Look at this. It certainly looks the business.

In recent years, Labour seem to have eschewed the Tories’ strategy of slick New Media launches, aimed at offline column inches rather than online impact. From ‘Dave in India’, through Webcameron’s diminishing returns, to the recent banner ads, the Tories have very pragmatically spent online in order to look innovative to the offline majority, who will never actually bother with this politico-geekery themselves. It didn’t matter really what they did, so long as they looked stylish, modern and open, and had enough buzzwords on-site to impress the scribblers.

Put against this, Labour seem in the last year to have taken this web stuff all a bit too seriously. Rather than media launches, they’ve worked through a bunch of policy consultations, and tools designed to up their supporters’ web literacy. The byzantine MPURLs system is a world away from Webcameron, and seems to show a party actually looking for ways to take the technology seriously. Focusing internaly has had benefits in building a core of activists who are web literate, and I think is the correct strategy long term, but it’s let the Tories lap us more than once in the race to be seen as innovative.

Labour Central seems to be in the same vein, and it looks good on paper. It’s a solid tool for supporters rather than to build hype – a kind of social democrat social bookmarking service if you will. You submit content to it (videos, news articles, blog posts), annotate and tag ’em, and vote on the bookmarks submitted by others. It has RSS feeds to let you see the latest, and different levels of interaction (vote and submit, registered or not) to draw people in to contributing. They’ve got the design right too, with enough changing on the front page (yes, and a tag cloud) to not get in the way of people using it as a regular tool.

It’s just up, so probably unfair to road test – I submitted 30 mins ago with no luck yet (hope this doesn’t suggest moderation, which would kill it as most use will be overnight) – and the contributors’ panel isn’t working yet, but otherwise looks like a result. Well done to the team on this one.

In related news, Tory blogger Iain Dale publishes his list of left bloggers for 2007, once again remarking on the paucity of significant left blogs, in comparison with the supposedly rampant Tory blogohemisphere. I think he overdoes this schtick, though it’s in terms of praising his own side rather than in running down ours. Truth be told, the whole UK political blog scene is risible, when viewed next to what’s happening in the States. We don’t yet have the market of readers and bloggers to support what either left or right are doing.

Only time will tell whether Labour Central is able to seize activists’ imagination, but I think it’s the best chance yet. It seems to be a genuine attempt to encourage activists to get into digital creativity for the party, by supporting them with an audience, whilst at the same time avoiding the worry of directly associating themselves. If it can establish itself, it will do a lot to build Labour blogs, and to change the tone of Iain Dale’s coverage in 2008. Get posting!