Britannia Radio

First in this nasty story, The Times brings it up to date and is 
followed by the Telegraph's own comments .

Then Nadie Dorries, the MP slandered in those e-mails lays into Brown 
personally and devastatinghly.

Finally,  last night was the announcement that Tom Watson - the 
minister for something obscure . . . . Dirty Tricks, perhaps -    has 
got Private Eye's most satirised libel lawyer to write a letter of a 
vaguely threatening tone to try and distance himself from the 
imbroglio.  This is typical NewLabour, bluster and bullying.    But 
he was there definitely - in the same office as McBride.

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THE TIMES    15.4.09
Commons link to Damian McBride smear site is red rag to David Cameron

Dominic Kennedy and Francis Elliott

The website set up to smear Tory politicians about their health, 
family and sex lives was registered to the House of Commons, The 
Times has learnt.
The site, The Red Rag, was to be used to spread slurs prepared in No 
10 by Damian McBride, Gordon Brown's disgraced spin doctor.

The identity of its creators remains a mystery but Mr Brown's 
official spokesman said yesterday that it was "not a matter for the 
Government".
A bogus applicant using the name "Ollie Cromwell" paid £8.99 to set 
up The Red Rag as a campaign blog. The buyer had to provide only a 
name, address, telephone number and e-mail to create the site on 
November 4 last year. The address given was the House of Commons, The 
Times has been told. The site was registered for two years, ensuring 
that it would be in place throughout the general election campaign, 
which must be called by June next year.

The revelation will intensify calls led by David Cameron for an 
official inquiry. The Conservative leader said that an investigation 
was required "to get to the bottom of who knew what and when and how 
widely this went".

Mr Cameron dismissed Mr Brown's attempts to draw a line under the 
affair. "I do not think we will get a change in culture until we get 
a change in leadership, and we won't get a change in leadership until 
we get a change of government.

"These people have just been in power too long; they have forgotten 
who they are serving, what they are meant to be doing, how they are 
meant to behave, and we need some change.
"I do not know what Gordon Brown knew and when he knew it but what I 
do know is that he hired these people, he sets the culture, he is the 
leader and we need change in order to change the culture and stop 
this sort of nonsense."

Downing Street's hopes of preventing the affair from continuing to 
dominate the political agenda faded as it became clear yesterday that 
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, was considering an official 
inquiry.

Mr McBride, a close adviser to the Prime Minister for almost a 
decade, resigned after admitting that he sent e-mails from his 
Downing Street account to the former spin doctor Derek Draper. In the 
private messages, the two men discussed setting up The Red Rag 
"attack blog".

Mr Draper suggested last night that he had responded enthusiastically 
to the e-mails only because he was keen to win favour with Downing 
Street. "I deeply regret what I did," he told The Guardian. "I should 
not have responded to Damian's e-mails as I did. I should have said 
sorry, that is wrong, I will have nothing to do with it."

The Prime Minister wrote to all those mentioned by the stories, which 
he accepts were all untrue, expressing his "deep regret" over the affair
The site is now expected to be taken down because the rules of the 
internet in Britain require an operator's true identity to be 
disclosed. All websites must be traceable to protect the public from 
confidence tricksters, thieves and liars.

The domain name theredrag.co.uk was bought from Easily, one of 
Britain's most successful website sellers. Easily uses security 
systems to prevent its services from being abused, but this political 
ruse slipped under the radar. It checks, for example, whether 
postcodes match addresses.

Stuart Fuller, Easily business manager, said yesterday: "The postcode 
that has been entered here does match the address.
"If someone is registering a domain name they have to give correct 
credentials in terms of their address and their correct name. So by 
having a contact name of Ollie Cromwell and the address, it's likely 
to be false.

Nominet UK, which oversees all domain names ending in .uk, has begun 
an investigation after receiving a complaint. The purchaser of the 
domain name had exploited a privacy rule that permitted "non-trading 
individuals" to keep their addresses off the public register. 
Businesses must list a contact address.

The use of the House of Commons address, and the misuse of the name 
of one of its historic heroes, will be highly damaging if the person 
who made the registration is shown to be a politician or aide. It was 
unclear whether the website purchaser had used a parliamentary e-mail 
address or Westminster telephone number. Nominet declined to make 
public any "personal data" about the operator.

No other websites have been registered to anyone calling themselves 
"Ollie Cromwell". The website consists of a picture of a red flag and 
a parody of the socialist anthem:
". . . though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red 
rag flying here . . ."

The Labour Party has been desperate to distance itself from Mr 
Draper, who runs the LabourList website, since the story broke. The 
party said in a statement that it had not funded Mr Draper's internet 
activities but admitted that it had hosted events for the former aide 
to Lord Mandelson.

John Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister, is among Labour 
figures calling for Mr Draper to be removed from LabourList - his 
attempt to counter right-of-centre internet sites. But the party said 
that it was powerless to act as the website was an independent 
operation.

Mr Draper said: "I know there are people saying I should go - but I 
think LabourList is a good idea and I hope to leave it for a week 
before deciding whether to try to soldier on, which is what I think 
at the moment."

Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, in his letter 
calling for a formal inquiry, asked Sir Gus to investigate whether 
Tom Watson, the Cabinet Office Minister, was aware of the website.

Lawyers acting for Mr Watson issued a statement insisting that he had 
"no involvement in or knowledge of" the Red Rag proposals.  [- - - - 
- - -]
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TELEGRAPH   Leader 15.4.09
Labour loses its last shreds of credibility
Telegraph View: the Damian McBride affair shows Labour at its lowest 
- and presents the Conservative Party with an unbeatable political 
opportunity.

Those expecting Gordon Brown to voice contrition over the Damian 
McBride affair are in for a long wait. The Prime Minister does not do 
apologies, whether it is over his stewardship of the economy or his 
personal choice of special adviser. This refusal to shoulder 
responsibility means that the furore over Mr McBride's obnoxious 
emails is proving stubbornly resistant to the normal vagaries of the 
news cycle, and the damage to the reputation of both Mr Brown and the 
Government will be all the greater.

That is the paradox of this affair. An attempt to drag the Tories 
through the mud has succeeded instead in exposing the moral and 
political vacuity of Labour. It is the Government's own supporters 
who are most outraged by the events of the past five days, not their 
Tory targets, who have learned to expect no better from the Labour 
spin machine. Frank Field, one of Labour's most thoughtful 
backbenchers, spoke for many of his colleagues yesterday [see "A 
Field day and other comments at 1609 yesterday]  when he said that 
the McBride affair had left the party staring into an "abyss of 
nothingness". A party whose political vision has rarely extended 
beyond the tired old socialist cliché of tax and spend finds itself 
bereft of ideas now that the economy has tanked and tax revenues are 
drying up. All it has left is an undiminished and ugly appetite for 
the smearing of opponents.

The air of decay is palpable. When was the last time a minister had 
anything interesting to say about an issue of substance? We have 
heard far more about the rosy state of Jacqui Smith's taxpayer-funded 
finances in recent weeks than we have about health, education, 
welfare or defence.

This offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to the Tories. In 
seven weeks' time, the European and English county council elections 
will present Mr Brown with the biggest electoral test of his 
premiership. Between now and then, the Conservatives must do two 
things. First, they must show they can fill the policy vacuum. The 
country may have had its fill of Labour, but the Tories have yet to 
deliver a blueprint for government that can excite and energise the 
electorate. There have been some excellent policy ideas, but not 
quite the over-arching picture of how a Tory Government would make a 
real difference to people's lives.

The second task represents an even taller order: Mr Cameron must 
convince the country that the Conservatives can restore public 
confidence in the political process. That confidence has been 
shattered by the ingrained cynicism and deceit of a Labour Party so 
morally stunted that it employed at the highest level a man who 
believed an opponent's wife to be fair game.
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TELEGRAPH 15.4.09
Gordon Brown presiding over a 'cesspit' at Downing Street, claims 
Nadine Dorries
Downing Street under Gordon Brown is a "cesspit", Nadine Dorries, a 
Conservative MP smeared in the email that prompted the resignation of 
Damian McBride, has said.

By Jon Swaine

Yet aides like Mr McBride are only acting in accordance with the 
Prime Minister's values, meaning throwing them "to the wolves" is not 
sufficient, she said.

[- - - - - - - - - - - -].

Ms Dorries, the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, said that she was offended 
by a letter she received from Mr Brown in the wake of the 
resignation, which expressed "regret" that "our politics" had been 
damaged.

It was sent after Mr McBride, a long-term adviser to Mr Brown, was 
forced to resign after admitting that he sent "juvenile and 
inappropriate" emails from his Downing Street account to former spin 
doctor Derek Draper. In it the Prime Minister expressed "great 
regret" that "our" politics had been affected in such a way.

"That's what I take offence to - it's not 'our politics'. It is the 
cesspit of 10 Downing Street and to say that we are all tarred with 
the same brush as Damian McBride is unacceptable," she told the BBC.
"It is the culture of 10 Downing Street. Downing Street was operating 
according to the values of the Prime Minister."
"It is not enough to throw staff to the wolves because they have been 
caught - they were espousing his values."

Ms Dorries said that Mr Brown's handling of the scandal brought into 
question his ability to adequately do his job.
"If he had written a letter, spelt my name right [!!] and said sorry, 
then this would all have gone away and the story would have dropped 
off the radar," she said. "But the PM has misjudged this so badly, so 
with things like the war Afghanistan, the war in Iraq - how are they 
being judged?"

Her comments came as Mr Draper revealed he was considering stepping 
down from running LabourList, a Labour-supporting website.

Tory leader David Cameron has said Mr Brown bore responsibility for 
creating a culture that allowed a senior aide to consider smearing 
senior Conservatives.

And he said only a change in government would bring an end to such 
"nonsense".

Cabinet colleagues publicly rallied to support the Prime Minister but 
other senior Labour MPs said the scandal exposed an unhealthy culture 
of hostile briefings - often against them - and a serious need for 
the Government to focus on policy.

[--------The rest is a 're-cap' of information elsewhere -------]
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SPECTATOR Blog 14.4.09
Watson denies knowledge of the smear emails
FRASER NELSON 6:31pm

Well the "statement" is in - not so much from Tom Watson as from his 
lawyers, Carter-Ruck, who are complaining about Iain Dale's article 
in the Mail on Sunday which claimed that Watson was copied into those 
emails.

Here is the statement:
"We have today been instructed by government minister Tom Watson, MP 
for West Bromwich, in connection with allegations concerning him and 
the emails exchanged between Damian McBride and Derek Draper relating 
to a proposed website entitled 'Red Rag'. We have today written to 
the editors of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail to complain 
about the publication of the false allegation that our client had 
knowledge of, and participated in, Mr McBride's actions. We have made 
it clear that our client has confirmed to us that he was not copied 
in on any of the emails exchanged between Mr McBride and Mr Draper, 
nor was he aware of them or their content until their existence was 
first drawn to the attention of Downing Street by national 
newspapers, on Friday April 10. He still has not seen them. We have 
further made it clear that our client had no involvement in or 
knowledge of the 'Red Rag' website."

But is Watson suing? I suspect not - because, if so, the Mail on 
Sunday could ask for disclosure and open up Damian's inbox. What a 
sight that would be. A sight that, something tells me, No10 is not 
keen to treat us all to. So we can see this as Watson trying to use 
attack as a defence.
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As someone says in their comment on this blog - - "Watson isn't the 
first and won't be the last to use messrs Sue,Grabbit and Run to try 
to put the frighteners on legitimate comment and inquiry.The fact 
that he has been lying doggo for the past several days is pretty 
eloquent; even more that he shared an office with the creature 
McBride.Perhaps I will get a threatening email or more likely a knock 
on the door from the Stasi"