When Ed Balls phoned him last week demanding that he withdraw his post, Nelson wrote: "I thought he was joking: had there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media?" In fact the real power shift, exemplified by Fraser Nelson as much as anyone, has been in the way in which the oceanic expanses of the blogosphere have elevated the power of raw numbers and polemical energy over the power of political spin. - Ewan