In the US it's possible to influence local and national campaigns directly by throwing money at them. So senate and house seats will always have a few contenders from each party, and there's some prospect of influencing candidate selection, followed by candidate election.

In the UK candidates, are parachuted in from head office by party machines, and the faithful are then expected to support them. There's almost no bottom-up representation at all, which means there's no direct point of leverage. Most party constituency offices around the UK have a few tens of members, and contact with the rest of the population is limited or nonexistent.

So the only prospect for infuence is direct lobbying in Westminster, which is very expensive and difficult to organise, or media outreach, which needs a more lateral approach.

I'm not sure how things work in Germany, but I wouldn't be surprised if the situation is similar.

Then again - if Spiegel is being insulting about bloggers, that could be about to change.