, I would not shed a tear. So, at 4am this morning, Mike Smithson of Political Betting decided to announce that he’s calling it for Ed Miliband and I felt quite relaxed and happy about that.

Allow me to explain:

See, Progressivism is about selling fantastic dreams  - work less, earn more, play more, become more attractive, be more admired by your peers, end hunger, end poverty, create world peace, abolish cancer, save the whales, save the planet all by simply voting once every few years and telling people, hey, I voted for cool. Musicians, actors, comedians… all manner of people who depend on being ‘in’ and ‘hip’ to make a living align themselves with progressive politics. Cos it’s cool. It’s one giant circle-jerk of ‘cool’.

That is, of course, only when the Progressive movement is led by someone cool superstar politicians – Clinton, Blair, Obama – then the circle-jerk actually works.

However when the leader is someone lacking in cool – Gore (the less charismatic and distinctly more bonkers Gore), Kerry or Gordon Brown – then there is no circle of cool, the Progressive Party languishes in failure and defeat. It’s not that people vote for Centre Right parties instead – they clearly don’t, because, after all, if you’re voting for cool then you’re not going to get that from the Conservatives or the Republicans – but they do stay at home instead, preferring to spend polling day listening to the hottest new band with their latest single, “Rupert Murdoch gave me AIDS”.

Selling Progressive dreams is a job for expert salesmen and saleswomen and so, to the point of this post, Ed Miliband is no cool superstar politician and so fantastic news for those who wish Labour… ill. He’s got a sort of cuddly, bubblegum innocence about him with his strangely nasal voice and chinless, feminine face which doesn’t really inspire the sort of feelings of terror and loathing that a winning Progressive Leader should inspire in someone like me. I only fear the ones that have a realistic chance of actually running the country.

But then, none of the others seem to have the mysterious X factor either. There’s no British Obama here, and for David Miliband the apple has fallen a long, long, long way from Blair’s tree.  It’s all so ho-hum.

I suppose the question is, am I right? Is it impossible for a Progressive party to win power without a political superstar leader? I put this same argument when Gordon Brown first became leader, stressing my belief that Gordon should never be able to win an election no matter what he did or said because he’s the wrong kind of leader for Progressives, and I was told by various cool people how wrong I was, that politics can’t be reduced to a simple question of teeth and hair and smiles.

Maybe I’m just not cool enough to understand.

So Dan Hannan (Tory MEP) applauds the improvement in the left wing blogosphere, pleased that they’ve started to ‘get their act together’ and draws attention to Tory Blogging Supremo Iain Dale’s post bemoaning the lack of ‘new blood’ in the Right Wing blogosphere. Hmmm.

Now quibbles about Left and Right aside, this notion of “the blogosphere” really refers, in this context, to a very specific niche of political blogs that includes Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale et al. There are other political Blogospheres in the UK but THIS one dominates. Let’s call them the “Broadway” bloggers. Now, “Broadway” blogs carry advertising from a company which is owned and run by “Broadway” bloggers, and they make the rules about which blogs are “Broadway” – for example, the size of the audience, the demographics, etc. Perhaps I’m an “Off Broadway” blogger. Ha.

But I digress. That’s the metaphorical explanation of the office politics behind these particular scenes.

My theory about why the Right Wing blogosphere seems to be lacking “new blood”? It’s probably because Iain Dale has done rather too good a job at securing his place as the patriarch of “Broadway” blogs and thus, in many ways, is is the primary gatekeeper for new bloggers… but his attention has been focused elsewhere these days. The barrier to entry is lot harder than it used to be.

I say this because, in the past, I have been linked to by Iain Dale many, many times. Not really because he’s mentioned me, but from his “Daley Dozen” feature where he would link to interesting stories he’d found, which was a fantastic way of finding new blogs, new talent and generally being noticed. You could email Iain and say, “Hey! Read this!” and being a nice guy he sometimes did, and sometimes he’d link it and if you were very very lucky he’d put you in his RSS feed reader.

I don’t really know how much this sort of thing helped – Letters from a Tory was another wonderful blog that would link to me, too, and he’s also gone. I got a lot of links from Devil’s Kitchen, but DK’s psychologically moved on from blogging to focus on business and I don’t blame him for that.

Those days feel like a long time ago now. I don’t know how much this sort of (and I’m turning into a Marxist just saying it…) community support helped my blog, but I can’t deny that it must have been a factor. Without that attention from established blogs, how would anyone know I existed at all?

The point is that if the ‘Right Wing’ blogosphere seems static it’s probably because the ladders that helped the existing blogs to climb have been pulled up (and the primordial soup of voter angst that gave birth to the ones who created those ladders has long since disappeared), while the Left Wing blogosphere is creating its own rival and alternate power/ladder structure – patronage from Iain Dale not necessary a bonus in those circles. Perhaps this is a metaphor for social mobility and people will declare, “Ha! See?”. Oh dear.

So ‘new blood’ has a mountain to climb but, wow, I can’t wait to see the mountain climber that makes it. That’s the basic “Right Wing” argument, isn’t it? Sure it’s difficult but difficult builds character, while the alternative – promoting the mediocre – certainly gets the numbers up but you’ve pretty much won by cheating.

But enough about “new blood”. The only reason this has come up is because the Right Wing Blogosphere feels jaded and burnt out these days… but I’m not quite finished blogging, thanks. I didn’t quit then start again then quit then start again just to quit again now! So shove your new blood, your ladders and your burn-out. I still haven’t destroyed Socialism, Labour still exists, and this Coalition is ONLY bringing spending back to 2006 levels so, therefore, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some writing to be doing.

UPDATE: According to Twitter, The Daley Dozen will return. So, newbies, you’ll have it easy for a bit. Slackers.

UPDATE: I don’t want anyone to think this is a whinge about Iain. It’s not. He works really really hard and owes us nothing. The point is dependancy sucks and newbies shouldn’t be afraid to chart their own course instead of trying to follow those who’ve come before.