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2009
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- So what will be the political impact of the budget?
- See Ed Balls skipping
- Has Labour finally cracked the internet?
- South Africa Poll Update
- South Africa Election Game
- McBride is gone - who's next?
- Should the default assumption be that this is spin?
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- Should Labour follow Ireland's example on MPs' pay?
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- Hung Parliament Revisited
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April
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140 comments:
1st
First!
Is it a repeat of last week?
or McBride's revenge on the blogosphere?
Shucks!
Just traffic I think - we're looking at an 1800-comment day, which is at the very busy end, especially for a Saturday.
Liam Byrne on Sky News now.
Draper on Channel 4 (live from the Canary Islands)
Another refugee here. Are you sure it's just traffic Morus. Normally the blog would be able to take the amount of comments. Or do we have a large amount of lurkers.
Database error for me.
Liam Byrne has worked with Damian McBride, why does he refer to him as Mr McBride?
Latest spin line:
McBride thought this should go in the bin - evil Guido has decided they should be published.
alex
For someone who likes to consult his lawyers on a regular basis, Draper doesn't seem to know when to stop digging...
[JSFL] Draper back peddling on who the email was distributed to.
I'm sure viewers will enjoy knowing that this nasty little tyke is sunning himself in the Canaries
The entire current spin line seems to be dependent on it being one email between McBride and Draper. If there are multiple emails and/or other people copied in/receiving then it won't hold.
alex
Anonymous @18:37. Draper says the rumours/smears came from McBride after talking about setting up a site. McBride says today he didn't want them published?
Hmm....
What time do the front pages usually start appearing?
I can't watch anything. I can only read. Sad.
Agree with others querying whether the problem is high traffic.
Getting message:
Failed to establish database connection.
Normally it just goes very slow.
Derek Draper has conceded that others might have been cc'd on the emails on Channel 4.
By the way, it is ridiculous that he can somehow post to LabourList but can't check his email from the Canary islands. Does he think real people don't know how the net works?
Toontoon
Sky usually puts them in the site at 11 pm.
The Guardian says the emails contain nasty rumours about affair between MPs, and about Sam Cameron and Frances Osborne.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/11/damian-mcbride-forced-to-quit
If it's about Samantha Cameron that could be terrible for Labour. No matter when this email exchange happened, the public will not like to see slurs about a currently grieving mother.
ITN said in the news earlier that papers were reluctant to publish the emails as they were very lurid. I think they will now.
Does anyone know if the content of the e-mail is true? Or is it just a rumour that they invented?
You don't go after the wives...
Matthew d'Ancona is firing on all cyclinders on the Coffee House Blog, he is also trailing that his article tomorrow will be about the fall of McBride.
Draper's mistake today was to open his gob while out of the country and unable to keep up to date with the minutiae this unfolding story. He has been a sitting duck to those like Dale and Guido today.
Yes, nasty rumours about politicians are one thing, but if there is anything about Samantha Cameron... crikey.
Not only will Watson have to go, but it will threaten Brown himself, that he employed people like this.
[JSFL] Latest from the NOTW:
The PM's spin-doctor, Damian McBride, and Derek Draper, who heads Labour's internet campaigning, outlined a dirty tricks war of highly personal stories about top Tories.
The plan was far more sophisticated than McBride or Draper have claimed and was close to completion.
Emails seen by the News of the World show McBride and Draper schemed to spread false malicious stories that:
Opposition leader David Cameron had an embarrassing illness
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's wife was "emotionally fragile" just because she appeared upset at parties
A Tory MP used his position to get publicity for lover's business
Involved allegations about female Tory MP Nadine Dorries and another named MP.
In the emails, McBride says: "We've got to keep up the momentum."
Stories had been drafted and pictures selected to run alongside them.
McBride spoke to the Prime Minister this afternoon and formally resigned from his post as senior media strategy adviser.
Draper may have his emails on his hard drive. I can access my emails on the move, but I usually download them onto my PC via Outlook when I'm at home, so when on the move I can't access old ones.
He carefully said that no minister had emailed him over this, not that one might have been cc'd in.
I am getting a variety of connection problems - the database error, unable to connect, and half loading but very very slow.
If the Emails are against Samantha Cameron and Frances Osborne this will be dynamite.
If Nadine Dorries is also involved does that mean the yet unnamed person is also the wife of an MP?
Oh dear:
"The Observer has discovered that the plan was still being discussed a fortnight ago"
That blows all Labour defences out of the water. Liam Byrne will look very stupid. They need yet ANOTHER spin line!
"We've got to keep up the momentum"
?!? Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.
And what is this embarrassing illness crap? Are they saying Cameron has an STD? Given him by his grieving wife?
So not just a few emails sent in a bored half hour, then.
Exactly how many lies have Labour told today?
Christ. If they've really dragged family into the matter, this is going to get bloody.
It looks like the poster who interpretation of Nadine Dorries question to Brown about how he would feel if CCHQ had brought Sarah Brown into this, might have been correct on the earlier thread.
If so, truly horrible.
I presume that Cameron's "embarrassing illness" is alopecia :)
alex
How come Guido's site never goes down? Lads?
Database error for me.
Memo to Draper, to try a damage limitation exercise when you don't know have a clue as to how much others know isn't a good idea.
More and more this looks like a concerted effort from an insider (or maybe more than one). These people have enemies and their desperate attempts to blame 'hacking' are to try and smoke out those who passed this information on.
I just continue to marvel at the ineptitude of Labour planting that Telegraph story this morning. It appears that many of those defending Labour on the news today didn't realise that the story was a plant, and have been made to look very stupid as a result.
And meanwhile the best investigative reporters (those in the Sunday Press) have been given a whole day to find out everything (even those not at the Sunday Times/NotW) so it will now be in ALL the Sundays, not just the original two!
alex
The next PMQs are going to be very interesting, of course The Great Leader, world renowned expert on courage, may have to open a garden shed or something else more important than scrutiny of his disgusting government.
I wonder if these emails are still on the Home Office Email Database. Please have alook for us Jackie ~ Gone Oh No
SeanT - Hosted in Ireland with expensive protection I expect.
Oh dear me, this is getting worse and worse for Labour.
[JSFL]Anon@18:56
Indeed, I wonder whether the words 'morale compass' might come up in the questions?
This is all moving very fast.
The Labour position is now in tatters and they are ploughing on regardless
Dr Who will have to wait
The problem is now that Govt ministers have become exposed. Liam Byrne has gone on TV with the latest line, and its fallen apart already.
alex
I’ve been following events on PB all day; talk about House of Cards meets Eastenders (omnibus edition) whole gamut of emotions from disbelief to disgust with a healthy dollop of mirth thrown in.
Digging over the vegi patch can wait until another day. Oh happy days.
SimonStClare
Every government MP or minister who has been caught lying on air today will have to eat their words.
Seriously - why not just tell the truth? It's going to come out in a few hours anyway.
Is it because they themselves don't know who knew what when, and haven't actually seen the emails? Complete incompetence.
Now the lead story on Google News UK.
I think that the Govt line has been informed by what McBride has been telling them. Since he was, until recently, fighting for his career it is likely that he has been holding stuff back.
Hence the car crash that has been their response today. Made disastrously impossible by not knowing what allegations they were facing, and having no choice but to accept McBride's words.
alex
Andrew Porter will be in trouble at the Telegraph for running McBride's spin this morning.
What a pity that he was too lazy to check the story.
Where does this leave Andrew Porter and his article in the Telegraph last night?
[JSFL] Interesting that Boulton's Blog has nothing on this. last thread 7am this morning.
TC, how spooky is that?
Main site Down???
Dolly was a car crash on C4 news.
Toxicity meter just reached 85%
MTF
If the main site is down, its either another a denial of service attack, or Mike's traffic has reached exponental levels. It just goes to show the level of interest.
MTF
To TC, MTF, URW and others.
Select 'Name/URL' instead of anonymous on the right hand side. You can then use your moniker when making comments.
Sorry, I meant JSFL instead of TC there!
God I’m slow, why didn’t you guys tell me Dolly was a Tory plant?
SimonStClare
Hah. Guido is also down. Aplogies to the lads at pb. At least you do have an alternative venue if it rains.
Guido has gone down...
ARF! Guido's site is now down.
I can get order-order OK.
Guido going down seems a tad too much like coincidence.
SimonStClare.
But I have said that they are Tory Double Agents many times. They will be richly rewarded by the next Conservative government.
Now we need only wait for Agent Darling to activate.
GF site is down now
spoke to soon , it is down
Feels like DoS attacks to me
Yeah but who is denying the service...
Guido and PB both down...
Is this mere coincidence, overload of viewers or have some 'plugs' been pulled...
Disconcerting but at least PB2 is still here!!!
Scrapheap
MI5?
very convenient.
Maybe it was my aside about blowing up parliament.
Whoops. :-)
Dale twitters to Krishnan Guru Murthy
"Tom Watson was involved. See my blog to see how. All the emails were copied to him. Did he tell McBride to stop? Did he ****. "
Why would MI5 want to help this Govt?
Haven't you watched Spooks?
Politicalbetting and Guido Fawkes both down.
How very convenient for the government!
Plato has been covering this story all day - best consilidated coverage on the blogosphere so far.
http://plato-says.blogspot.com/
oh dear. smearing the wives . nice one, Brown. This is seriously bad for NO10 - it goes to the heart of a rotten government that will do anything and say anthing to hang onto power.
Pages 1 to 3 in Sundat Times tomorrow.
So Draper and Watson will probably go tomorrow as well. Leaving Brown to deny he knew anything about it and looking weak again.
A thoughtful article by Sunder Katwala
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/04/very-last-thing-we-needed-was-red-guido.html
He is one of the few sane Labour voices out there.
Well he will be weak. There will be noone to massage his ego.
MTF
i think we can now say for near certainty that Tim is a Labour bot getting fed these dirty stories -just look at the smears he has posted in the past few weeks , its entirely consistent with what McBride/ Draper has been doing.
Planning to smear Samantha Cameron after her recent bereavement is about as low down and sick as you can get.
There's no doubt in my mind that Gordon Brown is right behind all of this.
I think its called overwhelming interest!
I wouldn't be surprised if Guido has had more than 1m hits this afternoon which is the quiet time.
I've had almost 6k just with my rolling story updates which must represent a 0.X fraction of his traffic - particularly given the BBC link.
Glad to see that this is just a blogger story :)
OT: Happy Nepalese New Year
Tim. Beneath contempt. Odious posts. Had nothing to say today apart from an attempt at damage limitation. Why did Gabble suddenly appear?? Draw your own conclusions
MTF
PB and Order-order both down, when will Dale's site go?
Google implied server problems for both...
Stephen Pound say`s Guido is a lice in politics on Sky tonight
MTF a bit unfair. Gabble may have appeared but he certainly wasn't spinning for the Govt.
He does have a tendency to go rogue from time to time.
i can just imagine Brown sat there discussing what they'd say about Samantha Cameron , giggling in that way he does. What a complete nutcase we have as Prime Minister. Someone please get this guy out of our lives , and quick. It is just obscene now.
Pound is just a rent-a-gob
Always a delight to see them go on air without knowing what they are talking about.
He is so good at it.
Talking b0llocks that is!
There was a snippet on one of the news bulletins that I think informs Sean's question about timing. Apparently McBride claimed that he did not want the smears published, "and if they are published now it is Guido's fault". So today was a pre-emptive strike against publication, rather than a damage limitation exercise tomorrow. Didn't work...
Some people might have no problem imagining it, but i think they're getting themselves unnecessarily angry imagining that Brown was at the centre of it.
His crime is that he was happy to have such people as his close advisers, not that he was party to what exactly was going on.
McBride is only 33.
alex reread all his posts when you have time and look at them DISPASSIONATELY.
MTF
speccie coffee house now appears to be down as well. Can anyone else get into it?
The main site is back
Just tried Guido's site and was mysteriously sent to Bob Piper's site, Labour MP.
Ive never heard of him or visited his website.
Are my suspicions justified.
now into the speccie, but it is incredibly slow, is this just a massive amount of interest?
McBride can't be in his 30s
He looks at least mid 50s
Alex, most people understand that Brown is capable of anything. Just think of him last week pushing past his wife to make sure he was next to Obama. He is nasty.
Maybe the story has just been published on some massive American site?
Yes that's the same think malcolm.
I'm still having issues with the main site...
Guido is back up.
James - you are not alone in that
[JSFL] Still can't get into main site?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7995107.stm
"Derek and I decided in the end that this website was the wrong thing to do, and that Derek should not take his online efforts down to the level of Guido Fawkes and his Tory backers."
Isn't this line itself a little dodgy?
This hasn't got to Drudge yet so can assume this is home-grown interest.
Plato: It's on CNN's site, so that may bring some people over.
pb 1 is back
Guess we are over here for a bit!
Labour are ***ts!!!!
Super Watford!!!!!!
194 stjohn - From The Times:
McBride’s second suggestion is to challenge David Cameron, the Conservative leader, to publish his “full financial and medical records”, and spread gossip that he may have suffered from a sexually transmitted disease.
The slur appears to be based on nothing more than Cameron’s admission that, when he was a student, he once attended a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. But McBride suggests “inserting [a] picture of Dr Christian Jessen”, who appears on the Channel 4 programme Embarrassing Bodies. There is no suggestion that the two men know each other.
I think we can pretty safely assume that this story will do ten times more harm to Labour than anyone else.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6078542.ece
I want to know exactly what part of this Derek Draper considered 'brilliant'.
Dale has been a busy boy today... Appearances on SkyNews and BBCNews, an article in the Telegraph and now an article in the Mail...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169355/IAIN-DALE-Smears-glowering-henchmen--8211-like-Nixon-White-House.html
Morus - I suspect Dolly won't be turning up to the next pb.com party....
Richard Nabavi. Yes I read that bit. I think I get it now. The REDRAG team weren't expecting to get caught were they? So a story like that could have harmed Cameron if the trail did not lead back to No 10 Downing Street. Not now though.
My concern, from a betting perspective, is whether there is more damaging "stuff" to come out about Cameron. Mike has alluded to this.
Any tips on Brown's assassin?
Cruddas?
Harman?
Clarke?
Anonymous 22:54
I suspect the assassin will be someone in the unions, privy to the emails through either Whelan or Dodgshon.
Junior union people won't have the same message discipline as junior No. 10 insiders.
stjohn - Has the impact of this been that if a story emerges now about Cameron the first thought might be 'smear'? If so then it could be that this smear operation has backfired to the extent that Labour now look horrific, and Cameron has more of a teflon coating?
Times opinion piece pulls no punches
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6078448.ece
"It was supposed to be a new era. When he accepted the Labour leadership and the premiership of this country two years ago, Gordon Brown promised “a different kind of politics”, one that was more open and honest. He would be guided, he said, by the “moral compass” that had been provided by years of listening to his father’s sermons."
I like this site. It's not better than the other one but it's good
I prefer politicalbetting.com!
Yeah - the poster's name is above the message. I definitely like that.
Throw in some numbers and I'll be happy.
Floater - that is devastating.
Presumably Gordon Brown's father's sermons didnt involve advice about how to smear your opponents with fabricated stories about prostitues, dildos and cocaine, and George Osborne.
Makes the rocking horse story seem tame!
Just read the Times article that Morus linked to, these people aren't juvenile they are sick, twisted human beings.
In decent times they would be humiliated in public for this, made to grovel and kicked into the grass forever.
There will be a day of reckoning and the sooner the better.
I see little evidence that Gordon Brown ever listened to his father's sermons.
James Burdett. Undoubtedly Cameron has been armoured against any "damaging stuff" as a result of this debacle. I am still concerned that there is more to unfold. I am perturbed by Don describing the content of the emails as "DISGUSTING".
I may be being overly pedantic but that implies to me that the smears themselves allude to behaviour by those being smeared that many people would find disgusting?
I wish Don would clarify what he meant by this word. Is he referring to the behaviour of the authors of the emails or the nature of the allegations themselves.
I also wish Mike would clarify whether we are now fully up to speed regarding possible allegations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169346/Browns-attack-dog-sacked-vile-smear-emails-Tories.html
The story was updated.
Or that the smear itself is disgusting.
There's more to come, I think - and it's quite possible that even UK newspapers might find some things too raw to put into print.
Don't know if someone posted.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169355/IAIN-DALE-Smears-glowering-henchmen--8211-like-Nixon-White-House.html
So, I wonder which ones Draper found 'brilliant and rather funny'?
Perhaps the one that said Osborne's wife was mentally fragile, hmm? No, Dolly? Not that one?
Ok... perhaps suggesting Osborne liked to cross dress and black himself up? Do you find that one 'brilliant and rather funny'?
.. perhaps that Nadine Dorries had an affair and they found a sex toy in her room? A real hoot, saying that about a married woman, yes-siree.....
Come on Dolly. Which ones were 'brilliant and rather funny?'
It's disgusting.
Site's up!
Having digested the whole sordid details available tonight, I really am sickened at what these emails contained. Words fail me.
The damage, hurt and distress this has caused for all those involved is just unforgivable. This isn't why I became hooked on UK politics in my teens. And even tonight, those involved don't seem to understand what they have done.
Jesus, I am desperately awaiting the safe return of my brother from Afghanistan soon. And this bunch are running the country!
StJohn, both Don and Guido have stated that some of the content of the emails are simple unprintable in the public domain.
The Times article mentions three emails two from McBride and one from Draper, no more. Though it is is clear from the opening of McBride's first email that their had to have been prior discussion about the Reg Rag project, no further evidence is forthcoming.
There is a mention of Watson, the minister, in one of the emails but not in anyway that could imply his involvement.
The total of the story is far less than the hints from Guido, Dale and others had suggested.
What have we got? Mcbride is a slimeball who was plotting a scurrilous campaign whilst being paid from the public purse. His character has been well known for years and he has now resigned. His fellow conspirator was Draper, already known as a lump of excrement in human form. So no news there either. Whelan, another piece of human detritus was copied in to some of the discussion. So what?
There is either more to come or this has been the most over-hyped story since the millenium bug.
At last a thread I can reply to !
Point1:We need to see something from IG/extrabet.They have been very coy recently.Bravo to Sporting Index for keeping the flag flying and for reducing the Spread by one point.
Point2:For the casual punter,Spread Betting is just about the most dangerous way to go.To make it worse,if you don't have adequate credit facilities it forces you to tie up fortunes compared to what you can win.
Point3:The Spread firms are my weathervane and their five point Spread gives them the appearance of god-like inviolability.You can beat them but you have to be very good......TWICE !
Point4: It is my belief that on the whole, what moves the Spreads is weight of money and not the polls or the narrative.
It could be that there is little actual business being done.
Point5:I hate tipping as such and would never direct people to gamble potentially huge sums on my word.I have made only three definitive bets in the last couple of years and one of them was a mini-disaster.
At this juncture however,a Sell of Labour Seats is looking marked at better than 225.On April 7th I begged a friend to Sell Labour Seats at 228 and LD Seats at 45.0.Last seen at 227 and 44.0 with extrabet/IG that is possibly an even better trade now.
URW
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