This is Damian McBride, pictured alongside Gordon Brown. This is no fluke. McBride was at the centre of the Number Ten spin operation, as are several others who hopefully meet the same fate.Derek Draper has always maintained that he is not funded or controlled by the Labour party. The events of this weekend have revealed a rather different picture.
As Tom Harris says in his blog:
"This is about standards of political activity, standards which have fallen far, far below what is remotely acceptable, especially for someone working at the very heart of government. "
I repeat again. Brown is at the very heart of Government. Brown knew. Brown in all probability instigated it. To try and spin that this was some "bad apple" or that the clearly delineated plans to smear the Tories was an idea that was binned, is nonsense. McBride had already cocked up big time but was never removed from Number Ten Downing Street. Brown knows exactly what McBride and others are capable of, which is why he employed them.
In their disgrace, the BBC, who you would think could sink no lower, have printed McBride's lies in full, with little attempt at balance.
Update:
Derek Draper, Labour List blogger at the centre of the email scandal, and creator of the Red Rag blog that was created as a dirty tricks blog, is funded by Unite, which also supports the Labour Party. Unite is a massive union, presided over by fat cat leaders and a former Labour spin doctor, Charlie Whelan. As Alex Hilton, staunch Labour supporter and blogger (no friend of Tories) wrote:
It was launched at Labour HQ and Mr McBride's old colleague Charlie Whelan provided Mr Draper's funding from Unite's political fund, the trade union he now works for.
They then pursued the unsustainable charade that the project was independent of the Labour Party.
It now turns out that shortly after the creation of the Red Rag blog, Draper was entertained at Chequers for lunch with the Prime Minister. Brown is up to his eye in it.
5 comments:
The smears were never binned. They were saving them up for use in an emergency. Like an election or 5 opinion polls with Labour at 27% or under.
On the Daily Telegraph blog there is an entry, allegedly from Guido Fawkes.
If it is true then the Daily Telegraph is an utter disgrace.
"Sunday, April 12
Guido smacks The Telegraph's bottom
"Telegraph Has Behaved Terribly Over Smeargate
Sunday, April 12, 2009, 01:38 PM GMT [General]
There are a lot of bitter, jealous journalists at the Telegraph and you have behaved shamefully over the McBride story. You even tipped off Downing Street in advance as to exactly what I was up to. It reflects on you a lot more than it does on me.
You revealed sources, broke a confidence, breached a signed non-disclosure agreement and behaved like patsy's for McBride.
You still failed to spoil the story. Your political team is about as weak as it gets, that is why you sucked up to Downing Street.
The Telegraph was once run by gentlemen for gentlemen. This would never have happened under Deedes or Charles Moore.
Do your worst. "
At least be consistent in your smearing - Brown was "100% complicit" in your last post - this has now been softened to "in all probabilty" in this post. Why is this degree of uncertainty creeping in? Perhaps you might wish to explain to your readers what special expertise/insight you have in this area - or was it something you were told by Samuel Parris.
Do you really think that if Draper was maintained or funded by the LAbour Party he would be kept in position while McBride isn't?
You may also want to try and justify using Tom Harris's absolutely correct words support a totally different position from that being put forward by Tom. This says a lot about your level of honesty.
TBNGU
Just remember one thing. You are allowed to leave your silly comments here, for all the world to see, for everyone to make their minds up.
Had I been attempting to leave critical comments on Labour List, they would not have seen the light of day.
See the difference? We believe in free speech.
Now piss off.
You (and Draper and McBride for that matter) may think that making unsupported allegations against people is an appropriate use of free speech - I think that it is just plain silly and immoral.
Perhaps one of the reaons why LabourList doesn't print your comments is that they break the laws of libel - it's strange that there appear to be plenty of other critical comments.
And if you were at all moral you would apologise to Tom Harris.
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