HAZEL Blears is right when she says that for politicians, using YouTube is “no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre.”

To most political activists, such a comment is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious (as Basil Fawlty might say). YouTube broadcasting has its place, she might have gone on to add, but its impact is miniscule compared with on-the-ground campaigning.

But the fact that Hazel has herself used YouTube extensively in the past is justification, it seems, for The Spectator Coffee House blog to brand her “a massive hypocrite” (not sure if “massive” can be used to describe Hazel, but let’s put that to one side lest I’m accused of size-ism). Someone calling himself Small Man has jumped to the odd conclusion that because she has used the internet video platform herself in the past, she has no right to suggest that there are better, more effective ways of campaigning. Hazel wrote that there are better ways of campaigning — she absolutely didn’t claim that we shouldn’t use YouTube at all. Yet another case of the media insisting on painting things as black and white because a nuanced argument is beyond them.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Gordon’s YouTube video on MPs’ expenses was wise; he’s clearly less comfortable with the medium than, say, John Prescott, and someone at Number 10 should have had the good sense to tell him that before it was posted.

But he doesn’t need to use YouTube — he’s the Prime Minister, for goodness sake! He has access to a wider range of conventional media than any of the rest of us will ever have. YouTube democratises broadcasting in the same way blogging can offer a platform to those who wouldn’t normally have access to the print media. YouTube is useful because it’s accessible and instant, not because it’s “cool” and “down with the kidz”.