I’m happy to condemn Draper and McBride’s schemes (at a half-baked status or otherwise) as completely unacceptable, but before I go into any depth on my blog I would first like to see the email(s) that Paul Staines promised to publish on live television:

Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) and Derek Draper on Daily Politics – Thursday, 26 March 2009: [Extract from 01:50 to 02:10]

Paul Staines: I’ve seen the briefing paper done by Downing Street; “How to get Dale”

Derek Draper: Well, publish it.

Paul Staines: I will publish it this afternoon

One reason I would like to see this:

Iain Dale has been grouping (a) this as-yet-unseen email, (b) the published emails, and (c) reports that Tom Watson may have seen the latter, and has been implying – without a lick of evidence to support it – that Tom Watson was/is personally involved in a conspiracy to smear him personally. (more here and more here, too)

This itself is a smear if the claim cannot be supported by evidence, and Iain must know that.

Iain, arch-hypocrite that he is, is also criticising Tom Watson for not doing anything about emails Iain can only assume Watson saw/read. He does so knowing that he has recently – for the second time – stood by and allowed a political opponent to be smeared as a paedophile, when he was in a unique position to prevent it. (more)

Regulars here may also recall Iain talking in circles when Nadine Dorries seemingly implied that Alex Hilton was a paedophile and refused to clarify or withdraw the remark. (more)

And, as you have mentioned, Paul Staines still maintains the position that by implying that a certain MP was a paedophile several times in his failed podcast venture ‘Guido and the Monkey’, he was in fact hinting that the MP was gay. (more)

All of these people are appearing all over the old media channels* and feigning outrage about Draper and McBride’s behaviour as if they have never seen such a thing in their lives… when in fact each and every one of them has played a significant/active role in the lowest smear possible; to falsely accuse someone of the kind of crime that prompts mob violence in some quarters.

No good can come of these people being heralded as moral campaigners.

Never mind wolves in sheep’s clothing; these rabid mongrels are now dressing as shepherds.

We have every right to express concern about that.

[*The media channels churning their nonsense out include most if not all of the same newspapers that refused to get back to me with a simple email when one of the people selling them terror stories started posing as a Daily Mail reporter smearing *me* as a paedophile! (]

And where was the hue and cry when George Osborne (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article660304.ece) effectively accused Gordon Brown of being “faintly autistic”? A month later Brown’s son Fraser was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Don’t tell me that wasn’t a stressful time for Gordon and Sarah. But George was allowed to shrug that one off as a “little joke”.

Now two, three or four wrongs don’t make a right, but there’s a long history of this. Poor old Ramsay McDonald had to suffer repeated and continuous accusations of illegitimacy. This affair has attained its current profile through careful planning. Paul alluded to the email exchange a couple of weeks back, yet timed the release for this weekend
Admittedly Guido is no naive innocent. It was deliberate timing to launch this assault on Downing Street this weekend to fill the holiday news vacuum. (http://www.order-order.com/2009/04/mcpoisons-going-is-good-for-political-standards/).

My personal belief is that this was a naive, stupid, disgusting and pointless idea, and that those involved probably realised it as well. Thus the non-appearance of the Red Rag website. Look at the clique raising the storm (Staines, Dale, Dorries) and the sheer breadth of media appearances and tell me it hasn’t been cleverly stage managed for maximum effect. I’ll give them 10 out of 10 for their handling of the situation, and minus several million to Draper and McBride for their deviousness and rank stupidity.

But don’t for one minute believe that this is a attempt to clean up politics and move away from spin and smear. This is partisan shit slinging at its finest, and all credit to Paul for playing the game so well.

Which presents us with the real challenge; how to take online debate forward in a constructive manner. From the Left’s point of view, there’s no room for Draper, McBride and the old-style spin and smear. That must be left to Staines and others on the Right. We can and must be better than that.

I think you would be surprised by 1) how many people hate all parties now and they might well be the ones reading Guido, 2) how many Labour supporters would enjoy pouring bile on the Tories once their heroes are safely on the opposition benches.

[51]

Equally important is the need to reclaim the next revision of the Labour party from those still wedded to the central command and control model. The requires active engagement locally, nationally and online. It’s not just the Tories we need to hold to account, but also the Labour party. We should never have another leader “annointed” in the manner of Brown and we need to prevent the disconnect between PLP and grassroots members.

Hopefully there’ll be something here onTuesday to set the ball rolling.

Shorter brownshirt troll “I love Guido he is my hero”

Guido is a muckraker, but at least he does the investigation on which to base his attacks.

If only. The Mark Oaten paedo podcast was a classic Guido smear based on zero investigation. And then there was the Prescott affair with fellow MP which was simple regurgitation of Westminster gossip. The sheer volume of smears allowed through in comments devalues 99% of the posts of any worth.

Worst thing is, I don’t expect anything to change should the Conservatives win the next election. Paul has built his readership primarily on the basis of attacking a Labour government, his readers as a consequence being mainly Tory supporters. How likely is it that a stats whore like Paul will switch to attacking a Conservative government if it is going to impact his site traffic? And how many Labour supporters are going to start frequent the seething swamp of venom and bile that constitute his comment threads?

What the Left is going to have to do is develop an online strategy that can engage readers without resorting to the gutter. As has been said elsewhere, we don’t need a Red Guido and that was the fundamental mistake of Draper and McBride. But it is critical that any new approach be both informative and entertaining. One question we may very well have an answer to is whether the popularity of the Right-wing blogs is because it is easier to blog from opposition or not.

Equally important is the need to reclaim the next revision of the Labour party from those still wedded to the central command and control model. The requires active engagement locally, nationally and online. It’s not just the Tories we need to hold to account, but also the Labour party. We should never have another leader “annointed” in the manner of Brown and we need to prevent the disconnect between PLP and grassroots members.

All these are challenges for us to start addressing now.

People like you, if you’ll pardon me saying so.

You never spoke a truer word Sunny. The BBC’s coverage of the Nigel Griffiths story is a perfect case in point. Anyone who hasn’t already been sickened by its bias can read their whole coverage here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7958996.stm

Firstly, why the need to make such a meal of the fact that the categorical denial that Nigel issued when the story first broke was a barefaced lie? What would people expect the guy to do – admit it?

Secondly, why all the unnecessary emphasis on the fact that his second explanation – that he was too drunk to remember anything about it – was rather undermined by the fact that he took dozens of photos over a period of several hours and then downloaded them onto his laptop? Is this really something the public need to know? What business is it of theirs?

Thirdly, and most sickening of all, the harping on about Nigel’s High Court injunction application to stop further discussion of the matter in the media, and the fact that a High Court Judge refused it point blank. I mean, how and why on earth is that ‘newsworthy’? MPs go to the High Court every day trying and failing to get injunctions to stop the newspapers talking about their sordid sex encounters. The prominence this fact is given in the BBC’s reporting smacks of petty victimisation to me.

Sunny, the sooner every single one of these Daily Mail reading types is booted out of the BBC the better, however huge their numbers. They need to be replaced with honest, objective people who know what real news is and are prepared to give it to the public. I would certainly be interested in the job.

And while he may be partisan (lets see what he does when the Tories are next in power), he has done more to hurt the Tory frontbench (c.f. Caroline Spelman) than any left blogger I know of. Does that means he is balanced, or that investigative journalists on the left are just lazy?

I think Hopi Sen nails it:

That said, what is really driving me up the wall is that it makes Guido Fawkes/Paul Staines into a campaigner for honesty and clean politics.

Arglebargle. Where to start with this madness?

This is the guy who has spent more time propogating political smears on the internet than anyone else. It’s the raison d’etre of his site. Paul Staines regularly smeared Gordon Brown in the foulest and ugliest possible ways, has regularly posted stories that were unsubtantiated and untrue (Journalists – If he says “name one” – there’s three on this page alone, and he did it live on Newsnight.).

I mean what can you say about a man who helped set up and fund “the Sunlight centre for open politics” but kept that quiet when he publicised its work (until other people exposed the links)?

The best you can say is that he has a fine sense of theatre. The worst is more libellous than anything in any email.

Please tell me your not serious. You’re a Tory troll using heavy irony.”

I have always suspected this, the tone of her posts are so bile-filled and partisan that they come across as a piss-take of the Socialist Worker.

However, I don’t think its fair to question Sunny’s integrity as an activist or blogger. Both here and in Pickled Politics, Sunny has many times criticised this government when he felt a policy or even political tactics were questionable.

What I question is how can the Prime Minister absolve himself of any responsibility? To me it seems like someone falling on his sword to ensure deniability of other, probably more, senior individuals.

What would have happened if the Tory blogger did not get this? Would we have seen the implementation these tactics? I have a feeling it would have been run on some blogs and would have been circulated. When challenged the PM and his team would deny any involvement — and in this country No. 10 emails would be declared privileged by Jack Straw in a heartbeat. So, this would have been in the public domain and this story would have the made the rounds for several days and many more news cycles.

A pretty good political strategy especially the step by step plan. And it would have been pretty effective.

And it came from the Head of Political Strategy for the Prime Minister — and do we have to believe that no one else was involved? Its hard especially with Whelan involved . Its been the Prime Minister’s hatchet team spearhead along with Ed Balls for a long time. And their track record is pretty nasty.

Pretty incompetent buffoons too.

No, it’s only the party leader’s chief spinner.
Nothing to see here.

Guido says that McBride cc’d several bloggers to encourage them to play down the story.
I do hope Sunny wasn’t one.

Oh, and in case it hasn’t been mentioned, Derek Draper is a total twunt.

Yep – I’d agree with that, Sally.

In America during the Clinton term the MSM was quite happy to run with any horse shit that was published on Right wing sites. When Bush got in they suddenly had a ‘on the Road to Damascus’ conversion, and published very little of the stuff that was being put on Liberal sites.

I don’t think it does.

There’s also stuff about media willing to be glovepuppets for briefings, blogs and spindoctors managing stories, political Civil Servants, and little lies to hide bigger lies.

On Mr D, I’m sticking with “PR 1.0 into Politics 2.0 will not go”. They could still fix LabList, though – and the LabourWomen blog which has come out of the same push seems to have a lot of good potential (but bit’s gone quiet).

I’m also playing with the idea that it’s actually a damn good thing to start blogging with no platform of your own at all (e.g., politician, known writer) etc and have to put in 1000 articles with no audience – because it takes that long to learn the ropes. People who start with a podium and can fall off it by self-inflicted wounds.

Is this actually any more than the importation of online American campaigning techniques that nearly everyone has been calling for?

Matt

Please tell me your not serious. You’re a Tory troll using heavy irony.

Right?

“Yep, I agree Tim. It’s been fun watching McBride getting lumps kicked off him. Guido will get his one day I’m very sure and I can’t wait.

‘…those who want to leak can see now that they’ve got many more effective places to do so to’ is an excellent point. The UK political blogging scene now has a number of blogs that can put a story in the top ten on Google within an hour. All it needs is those with something worthwhile to push to wake up to that.”

As you know I think that your and my polical ideals are a lot closer than the supposed divide between us indicates.

Yes.

The mechanism has been proven to exist. Blogs, to be silly about it, have “won”.

Great, what’s the message? For myself it’s that the scumsuckers can no longer suck scum.

Yours?

Another way of putting it. Now that we have this voice, what do we want to say with it?