Iain Dale for Bracknell.

That Iain wants to be an MP is clear. Why he wants it is less clear, at least to me. As a leading blogger and in-demand mainstream media pundit, he is reasonably influential. As a backbench MP, he will be a cipher.

70% of legislation comes from Brussels and, on the remaining 30%, our so-called "legislators" vote as directed by their party leaders. There is no sign that David Cameron will whip his troops any less aggressively than Gordon Brown. Indeed since press and public obsess about the "strength" or "weakness" of the party leaders far more than about the abysmal quality of our legislation, he will have little choice. Frankly, though I defer to no-one in my respect for Iain's media skills, I rather doubt he could improve the quality of any legislation if he wanted to.

MPs must toe the party line, which is why most MPs blogs are partisan, tedious and a general waste of pixels. Like him or loathe him, Iain is a great communicator. I am sure he will eventually get his political wish, but what will it mean for (pace the racier, but less influential Guido) Britain's leading political blog?

Tellingly, Iain Dale's Diary does not get much of a mention (I can find one link) on Iain's Bracknell campaign website. This, despite the fact that most Brits to whom the word "blog" means anything, would probably think first of him when they heard it.Perhaps he knows that, as a socially-liberal, reasonably freedom-loving backbench MP serving a paternalistic watermelon of a High Tory leader, he could no longer be the Blogfather?