Guido Fawkes: Paul Staines is Playing Semantics With "Smear"

Oh dearie me. I'm not sure that right-wing smearer in chief Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes aka Mister GuF actually knows what the word "smear" means. He features a blogpost from Tom Watson MP, drawing attention to David Cameron and his school drug record, in which Tom also puts a question about whether Cameron and his mob will have been to Staines organised raves, being as they are more-or-less contemporaries. Mister GuF calls this smearing.

Personally, I don't give a monkeys actually about whether David Cameron had a spliffing time behind the bike sheds of Eton, or took on a spot of Columbian marching powder in the backroom of a Krays haunt in the East End*, still less got on one matey at one of Paul's illegal parties. But the thing about this so-called smear from Watson was that it was (a) a mainstream media story; (b) true facts, fair comment, reasonable exploration; and (c) Cameron was squirming and refusing to give a full account of his activities. That's not smearing. It's not even discrediting Cameron in any meaningful way. Just coarse politics in action.

If Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes aka Mister GuF had a genuine interest in stopping this culture of real smears he'd take this post down for a start. A post in which our hero appears to admit that neither he nor a full police investigation could link any individual to some extremely heavy manners and disgraceful unpleasantness ... yet he juxtaposes names, including Watson's, with this activity. This is of course actionable.

As far as I know Paul Staines aka Mister GuF has not received any direct correspondence from Tom Watson's solicitors Carter-Ruck. He may have done. Such correspondence might be labelled "private" with consequences for publication even of its very existence. But if so we don't know. Not over the above. Not over Paul's other regular and knowing slanders and libels, followed also by Iain Dale, followed also by Nadine Dorries MP. The three claiming over and over again that Watson is involved, specifically that his name was cc'd on emails, that he must be involved given the damning arrangement of the office furniture.

Guido has reproduced the Carter-Ruck statement on the matter of the Red Rag.

* For the avoidance of doubt, this is an absurd for instance.