Saturday, April 11, 2009

Fighting With Monsters: Gazing For Long Into An Abyss



The end game may be approaching. There are two distinct explanations for the McBride-Draper exchanges and where they were going or not going.

First, there is the one that says that Mr Derek Draper was fishing for anti-Tory news and gossip to counter Mister GuF's own campaigns, got some creative writing that was very close to the bone from his old mucker Damian McBride, but that one way or another the pair of them decided that it was not right, and that they should forget it.

Second, there is the other one that says that plans for TheRedRag were very much still in train and that it was only a matter of time before sleazy stories about leading Tories started to surface on a blog whose specification and even registrant "Ollie Cromwell" indicate it was to be the Red Guido, whereas Labour List would face off Conservative Home.

The first has been the one which Derek Draper has been trying to sell from his Canaries break. The second is the one that the News of the World is trailing. Either way the ultimate motivation for both Labour List and the possible Red Rag is/was to combat Guido Fawkes, and Iain Dale, and Conservative Home.

The first interpretation is the one which persuaded me that this story constituted an instance of "Dog Bites Man" or more strictly "Dog Doesn't Bite Man". But I fear that the second interpretation is looking more likely. We'll have to wait and see. But not for much longer.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Iain 's Jump Page continues to develop. The Sunday Times have now published a write round of the emails' main lines. Nothing new actually. And Dorries is NOT named. Not yet.

UPDATE 23:50: Greatest revelation in Mail on Sunday piece is that Damian McBride is only 35. And they say the camera never lies. Interesting that John Torode of The Spectator stated during paper review that all the stories are in general circulation around the Beltway and rather old hat. A few mention for Nads now but still no details.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm no friend of either the Tories or Labour, but the angle of reporting on this story is a bit worrying. Surely, the main story is how messages between friends & colleagues came to be in the public domain. How did the emails get to the Tories? Did they hack into No. 10's system? Were the emails handed to them, and by whom? And should Tories dominate the airwaves by discussing trivia? If the emails were stolen and hacked into, shouldn't the police be asked to investigate?

HarveyProcter said...

A pro Labour blog along the lines of Guido's simply won't work while Labour is in office.And it needs to come from someone with Labour leanings, not the party itself.I have no doubt that will happen once the Tories are in office.

For what it's worth it all seems a bit of a non story to me.McBride has gone, no elected Labour people are involved, despite the spin.Worse still we get Iain Dale spouting about the internet and blogging in the press again.

Anonymous said...

You're off the pace on the Nadine angle. It has been explicitly around for at least the last six hours or so that she is alleged to have had a fling with a fellow Tory MP at an away day event. Keep up, Chris.

As for your strange interpretaion of this particular "gate" I think even you know the game is up and you are just hoping that nobody reads blogs. Well, that may be true in your caae but there are plenty of us that do.

Chris Paul said...

1. Guido got the emails, not "Tories" and most likely from the Draper end;

2. It is a bit of a non-story in many ways. I've not caught up with this morning's updates but the "project shelved" spin was holding up last night;

3. I didn't say I didn't know the Nadine story anon. I have more unused story tips about Nadine than any other MP including Leech and Rowen. My point was that the papers weren't saying.