Here’s a trend for 2010 – the UK election will not be a breakthrough event for the application of social media in politics. Vying candidates are already crawling over each other blogs and Twitter feeds for dodgy comments in a bid to shut them down.

Guido Fawkes reported last night on the first scalp of the forthcoming election.

“[…] This blog’s first casualty of the 2010 election cycle is Greg Stone, a LibDem councillor standing for parliament in Newcastle East against Labour’s Nick Brown.”

“Greg has withdrawn his candidature after a dossier of comments which he had made on this blog over a period of many months was circulated anonymously to the media.”

As Guido says “[Stone] won’t be the last politician brought down by a blog in the next few months…”