Lynne Featherstone

Way back when - on October 3 2003 - I posted my first blog it wasn't a devastatingly compelling start: 'I've started this blog to complement my monthly newspaper column, which is also available on-line (see links on the right).' Dull or what?

However, only two blogs later the title of my post was 'How to sex up travel planning'. I was clearly learning the power of key words at a very early stage!

I started blogging because I wanted the people who elected me to see that I wasn't lazy (frequent politician stereotype) and give them my take on things. I reckoned that it was a way of them getting to know me - and that kind of set the tone of my blog. I wanted to be a person first - politician second.

And I love writing. Blogging offered a neat combination of something I'm not bad at with the need to get my stuff out there, which is one reason why Mark Pack (now the Liberal Democrats' Head of Innovations) suggested it - here was something that might be both enjoyable and vote-winning!

I had to expand my reach if I was to raise my profile high enough to tackle my parliamentary opponent - then the sitting Labour MP. Clearly it worked - as I am now the MP and overturned a deficit of over 26,000 in two elections. But the five and a half years and hundreds of thousands of words were not just about winning - albeit I suspect that my blog played its part.

The blogging, twittering, Facebooking and the rest are now part and parcel of the communications world - and having been fast out of the starting blocks did me no harm. Indeed - if it wasn't for blogging - I might never have changed Iain Dale's original view of myself!

Getting my 'blogging voice' right was important - human, conversational, engaging rather than lecturing, though yes - also angry at times. I wanted people to read it and not die of boredom. Politician on message - shock horror! That wouldn't pull in the crowds - but it also means you have to keep blogging through bad times. Fair weather bloggers rarely succeed.

Over time, my blog has often helped me clarify my own thinking on issues. This is a side benefit that I hadn't expected. The actual necessity of making yourself clear to the reader is a discipline that helps sort out what you really think yourself.

And now? I can't imagine being an MP without blogging - without that always available audience to engage with and talk to.

A shorter version of this piece appeared in the March 2009 edition of Total Politics.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2009