It’s nearly a week since Le Web 3 in Paris and it’s still hard to find any meaningful commentary about the event that isn’t overshadowed by talk about the political hijacking of the two-day conference.

Much blog commentary late last week focused on the firing of Sam Sethi, co-editor of TechCrunch UK, by TechCrunch supremo Michael Arrington and the simultaneous suspension of the UK site.

Shel and I discussed this in FIR #198 last Thursday.

The latest development I’ve seen* is the resignation of Mike Butcher, the other co-editor.

While it seems to me that none of the protagonists in this affair – Sam Sethi, Loic Le Meur or Michael Arrington – comes out of it smelling like roses, the real pity is the stilling of a voice that had begun to make its mark as a growing credible authority on tech start-ups and the web 2.0 scene in the UK if not in Europe.

To me, TechCrunch UK earned that credibility largely through the content and expressed personality of its two prime bloggers, Sam and Mike. I’ve not met either of them, yet their posts were required reading for me and were among the first I read daily in my RSS feeds.

Now there’s a void, a real vacuum, waiting to be filled.

Who will it be? A re-launched TechCrunch UK? That would be a good move. Or perhaps Sam and Mike do something together or with another publisher? That could be a good move. Looks like something is in the offing.

Either way, an opportunity awaits a quick first mover.

[*Update @ 10:14] Why this didn’t show up in my RSS feed until now is anybody’s guess – Loic’s lengthy post yesterday about Le Web 3: his detailed explanation of how the political presentations came about and his robust responses to the many criticisms. 25 comments so far. Undoubtedly more will follow as well as further responses on other blogs.

That conversation still has longevity.