Simon Hoggart evidently doesn't read blogs; he seems to think the suggestion that Ken Livingstone might have had a few drinks when he insulted Oliver Finegold hasn't yet been aired. (Still, Hoggart has a story about Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe that's new to me.)
Someone who has been reading blogs is Iain Duncan Smith. He sees in them a hope for the reinvigoration of the right in Britain. The blogosphere, he says, 'could ignite many new forces of conservatism'. But I don't follow the logic of Duncan Smith's argument. Nothing he writes shows why blogs and blogging are intrinsically more suitable for promoting conservative causes and issues than for promoting left or liberal ones. All he says is that in the US the Democrats haven't benefited from the attentions of the blogosphere. Whether this is true or not, I'd reckon that, considered in terms of left and right, blogging is a user-neutral facility. And if there are left bloggers who aren't benefiting those they aim to, that'll be because of weaknesses either in the specific character of their left politics or, more generally, in their modes of address. I wouldn't have thought this type of causality necessarily augured well for British conservatism, given the state it's in.