1) Polly Toynbee – The Guardian
2) Trevor Kavanagh – The Sun
3) Irwin Steltzer – The Sunday Times
4) Nick Robinson – BBC blog ‘Nick Robinson’s Newslog’
5) Anatole Kaletsky – The Times
6) Simon Jenkins – The Guardian / Sunday Times
7) = Robert Peston - BBC blog ‘Peston’s Picks’
= Jeff Randall – Daily Telegraph
8) Richard Littlejohn – The Daily Mail
9) George Monbiot – The Guardian
10) = Martin Wolf – The Financial Times
= Matthew d’Ancona – The Sunday Telegraph
Julia Hobsbawn, who runs Editorial Intelligence is co-authoring a report with John Lloyd next month called ‘The Power of the Commentariat: How much do Commentators influence politics and public opinion?’
Polly Toynbee ranked top not just in the free vote and as being ‘highly’ influential but also ‘often’ influential. So the aggregated results for those who are both ‘highly’ and ‘often’ influential are as follows...
1) Polly Toynbee
2) Trevor Kavanagh
3) Nick Robinson
4) Matthew d’Ancona
5) Simon Jenkins
6) Peter Riddell
7) Robert Peston
8) Irwin Stelzer
9) Anatole Kaletsky
10) David Aaronovitch
Julia has also kindly agreed to give a bottle of champagne to the reader of this blog who correctly answers the following...
1) The top 3 leader pages
and
2) The closest margin between the Spectator and the New Statesman in terms of perceived influence: is it 5%, 10% or 15% and in whose favour?
Go to it!
Odd that Matthew Parris isn't here. His predictions are normally on the button and his arguments are always sound.
ReplyDeleteToynbee?! TOYNBEE!!
ReplyDeletepeople go to cif as they used to take rotten tomatoes to the stocks.
the bint is a loon.
I was a bit surprised not to see Mr Matthew Parris mentioned, so I staged a Google Fight between him and Ms Toynbee. Mr Parris won :-)
ReplyDeleteTop three leader pages:
ReplyDeleteDaily Telegraph
The Sun
The Guardian
Spectator beats New Statesman by 10%
Agree with Verity on Matthew Paris - especially given that he may have fundamentally undermined Gordon Brown and will actually change political reality.
ReplyDeletePolly Toynbee is just confused by reality - as her recent comments on Von Brun have shown.
PS When has Poly Toynbee *ever* put together an influential article on anything ?
Toynbee is only influential because broadcasters (The BBC most obviously) and other left-wing commentators, take what she says seriously and convert it for their audiences. Personally, I think she is a useless "progressive" socialist, who spouts 6th form standard political arguments that are littered with half-truths and outright bullshit and on top of that, she is a really pathetic NuLiebour apologist and her Guardian column is starting to resmeble something that Chris Paul or David Boothroyd would write. But reading the comments on CiF is always good for a laugh as she gets ripped apart.
ReplyDeleteThe list, in general, is full of MSM Labour lickspittels who are a disgrace to their profession and are guilty of laying the confidence trick of New Labour on a gullible electorate. They are a sinister and dangerous bunch of charlatans, and if we're lucky, perhaps one day they will find that somebody has reserved a lampost for them all!
If Polly Parrot is the most influential commentator, that explains a lot - it's all her bloody fault.
ReplyDeleteI think Polly Toynbee is influential, no-one makes me more likely to vote against everything she supports.
ReplyDeleteBut then I often find Simon Heffer tends to reflect my views.
The greatest pleasure I used to have in connection with polly toynbee was to read the website dedicated to exposing the massive errors she used to make in her columns.
ReplyDeleteWeek in and week out it would be shown that her assumptions were barmy and her conclusions therefore worthless.
Take a look here:
http://factcheckingpollyanna.blogspot.com/
Man in A Shed - Good point that Parris has actually undermined Gordon Brown. I would agree with you. When he sets his sights, his calm, well-reasoned opinions can be lethal. And he usually calls 'em right.
ReplyDeleteI'm also surprised that Simon Heffer isn't included. After his weekly column in The Telegraph, there is always a huge surge of comments thanking him for articulating the feelings of ordinary voters.
Polly Toynbee ?! *!
ReplyDeleteI am not an enemy of hers, like some around here, but come along ! She has had her day in the sun.
Love him or loathe him, even Lord Michael of White gets more attention these days.
I agree with previous posters that any such 'listing' which excludes Matthew Parris simply cannot be taken seriously at all. But maybe Julia is hoping that by us putting our twopenn'orth in, it will save her doing any actual 'research'..
Hmm.. surprised to see Fraser Nelson and Peter Oborne missing as well..
ReplyDeleteBut maybe Julia does have a point.
Ms Toynbee has at least influenced 'Call Me Dave' Cameron to come to a different conclusion about balancing taxation and benefits to keep society together, whereas many commentators only 'influence' people by confirming the prejudices they already had..
So how come George Monbiot is not on the list ? Even Boris does reach out to parts of the electorate that other right-wingers just can't refresh..
G-d help us.
ReplyDeleteI think they confused "influential" with "irritating". La Toynbee is a wittering clit of the lowest order and her logical gymnastics and sophistry in defence of Labour's many failings are an insult to the intelligence of even Guardian readers.
ReplyDeleteThe woman is a disgrace to humanity and should be right up there in gibbet next to Brown, Livingscum, Harridan Harperson and the rest of the fascist junta.
Also, this is an ill-defined category, because it doesn't tell us who these columns influence.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that, with the public, Irwin Stetzler is a stronger opinion-former than Matthew Parris. Nor do I believe Antatole Kaletsky is.
With politicians and their minions, very possibly. But if we are speaking of influential with the public, I don't think so.
I went to the site but it was going to be too much trouble to find the survey. Plus I don't like organisations that use the following words: networking, training and stakeholder. I just don't trust them.
verity cant surf
ReplyDeletePolly Toynbee must surely have minority readership. How can she possibly be #1 ? Privileged broadcast exposure perhaps ?
ReplyDeleteIt seems unfair that in broadcast debates minority interest representatives are given disproportionate exposure. This gives an illusion that the democratic weighting is 50/50.
Also BBC's Question Time. The audience often seems to be packed with liberals and yet the texting (viewer participation via ceefax) seems to be much more representative of the general public with which I am familiar.
For Scottish current affairs it has to be Iain MacWhirter
ReplyDeleteJulia Hobsbawm runs "Editorial Intelligence". How interesting!
ReplyDeleteIsn't she the daughter of Eric Hobsbawm, the well known, not to say fanatical, Marxist Eric? And doesn't she dabble in something called "ethical pr"?
And didn't she have a pr agency with Sarah MacCauley, who is now Gordon Brown's wife?
Gosh, I wonder how those top 10 mainly leftist commentators managed to turn up on her list! I'd love to see her methodology. It just seems mystifyng that neither Matthew Parris nor Simon Heffer seem to ring a bell with the people this outfit surveyed.
obnoxio - you've got a way with words - have you been to college ?
ReplyDeleteI bet Amanda 'Glenda Slagg' Platell is pi$$ed off that she cannot justify her vastly overpaid salary from the results of this 'survey'...
ReplyDeleteWho did Editorial Intelligence survey to produce this list?
ReplyDelete"Networking", "Training" and "Stakeholder" just sound so Common Cause, do they not?
ReplyDelete"And doesn't she dabble in something called "ethical pr"? "
ReplyDeleteThis is a bit like saying you can have an 'ethical foreign policy' while bombing Iraq to smithereens...
Iain is only printing this because Julia occasionally says nice things about him to massage his ego and get a free plug on this blog...
Truth or dare, Mr Dale...
It must be a pretty odd sample to place Polly Toynbee first.
ReplyDeleteShe's on television a lot but presumably because producers expect her Stone Age left wing views to spark a row, thus providing 'good TV'.
I agree Matthew Parris should be listed. Some of his articles are inspired and his observations of Mr Brown's shortcomings are spot on.
Agree on Parris. Furthermore, surely Rawnsley and Riddell are both far more influential than Toynbee?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a boy there used to be a chap on the Brains Trust (a Home Service wireless programme) whose catch phrase was "It depends on what you mean by ..... I think his name may have been Professor Jobe (or maybe Joab) and that he later got nicked for travelling on the train sans billet." I echo his professed sentiment, "it depends on what you mean by influential."
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm going to imagine I'm a squillionaire that wants to buy influence and am assuming that all commentators, even La TonyB, have a price.
Now the question is to whom shall I distribute largess?
I would have thought that Littlejohn of "You couldn't make it up" would be a good place to start.
La TonyB would be well down my list as I would have thought that her readers would be unlikely to be influenced by her. Surely they would only be reading the newspaper she writes for as confirmation of their escapism.
TonyB: A master of escapism "Da"; influence "Niet".
I agree that it seem mighty odd that Peter Oborne was not in the top 10.
ReplyDeleteBut I still maintain that most suspicious of all is the non-appearance of the immensely popular, thoughtful, articulate and very clever reader of the national mood, Matthew Parris.
So, missing from this esteemed survey of the top 10 most influential commentators, we have Matthew Parris, Peter Oborne, Peter Hitchens, Simon Heffer and Melanie Phillips. That is one hell of a vast chunk of British newspaper readership strangely unaccounted for.
o/t, but where's your link to the Douglas Carswell head-above-the-parapet article in the MoS calling for the Speaker to go (in essence, for the crime of not calling DC enough in debates)?
ReplyDeleteCan we assume that this crack at the Speaker (and, by the way, the House of Commons Commission and the Members Estimate Committee, on boith of which Theresa May sits) has been sanctioned by Central Office?
And can we also assume that DC is happy with his byline photo, which gives him the jaw of Lembit Opik and the eyes of Tony Marlow?
calais @ 8.31 pm -
ReplyDeletedon't be so rude about verity, now.
"I'm also surprised that Simon Heffer isn't included. After his weekly column in The Telegraph, there is always a huge surge of comments thanking him for articulating the feelings of ordinary voters."
ReplyDeleteVery few of the DT commenters seem to actually live in Britain.
Iain I do not understand you sometimes .This is Ed Balls right from the start . What sort of cretin thinks that Poly Toynbee is influential ? People only read her to marvel that a Methuselen hag can go on writing like a naughty sixth former.
ReplyDeleteShe is the opposite of influential .If for example Polly Toynbee says ,as she did , that David Milliband can be trusted and we do not need a referendum , you know he can’t and we do. If she supports Brown you can be quite certain that you should prefer to saw off your buttocks , varnish them and sell them in a provincial gift shop than allow him the time of day.
So how did this web thingy quasi business reach its absurd conclusion then? Could it be another example of the astonishing incestuousness of the Labour movement …
Julia Hobsbawm is the daughter of the that tedious establishment lefty Eric a particularly ridiculous purveyor of Marxist rubbish . She has no doubt traded on her Labour connections and name and the only people who look at the thing will be similarly deluded socialist jeuness dorées to whom Polly Toynbee is a pin up.
They must all be getting on a bit I expect its like a load of blousy old housewives going to a George Michael concert.
I am amazed that you give this any credence at all and quite suspicious in a malevolent mean minded but so far but nebulous way. How did you come to notice this “dot” ?
Geoff Randall is influential. Thinking people , like me , listen to him. Where is he ?
New Statesman beats Spectator by 5%
ReplyDelete1. The Sun
2. The Daily mail
3. The Financial Times
Big Andy
Why has no one nominated Iain Dale himself? After all he is supposed to be a leading blogger?
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's because he seems to be only concerned with his puerile sex survey over the last few days?
OK, I know he's made some interesting posts over the last couple of days but he still keeps going on about this stupid and pointless obsession with who has done what to whom. Give it up, Iain.
Verity opines, re: Simon Heffer, that:
ReplyDelete"I'm also surprised that Simon Heffer isn't included. After his weekly column in The Telegraph, there is always a huge surge of comments thanking him for articulating the feelings of ordinary voters."
My, I'd really love a pint of what you've been drinking! Even the Tories are rushing to disown Hefferlump, Mad Mel Phillips, and so on.
As for Matthew Parris, if you improved your reading comprehension, you might understand that his views are totally different to yours, and are in fact fairly close to mine!
What do you mean 'did a survey'? Who was surveyed? Where? How many? This is a list of the most obnoxious commentators whose written opinions merit a quick scan of the first sentence and the last paragraph. Its only through the extreme generosity of newspapers proprietors/editors that most of them continue to repeat week after week the same spiteful outpourings from their nasty little minds that they've been writing for years. Most of their articles are devoted to telling us who or what they hate, as if we didn't know already.
ReplyDeleteDo you really mean influential or just prolific in output?
ReplyDeleteToynbee is mostly unreadable, blatant propaganda and writes Gibbon style, never use one word when you can use ten.
Polly, Most Influential......
ReplyDeleteWe're doomed I tell you, doomed.
verity said...
ReplyDelete"I still maintain that most suspicious of all is the non-appearance of the immensely popular, thoughtful, articulate and very clever reader of the national mood, Matthew Parris."
Just because you like him doesn't mean that many other people do.
A survey which, frankly reeks to the heavens of media self-importance and probably carries little or no weight outside the Metropolis.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers of honest toilers who hang on la Toynbee's every pronouncement is, I wager, a little on the low side.
Especially after the 'great, clunking fist' debacle
I would have said that Simon Heffer and Polly Toynbee were more or less equivalent ,jesters on the fringe really. I like Simon Heffer but I would hardly suggest he held a pivotal and poltically sensitive position in a state funded broadcasting organisation...so why was Polly Toynbee ?
ReplyDeleteI think the word "influential" is the key here. To be influential you have to have the ears of the people in power. The tossers in the labour party were brought up on La Toynbee's ravings so of course she is influential (for just so long as Labour is in office).
ReplyDeleteMe, I like Matthew Parris (a brilliant article this week disecting Brown BTW) and the Heffalump. (Is he on holiday at the moment?)
Thats a thought what about Melanie Phillips ,she is highly influential and people actually read what she says.
ReplyDeleteIain this is absurdly biased and you would normally have held it up for derision.I wonder if this Labour Royalty pest is by any chnace involved in your media plans for world domination?
Bet she is.
You're very wrong.
ReplyDeleteTOYNBEE!?! - Shes such a bigoted leftie, always spouting the party line for nulab she must be on their payroll - careful Polly nulab is bankrupt (in more ways than one) so you're unlikely to get paid soon.
ReplyDeleteToynbee - go here - you'll soon she how bright she isn't - the woman'shttp://factcheckingpollyanna.blogspot.com/ an airhead -
ReplyDeleteHow can we take seriously a 'survey' that puts on a pedestal someone who clearly took a vicarious pleasure in Blair's grubby demise mainly because she passionately believed he was about to be succeeded by an intellectual super-hero? One, moreover, who could turn back the clock to those Halcyon days of the 1980s when 'proper' Socialists could talk bollocks during their coffee-picking sabbatical in Nicaragua.
ReplyDeleteThe poor dear is now left to splutter on the Guardian's Comment pages in a tone that suggests pained surprise that someone who Blair thought was temperamentally unsuited to being PM turns out to be, er, temperamentally unsuited to being PM.
Still, never mind the crass misjudgement, Polly. Just carry on being 'highly influential'.
Think yourself lucky you've escaped such dubious company, Iain
Top 3 leader pages?
1) Economist
2) Beano
3) Ham & High
How was "influence" measured? We can see from the results that the method was useless.
ReplyDeleteTo that laborious old bore - I suspect he's actually young, but he is an apprentice pedant - Asquith: There's nothing wrong with my "reading comprehension" (are you still in school? Which form?),you posturing buffoon, but you might want to brush up on your own.
ReplyDeleteThe "survey" that the company belonging to Marxist Julia Hogsbawm apparently carried out elevated several moderately-read, but leftish, columnists over Matthew Parris, Peter Oborne, Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips, Simon Heffer and - I forgot last time - Janet Daly.
I questioned the veracity of her findings. You must learn to be less emotional and read what people actually write. Also, your knowledge of the world is so limited that I doubt whether you have any reference points to understand what Melanie Phillips writes about.
Be a good little tick and bugger off.
Oliver Olliphant - my point exactly. Who was surveyed and was it an "ethical survey"? The "winners" are indeed, the same old crew with the same old message week after week and seldom merit a read beyond the first sentence.
Little Black Sambo - Quite. The minute I saw the word "ethical" that she uses about herself, and then recalled the name Hobsbawm and that her former business partner was now married to the gruesome occupant of No 10, and that she uses words like "stakeholder" in her corporate literature, I sniffed the pungent aroma of Common Cause.
She was canny enough, in an "ethical" way, not to let on what her methodology was. I do hope she reveals who was "surveyed" and how many people there were. It sounds like the conclusive findings of six or eight people round a dinner table in Notting Hill, frankly.
Not too many people interested in winning a bottle of Julia Hogsbawm's Champagne, I note.
ReplyDeleteLet us not forget that Hobsbawm's 'Editorial Intelligence' is the slimy little outfit that has sought to act as the greasy interface between PR & broadsheet wafflers, an enterprise I'm sure dear old Eric would have thoroughly approved of. Not.
ReplyDeleteAfter the 'Age of Revolution', the 'Age of Capital' and the 'Age of Empire' we now have, presumably, the 'Age of I'm sure My Friend Polly Would Love To Know About What You're Trying To Achieve, Let Me Give Her A Call For You' (at £675 plus VAT an hour)
Thank you for providing the resistance with a hit-list of top targets for assassination.
ReplyDelete