Today, Total Politics is proud to announce the results of the 2010-2011 blog poll.

Kicking off the awards, here is a list of the Top 25 Green Blogs:

1 (1) The Daily (Maybe)
2 Bright Green Scotland
3 (2) Two Doctors
4 (5) Barkingside 21
5 (4) Another Green World
6 Gaian Economics
7 (21) George Monbiot
8 (8) Rupert's Read
9 (11) Mabinogogiblog
10 (9) Ruscombe Green
11 (19) Weggis
12 Jane's Political Ramblings
13 Suitably Despairing
14 Flesh is Grass
15 (10) Green Reading
16 Greens Engage
17 (15) Caroline Lucas MEP
18 Stuart Jeffery
19 (3) Peter Cranie
20 (14) Bloggy Blanc
21 Scottish Greens
22 Greening Kirklees
23 Greener Leith
24 Chadwell and Seven Kings Greens
25 A Week Is a Long Time

If your blog is one of the ones featured above please feel free to put the following button in your sidebar and link it through to this post:

This list is the result of more than 2,200 people who voted in the Total Politics Annual Blog Poll during the second half of July.
Click on the blog to visit it.
All these lists, together with articles from leading blog commentators, will be published in the TOTAL POLITICS GUIDE TO POLITICAL BLOGGING, in association with APCO Worldwide. It will be published in October at £14.99. You can preorder your copy HERE.

COMING NEXT: Top 30 Libertarian Blogs

"Political? Oh you have to see NewsRevue then." The Edinburgh Fringe press officer didn’t hesitate in her recommendation. Thousands have witnessed the popular musical since it opened at the Canal Cafe in west London 30 years ago. Having seen it several times in London, the Edinburgh run of NewsRevue is the best yet.

In short, NewsRevue is four people singing satire. Longer, it’s an exceptionally well-written and impeccably timed mixture of sketches and songs, accompanied by musical director Pete Smith. The show touches upon just about every topical newspaper headline: the Budget, Glee, Israel, The X Factor. But without the repetitive simplicity of many TV impressionist shows.

It’s the little twists that make the show though: the feather boas draped racily in a song about Silvio Berlusconi, mime-driving a van full of illegal immigrants in a Disney film sponsored by the Daily Mail, Hilary Clinton’s oversized cigar. Bordering between brilliant and disturbing, the repeated sketch about David Cameron in a blue bike helmet and Nick Clegg as a hand-puppet is a personal highlight.

The actors themselves put in distinct performances but work effortlessly as a unit. Tom Connor’s impressions are spot-on, contorting his face wildly into pouts (David Cameron) and boredom (William Hague). The latter is one of the funniest political impressions I’ve seen.

Fellow performers Amy Westgarth and Annabel King have beautifully agile voices and great comic timing. But it’s Richard David-Cane’s George Osborne take-off that gets the most laughs. Let’s face it: there are many common comedic stereotypes about George Osborne. Mock the Week paints the chancellor as too young, Have I got News For You mentions his rich affluent friends. However NewsRevue have painted him as tricksy and increasingly sinister, wearing pantomime headgear and a cape. Needless to say, David-Cane looks like he’s having a whale of a time playing this particular character.

The performance has the strong individual characterisation of 1980’s shows like Not the Nine O’clock News, but is truly current without being overtly cruel. Surely musical sketch shows are now the perfect way in which to ridicule coalition politics: the confusion, the power struggles, the tie colours!

Occasionally, the youth of the performers does add a student feel to the show. But the script’s constant flirtation with political incorrectness justifies why places like the Canal Cafe and the Fringe take punts on experimental humour. It leaves you buzzing and exhilarated, but also proud that satire is living outside of its usual middle-class older audience.

NewsRevue is on at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh at 6.30pm until Sunday. It is normally on every Thursday-Saturday at 9:30pm & Sundays at 9pm at the Canal Café Theatre, London.

Mark Hoban, financial secretary to the Treasury, was grilled over how “progressive” the coalition’s Budget really was after condemnation from the Institute for Fiscal Studies today.

Hoban had a very hard time answering if, as required by the Equalities Act 2010, the government had checked what effect the Budget would have on women and minority groups.

General grumblings on the internet last year suggested there wasn’t enough satire at the Edinburgh Festival.
But the 2010 line-up seems to have taken that on board with subject matters ranging from BP to the BNP, from cuts to wild expenses claims. It isn't all part of a satirical renaissance though, with low-quality offerings like Hung parliament: the Musical, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a Rom-Com and Obama Mia! failing to impress.

Let’s not however let the remarkable quality of political drama be marred by the largely improvised or insane. Dave Benson’s one-man show Lockerbie: Unfinished Business played the political injustice of Al-Megrahi’s release with a bereaved man’s fight for legal justice. Do we look like refugees?!, about the South Ossetia War, was another example of current affairs dramatised with haunting accuracy.

The fringe is the spiritual home for satire. Kevin Eldon of Brass Eye fame managed to make political poetry laugh-out-loud funny at his Invisible Dot performance. His timing is unmatched, as he screeches "Mao! Mao! Where are you now, Mao?" before launching into a one-minute silence for the poem Tony Blair’s contribution to world peace.

Andi Osho’s Afroblightly is also worth a mention as an hour about Great Britain and cultural identity. The levels of self-depreciation she reaches get uncomfortable, cumulating in an assessment of black female politicians. "Floella Benjamin is in the House of Lords. Really? How'd she get in? Through the round window?". Shappi Khorsandi’s The Moon On A Stick tour is similarly a waltz through Britain’s cultural hang-ups. Khorsandi’s work has much improved since her Amused Moose Soho days, ditching the political puns for tales about her family history, in particular, her satirist father who got on the wrong side of an Iranian Ayatollah.

The anger and passion lacking in much of the fringe satire could be found in Josie Long’s set. She has strong words against the Conservative Party (lapped up by the largely lefty audience) but also despairs of the failings of new labour: "Living under Labour was like hanging out with a dear, old friend who you deeply suspect has betrayed you." Better than the one-liners, however, is her impression of a friend comforting a saddened Gordon Brown.

Kate Smurthwaite has bemoaned the lack of journalists who have reviewed her show The News At Kate . But her turn as the host of the London panel game The Comedy Manifesto, at the Soho Comedy Club, along with her solo performance cannot go on ignored. Smurthwaite has all the markings of a great satirical guest, reacting to Richard Desmond’s Channel 5 takeover, government cuts and women in politics with remarkable pace.

Brown got heavily knocked at the fringe, but no match for the level of distain (and occasionally genuine anger) at the coalition government. This is where the late-night comics at Political Animal and David Mulholland in his solo show You Are Being Lied To excelled.

Image credit: Getty Images

As part of our ongoing top political blogger profile Total Politics interviews Chris Mounsey, aka The Devil. He speaks to us about the need for minimal state interference, career politicians and why he's a fan of expletives.

Your blog is rather controversial. Would you advise other bloggers to be the same?
Writers should write about what they feel most about. If you can't be controversial on a blog though you are going to end up pretty frustrated.

Some of your language has got you into a bit of trouble. Where do you draw the line now?
I think, strictly speaking, I draw the editorial line on elaborate death fantasies. Those aren't going in anymore. The occasional swearing is fine. Those are the sort of things I am moving away from currently. I think a lot of people are disappointed. But what can you say?

You founded the Libertarian Party, why is Libertarianism not as popular as you would like it to be?
People at heart are libertarian as in they'd like people to leave them the hell alone. But they are less inclined to leave other people the hell alone. It's the whole community thing – they want the state off their back but they're generally happy to pry into other people's gardens. They haven't quite broken out of the circle.

If you had to vote for any other party which would it be and why?
It would probably be the Conservative Party. I toyed with the Lib Dems. If the Lib Dems consisted of Orange Bookers then I'd probably vote for them. If I were to vote for a political party because they have more chance of winning (which is, after all, what a large number of people vote for), I'd probably vote for the Conservatives. But the coalition has thrown all of that into a new perspective hasn't it?

Are you a fan of it?
They seem to be heading in the right direction. I'm quite a big fan of Pickles because he seems to be cutting things left, right and centre.

Being a libertarian and yet having a party, isn't that a bit of a conflict of ideology?
The five of us, when we started, had big debates about whether we should be a party in the first place. It certainly comes up. Are we legitimising the current system? If we want to change things then we have to work within the current system. I also don't see a problem with people voluntarily coming together to form interest groups and a political party is just that. We're not really forcing people to do so.

The tagline to you blog is: "Filleting the extensive lies of the political classes...". What are the political classes?
That was a throwaway tag line there. The political classes are those people who have done little else than work in politics.

Career politicians?
Yes but more than that. Those people like Jack Straw who went from the NUS, worked for an MP and then became an MP - those who haven't had a massively distinguished career doing anything else really. It's difficult for anyone to have a perspective on life when they spend all their time in the Westminster bubble.

Political idol?
Adam Smith.

Political villain?
Gordon Brown.

Favourite blogger?
Tim Worstall.

Least favourite?
The entire left blogosphere. Sunny Hundal [especially].