Never trust a webbed politician

Watching politicians getting excited about technology is always an embarrassing experience. The manifest insincerity of their attempts to pull on geekish robes is physically painful to anyone who knows what's really going on. Yet it can be hard to resist when such powerful people pay flattering attention to the techies. It's hard, but I think I can resist the blandishments of Webcameron...

The really grand technology gaffes we can leave to the Americans: to one-time presidential candidate Al Gore, whose slightly overblown statement that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" through his work in Congress became the stuff of late-night comedy, as though he'd claimed to have built the Net in a shed at the bottom of his garden. On the other hand, US Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, really does appear to have tied himself in knots when losing his way in a metaphorical explanation of the problem of Net neutrality. "The Internet is not a truck... it's a series of tubes."

Whatever the spin and nuance involved, these are big, bold American gaffes. From British politicians we get something much less exciting: Tony Blair at the recent Labour party conference talking about the "Google generation", which has "moved beyond the idea of 9 to 5, closed on weekends and Bank Holidays." The Tories of course went one better, by producing an actual Google executive, Eric Schmidt, and announcing their new leader's interactive Web site, Webcameron. This is a name I found hard to write without performing something between a smirk and an involuntary heave.

There's a wonderfully revealing video at the Webcameron site, called 'After the speech, discussing Webcameron', in which the relationship between politics and technology is illustrated in shameful clarity. Cameron is seated at a desk in a gleaming white shirt and tie, staring down at the wonderfully posh and geeky form of Sam Roake, head of Web campaigning for the Conservative party, who's clad in a striped T-shirt and thick glasses straight from nerd central casting.

In plummy tones, Cameron confesses smugly that he hasn't had time to read all the comments on the site because he's been "rather busy", but he's very keen to hear what people are saying. Sam points out, not unreasonably, that there have been complaints that David is not responding personally to comments on the site. David looks concerned, as well he should: what's the point of banging on about how available you are if you don't actually have time to field such enquiries?

"I want to give my time in my diary, but I will, definitely, I want this to be interactive, otherwise it's not going to work," he says earnestly. Dear reader, do you think this is going to work? Or do you think it's a PR exercise of the kind Cameron is so quick to deprecate when practised by his political rivals? I could not possibly comment, at least not until the more advanced comment features on the Webcameron Beta are working.

Roake points out that many users of the site have expressed concern that it's not fully functional: there are problems with the RSS feeds... Cameron starts in nervous horror at this deadly jargon, seeing key centre-ground voters switching off in droves, but does his best to convey bluff enthusiasm in the face of such vulgar nonsense.

"Getting a bit technical for me," he simpers, "but I'm sure people out there will know what he's talking about."

And there you have it. Technology is for people out there. It's not for people in the room. The people in the room are like Cameron. Their concern is power. Their tools are paper, telephones and face-to-face meetings, as they have always been. Blair, another boyish leader, famously never figured out how to switch on a PC. There's a long, smouldering video nasty on the site of Cameron answering emails (someone should let him know that it's actually not that fun to watch). It's clearly designed to position Cameron as the anti-Blair, the one who can boot up a PC, the one who 'gets it'.

Cameron, for all his attempts to cultivate a youthful image, looks about fifty years older than Sam Roake, and I suspect his entire generation are going to have to die before the bluff amateur ho-ho-ho pinstripe anti-intellectual technocontempt of him and his ilk has been bred out of the establishment gene pool. When Sam Roake's grandchildren are going up to Oxford, it's possibly that we will be spared the odious patronage of these oily snake-oil salesman, desperate to get a little Web 2.0 mojo they can spray on their campaign. Until then, we should all go and see Al Gore's movie. Now there's a real political geek.