McBride – dubbed “Gordon Brown’s king of the dirty tricks” - was forced to quit at the weekend after exchanging a series of email with blogger Derek Draper containing slurs about senior Conservative MP's. These were scheduled to appear on an “unofficial” website called Red Rag, and were intended to "put the fear of God" into the opposition Cabinet Office Minister Watson has also been dragged into the affair after being mentioned in one of the emails – but he’s adamant that he’s just as much an injured party as the Tories who were named. Labels: Tom Watson
Monday, April 13, 2009
Listen: Westminster Hour Discussion on Blogging
Iain Dale 1:18 PM
Click HERE to listen.Draper & Watson Call in the Lawyers to Put Pressure on the Media
Iain Dale 12:57 PM
5 Live called to say they were being leaned on by lawyers with regard to any reference to Tom Watson MP and before I went on, would I just be aware of that.
I understand Tom Watson twittered on Saturday asking if anyone had the number for Shillings. Perhaps he wasn't joking.
I asked them what they wanted me to do with that information and were they saying I couldn’t talk about Tom Watson? No said the researcher, we are just under a bit of pressure here, that’s all, just be careful.
BBC Breakfast producer told me they weren’t taking Derek Draper on because they were being leaned on by his lawyers and he had already made ‘legal’ noises against them.
So what’s going on here then?
I’m going to stay in the constituency as I have work to do.
Meanwhile, he has broken cover, not on his blog but on a West Midland site called The Stirrer. Apparently I am guilty of smearing him.West Bromwich MP and occasional Stirrer blogger Tom Watson says he feels “smeared” after being caught up in the email row which has already cost Labour spin doctor Damien McBride his job.
Despite this tenuous link, eh's even got such august journals as the Daily Mail hounding him, and questioning his cabinet role. "Because I'm a blogger and a I've got a big engagement with digital technology they are trying to nail me" Watson said.
"But it's precisely because I'm engaged in that world and I know what I'm doing, I wouldn't send this kind of material by email." Watson also made it clear that the content of McBride's emails was unacceptable. "As soon as we found out what Damien McBride was doing, he tendered his resignation and it was accepted immediately” he said.
The Minister had a strong rebuke for Conservative blogger Ian (sic) Dale, who claimed that when Watson found out about the emails, “he either tacitly or overtly encouraged McBride to send more.”
Dale asked: “Is this really what the Minister for the Civil Service should be doing? He's not some Labour Party hack. He's a Minister of the Crown and responsible for the conduct of all who work in the Civil Service” (http://iaindale.blogspot.com/).
Watson responded by accusing Dale (who has been running a vicious campaign against him) of peddling an "untruth" by suggesting that he knew what was going on.
Now that the Tory writer has made the accusation, the challenge is there for him and other media organisations who've repeated it, to prove it - in short, put up or shut (sic).
Illiterate stuff maybe, but highly revealing. What Watson doesn't answer is this: Did he know about the plans for an attack blog called Red Rag or not? I can't (yet) prove he did, and he can't prove a negative, so this is unlikely to progress very far. All I have said is that it stretches credulity, knowing his background and knowing his role in Downing Street, to believe that he knew absolutely nothing about this. He shares a small office with McBride. I just cannot believe that McBride a) didn't tell him about any of the allegations he was passing to Draper and b) that neither Draper nor McBride mentioned anything about Red Rag.
Is is so unreasonable of me to ask these questions? He clearly thinks so. I'm not, as The Stirrer says, "running a vicious campaign against him". As it happens, I quite like him and have had good personal relations with him in the recent past. But he sits an office where his close colleague Damian McBride sent emails to Draper smearing me. I don't pretend he knew about that, necessarily, but I am not going to let a personal liking for him blind me to what I know his office have been up to.Brown's Thugs at Work
Iain Dale 11:46 AM
I have just discovered your blog this week-end, excellent stuff. I am not sure if you are aware it is also very educational, an aspect of some blogs which is often missed. I have supported Labour for over forty years but since Blair and Brown I have moved further and further away. I live in Scotland and if you wish to observe the real evil of Brown at work (and I mean it) you should investigate the going ons over many years here. Utterly corrupt and vicious in their practices it requires the exposure to the sunlight that you have achieved south of the border to bring Brown and Scottish Labour to book. Have a look at the fixing of selection meetings to favour Brown supported candidates. Constituency chairs will tell you how they have been bullied. Ask activists how they are marshaled when Brown' fixers come calling, and ask failed candidates how they are smeared before selection meetings. All done by Brown's thugs. Remember Scotland is Brown's fiefdom, it will also assist in his downfall.
Derek In His Own Words
Iain Dale 11:28 AM
I left a trail of destruction behind me, in terms of let-down friends and broken relationships. For me, my early involvement in politics gave my life meaning. But eventually those elements fell away. First, I felt I lost my soul, then my work didn't come naturally any more. It began to feel alien. Then I ceased to be able to work and lost my energy, eventually breaking down and becoming profoundly depressed. Everyone assumes I got depressed because of the scandal. Actually, I had been depressed for two years, from around 1996. I thought I had a physical virus.
I'd always been quite arrogant and cocky, but I think I put all my unhappiness into my obsession with the Labour Party. The really spectacular breakdown came two years into my depression with the lobbying thing. That was the killer and I was admitted to the Priory; then I started to get better. I am over it now, though. I haven't been depressed for years, since just before I met Kate, who has changed me for the better anyway. I got rid of my depression by doing a lot of intensive therapy, taking the prescribed anti-depressants, doing yoga and finding solace in prayer, because I eventually realised I had been masking the depression for years with overwork, drinking or womanising.
[My obsession with work and politics] and the power-playing that went with it, and the drink, drugs and promiscuity, were all toys and inside, unbeknownst to me, the little child part of me was in the driving seat... Far from being the Master of the Universe I was more like the tyrant in the playroom. It was only when I reconnected to the child part of me, and was able to offer him the love and stability he craved, that he began to calm down, and my life began to settle. The point is that therapists are always working on themselves, just as much as they are helping their patients to work on themselves. Hopefully, it will make me not only a better therapist but a better husband and a better father. We are healers, not heroes. The old Derek is no more. This is the new Derek.
Yup. Really.The Silence of "Propah Bloggah" Tom Watson
Iain Dale 9:47 AM
Tom Watson MP likes to call himself a "Propah Bloggah". Strange therefore that his blog hasn't been updated since Friday. All sorts of allegations are being made against him yet he declines to use the obvious medium open to him to refute them. Wonder why that would be, then. He's also disabled his Twitter account so you can only see what he is tweeting with his permission. Hardly the actions of a "Propah Bloggah", eh?
Note: Propah Bloggah is a term copyrighted to Sion Simon MP followinghis hugely successful Youtube video (watch this interview with Sky's Anna Botting). The cameraman on the video was Tom Watson who had dreamt up the idea of smearing David Cameron. It rather backfired though. Poor Tom must be used to it by now.What Did Kevin Maguire Know?
Iain Dale 9:01 AM
Some time ago I received a tearful phone call from Nadine. She had just been rung by a leading political editor who put two horrendous allegations to her. It is now clear where he got the tip-off from. The RedRag website may not have physically existed, but its content was being maliciously spread around by its putative creators. Nadine thinks that the site was planned because the newspapers wouldn't run the stories. I strongly suspect that the allegations relating to Osborne and Cameron had been doing the rounds too.
The role of Kevin Maguire, the Mirror's Associate Editor, is very interesting. It appears that he was not only copied some of the emails but was fully aware of the allegations being touted around. Guido has some tough questions to for him to answer. Maguire used to be a top journalist. Now he's just a patsy for the Labour dirty tricks machine. His blogpost yesterday is laughable. He must have been pissed when he wrote it, having vacated his millionaire mansion in Kingston to spend the Easter weekend slumming it in the north. This is his payoff line...Just what is the truth of Cameron's alleged embarrassing complaint of a highly personal nature? I, like the drinkers in the Steamboat, Alum and Riverside, would like to know.
So far 157 comments have been left by people who regard that question as disgusting. The fact is that Maguire knows exactly what the nature of the allegation is because he was involved in the McBride/Whelan/Draper conspiracy. Over to Guido...Funny thing is, Maguire could have had the front page scoop himself. After all - despite today’s disingenuous spin from Liam Byrne* that this was a private matter between only Damian and Derek - Maguire was very much in the know. He could have had the scoop about “Red Rag” himself, months ago. Guido has been calling Maguire all evening to ask him why he didn’t run the scoop himself, or why didn’t he advise his mate Damian against the whole idea? What a scoop Kevin could have there, eh?
Strangely Kev isn’t taking calls from Guido or any of his Lobby friends. When Guido texted our Kev a few questions, someone else called back claiming that he had a missed call from Guido. James Lyons, Kevin’s Mirror mate was the caller. Odd.
Still, no doubt some of Kevin’s fellow Lobby journalists, ruthless investigators that they are, will get the facts from Maguire. When did he know? What did he know? Isn’t that what proper journalists are supposed to ask?
A good question. Maguire normally does the Sky News Paper review on Mondays. Let's hope Steve Dixon and Andrew Pierce skewer him tonight.
Monday, 13 April 2009
The Westminster Hour have put up the nine minute discussion on blogging last night between me and Sunder Katwala from the Fabian Society.
From Nadine's blog...
From a new reader in Scotland...
There's a charming interview in The Scotsman with Derek Draper and Kate Garraway, which, if you have a strong stomach, you can read HERE. Here are some of Derek's more, er, interesting quotes...
We keep being told the McBride/Draper emails were never meant to see the light of day. Bollocks. I couldn't mention this before, but since Nadine Dorries has talked about it on TV this morning, I now can.
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