Remember Tony Blairs promise of "whiter than white" government ? of course it didn't last very long. Remember too Gordon Browns promise of a new kind of government, having just bullied and plotted his way into the top job, the only PM in my lifetime at least never to have been elected by party or people. So what have we got here ? It seems that the party of government has been unable to deal with the large number of " right wing " bloggers undermining their every move. In the absence of top Labour friendly bloggers to compete with the leading Tory friendly blogs, especially Iain Dales Diary and the Guido Fawkes blog by Paul Staines. Now as with most good blogs these are not funded by any political party, they are not national newspapers and they have no outside influence. These are just the work of individuals free to write and say whatever they like without any restraint, and so good are they at this that many people, not always like minded, read them every day.
Clearly it is beyond the wit of Brown and his minions how this works. Last year the shambolic, disgraced ex lobbyist Derek Draper was brought back to pioneer an online rebuttal system to compete with " right wing " bloggers. The result has been a car crash. Draper is rude, ignorant and dishonest, completely unable to stick with a story and appears on TV looking unkempt and ranting so wildly He needs to be upbraided by the presenter. Much as he tries to deny it his Labourlist is sponsored by the party and so is doomed to failure, not that it is any good anyway.
So far out of it are the government that the PM's personal adviser Damian McBride, ( a civil servant by the way, ) started emailing Draper suggesting that they set up a Guido style blog called Red Rag, and use it to smear top tories with unfounded allegations in the belief that it would " destabilise " the tories. You can begin to see the problem already. I'm not going to go through the contents here but suffice to say government computers and taxpayers money were used to discuss obscene false and libellous allegations against politcal opponents. The emails found their way into Mr Staines posession and He was soon making it clear He was going to go public with them, a last ditch attempt to divert attention by publishhing a story in the Telegraph on Saturday morning failed and McBride was toast by 5 O clock Yesterday. A harsh lesson in the way things work.
This hasn't died yet, one of the smearees tory MP Nadine Dorries, a formidable backbencher is lets just say, incandescent about the story that was discussed about her. She is consulting lawyers about the matter and demanding an apology from the Prime Minister no less. Draper is bleating like a deranged sheep that McBride shouldn't have gone, that the emails were a private joke between mates and that Mr Staines should not have published them. Clearly Draper is an embarassment the party can ill afford to be associated with much longer, and the responsible minister, Tom Watson, is now in the firing line too. But what does this say of Gordon Browns judgement? the Prime Minister likes to sermonise to us about his great skills of leadership, and his statesmanship. These men are close to the Prime Minister, these are people He trusts. Last year the government lost a safe seat in a bye-election by crassly insulting the people of Crewe and Nantwich with a staggeringly puerile campaign, can nobody tell him this really isn't working?
Draper likes to put it about that Paul Staines is backed by the tories, either He is terminally dense or just plain pathalogically dishonest, whatever He really doesn't have a clue how it works. My hat off to Paul Staines for his magnificent coup, it was wonderful to watch it unfold, I wish I had half his skill.
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