O! Jon Cruddas, how shall we know thee?

The unseemly struggle for a position within the Labour Party that is not yet vacant continues apace, consuming the entire Labour blogging community in heated exchanges in the various comments sections whilst the rest of the world - uninformed about the REAL issues as such people always are - continue to labour under the misapprehension that Iraq, the future of party funding, and management of the NHS is where political discourse is really at.

To recap on the candidates:

First up is Hilary Benn MP: Secretary of State for Hugging Poor People (DfID) and a nice chap by all accounts.

Second, the veteran of many Departments: Peter Hain MP of the Ireland Office

Third, Harriet Harman MP who is, as she reminds all her potential supporters, A Woman. It's in the bag, Harriet.

Fourth, is Labour Party chair Hazel Blears MP who, although she hasn't declared, I am putting in anyway partly because there are rumours that she might, but mostly so I can be entertained by various perves showing up on our logs as having Googled something rude involving Jessica Rabbit and ending up here.

(Hi to the bloke who Googled "rude fillies" yesterday. Gutted, eh?)

A former potential challenge for Gordon Brown until he decided to focus on the deputy role: Alan Johnson MP

Which brings us finally to Jon Cruddas MP.

Now, none of us want to be unduly harsh on Mr Cruddas who, for all we know, might be a very nice man, nor are any of us rooting for any particular candidate.

But why, WHY has he proved such a hit we ask ourselves? Every Labour blog seems to have one of those "I'm Supporting Jon Cruddas" stickers on it, even though until a few months ago my mental image of him was a white name on a green background on the House of Commons annunciator.

More confusingly, this is the man who used to be a bag-carrier for Blair before he became an MP, but can now cause an entire CLP meeting to stop debating the Dear Leader's many apparent character flaws to swoon into Cruddas' manly arms. What the hell's going on? One would have thought that a little more was required than the usual platitudes about "giving a voice to the membership" and a Compass pamphlet or two on making "new" Labour "newer" or some other such sub-Giddens balls.

The clue came from no less a Parliamentary figure than Tom Watson MP who commented on a recent post that:

"The most remarkable thing about the Jon Cruddas facebook interview is not what he said. It’s the fact that he actually knows what facebook is. I am absolutely certain that he is the only candidate for the deputy leadership who will have heard of this online phenomena."

And suddenly all the pieces fell into place as the myth that Cruddas is necessarily way ahead shatters: the only people who are interested in the Deputy Leadership are bloggers. This does not mean that the rest of the membership are similarly excited about him.

Bloggers like other people who blog, and are inordinately obsessed with blogging (ahem). That Cruddas has a blog, knows what a facebook is (which is more than we do) and knows his FTP server from his monitor demonstrates he is dahn wiv da yoof firstly, and wants to give the type of people who engage with him online "more of a voice" secondly. And there is nothing, NOTHING, that we bloggers like more than our own voices. This has created an impression on the bloggersphere that Cruddas is way, way ahead because all we see is support for him but, believe it or not, there are some members like my Granddad who think that "blogging" is a lumberjack with an electric saw and prefers Hilary Benn because he's heard of him.

Is the Cruddas support an illusion, conjured by the online Labour community?

This is not to say that I or the other Hamers won't vote for him, just that we have yet to be convinced, his obvious ability with a computer notwithstanding. And any abuse in the comments will mean that NONE OF US (and there's a number of us) will vote for him, so be warned, Cruddas cheerleaders.