Aaargh. Jimmy Leach, Tony Blair’s head of digital communications, wins an award for his work. He’s taken home the New Media Age award for “The Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media.” Why? Epetitions. Podcasts. A YouTube channel for a Prime Minister. All put in place in less than a year.

Simon Dickson underlines the importance of Leach’s work: it helped establish a precedent for British government communicators.

“…So Jimmy is free to do all sorts of radical things which most Ministries … would typically strangle at birth.

Standard Whitehall mentality is that it’s only acceptable to do something innovative if someone else has already done it. (Which, of course, is a contradiction in terms, but anyway…) And if the ’someone else’ happens to be the almighty Downing Street, all reticence disappears.

Suddenly there’s no need to fear a call from the most powerful office in the land, asking what the hell you thought you were doing. If you post your Minister’s stuff on YouTube, in the same way that No10 posted theirs, what can go wrong? (And if it does go wrong, at least No10 will probably be stuffed too.)”

And, as WhitehallWebby points out, beating out a worthy slate of opponents.