Since Obama's election an industry of musings has been born: can there be a British Obama. For some the discussion has been a worthy one and centred upon whether Britain is a sufficiently multicultural society to elect a coloured person to be prime minister; that is an interesting debate. But a bigger question is whether any politician, of any colour, could gain the level of interest that Obama earned. To answer that question you cannot look simply at the tools used but at the man himself and the style of his campaign.

What Obama managed to do was build a movement. Interest initially came due to the election of 'firsts', that either a black man or a woman could be the Democrat candidate gained significant levels of interest in itself. But, starting with his show stealing performance at the 2004 Democrat Convention which has gained much publicity recently but little at the time, he positioned himself as a candidate that was different to all the rest. Perhaps his colour was a visible metaphor for that, but more importantly was his outsider status. His unique selling points were the fact that he was not owned by corporate giants, that he not only claimed to be but was accepted as a people's candidate. He has earned trust and affection. His challenge is to continue to maintain that, but can anyone imagine a British candidate inspiring the people in this way? That is the challenge, it is not building a Twitter feed for MPs, not joining Facebook, not posting videos to Youtube, it is inspiring people and sadly that seems to be lacking.

I would not lay the blame completely with politicians however. There is a cynical public and a cyncial media that make it unlikely for any politician to emerge that can cut through that cynicism. It is a challenge that needs addressing before we can imagine a politician emerging that can inspire the British public in the way Obama seemed to do both here and in the US.