I’m loving this whole Guido/leaked emails/No10 cabal thing, but for those who haven’t been following the saga of Dolly Draper and his fateful entanglement with the blogosphere it may all be a bit confusing. Who is Damien McBride, and more to the point, why is such a jumped-up poisonous little toad of a bitchy party functionary being paid from the public purse?
The meat of the emails – Frances Osborne’s nuts, George O. took drugs, Cameron had the clap and so on, all of it patently untrue – can be found at the Sunday Times too, as can background on the No. 10 relationships and the personalities of those involved. Their conclusion? Gordo’s up to his moral compass in it.
I think that the Observer has picked up best on the meta-implications of this, the first real blog-driven UK political sleaze scandal:
Smears are, of course, a staple of politics not confined to any one party, but the charge against McBride and Draper is not just one of dirty tricks but of hamfisted meddling in a new media world they did not properly understand.
The vendetta between senior Brownites and Guido Fawkes, the Westminster blogger who obtained the emails, dates back to stories Fawkes – whose real name is Paul Staines – posted about the Smith Institute and its relationship to Ed Balls, also a close friend of McBride.
Shortly afterwards journalists began being offered snippets designed to undermine Staines, including news of his drink-driving conviction. Coincidence? Staines, say friends, does not think so. His blog continued targeting senior Labour figures, and its waspish attacks got under Labour’s skin. When Draper launched LabourList, it was not long before they crossed swords – with Staines questioning Draper’s qualifications as a therapist and Draper threatened to sue.
Ah yes, LabourList. I believe ‘pisspoor”s the word. A Daily Kos wannabe without a Kos, without Kos’ commenters, or Kos’ content, run by a gang of bitchy, provincial stalinist hairdressers.
Whatever his qualifications may or not be Draper didn’t fail Hypnotism 101; to have convinced anyone that a shambling, unshaven, disaster of a walking midlife crisis was still young and hip and in tune enough with the Obama generation to start a blog community from scratch – 5 years too late – boggles the mind.
I can imagine Dolly’s spiel to Mandelson: “Yeah, sure, give me a couple of hundred grand and blogosphere will be in your power, trust me I’m a clinical psychologist now wahaha” and Mandy falling for it because he doesn’t read blogs or email and that whole interwebs thingy passed him by, he has a man to do it for him.
Labour’s public engagement with social media’s been a disaster wrapped in an embarassment, with an extra layer of mortification. Whatever they’ve tried they’ve fucked up, either because of general town-hall level stupidity or their desire to use technology purely as a channel for own personal vindictiveness and political rigidity.
There’s a whole building full of strutting, puffy flushed vain little Labour men at No 10, just like McBride, half of whom who think, like Gordon Brown, that social media means social control media. The other half see Facebook as a brilliant way to get back at people they’ve always hated; they don’t see blogging as the political movement in itself that it undoubtedly is but as a means to an end, viz, the personal and political character assassination of your opponents.
But their featherbedding and disengagement with actual life as lived by other people has blinded them to the political power that one person with a pc and intenet access can wield these days.
Despite their efforts to lock down their own residents and prohibit them from ever expressing political dissent, by recording all their emails, phone calls and internet use – and mine, if I ever want to speak to my sons again – bloggers continue to expose Labour for what they are.
It doesn’t matter they can no more physically record everything than they can drain the ocean, it’s public perception that matters – they’re watching you.
It may well one day be only those of us based elsewhere, like Guido Fawkes, who are actually able to blog about political wrongdoing, such is the thicket of New Labour new laws and restrictions being woven around citizen access to bandwidth and the right to free expression.
I disagree vehemently with Guido Fawkes on many many things, both personal and political, but what I do admire him for is for sticking to his guns, cultivating his sources and consistently coming up with the goods. Again and again he’s shown that Labour are little people with little morals, little substance, little brains and little credibility. I don’t care if he’s Pol Pot.
UPDATE I
Haha, Draper just got fired live on tv.
