Sunday Times claims Ed Balls ran Labour's smears unit

From tomorrow's Sunday Times:

Ed Balls, the schools secretary, used Damian McBride, the disgraced spin doctor, to smear ministerial rivals and advance his own ambitions, a Downing Street whistleblower has claimed.
In an explosive new twist to the e-mail affair, a No 10 insider has revealed that Balls was the mastermind behind a “dark arts” operation by McBride to undermine colleagues.
He claims the education secretary is running a destabilising “shadow operation” inside Downing Street to clear his path for the party leadership if Labour loses the next election.
The insider said: “There is now an operation within an operation at No 10 and it answers to Ed Balls.”

Now see what the News of the World has to say.

I am enjoying this.

News of the World: Labour general secretary helped hatch Red Rag scheme

Tomorrow's News of the World claims:

A new email shows that Labour's General Secretary Ray Collins chaired a secret meeting to create the Red Rag website now ensnared in the Smeargate scandal.
The email's existence links the dirty tricks site to the very TOP of the Labour Party.
And it exposes the LIE, put out by Downing Street, and repeated by government ministers this week, that the smears were just a minor aberration cooked up by a couple of renegades acting alone-and which would never have seen light of day.

Two things are worth adding.

The first is that, according to a PR Week report I blogged last September, it was Collins who asked Draper to advise Labour on using the new media. And according to the News of the World:

Collins granted Draper a pass to Labour Party HQ in Westminster, and even allowed him a Labour Party email account.

The second is Draper's claim in a Guardian interview last Wednesday that he "honestly cannot remember whose idea it was to set up Red Rag".

If - and you may think this a big if - we believe Draper on this, that statement implies that the idea was discussed among a number of people in the Labour Party.

The Red Rag was registered to the House of Commons

The Times reports:

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.

Amusingly, The Red Rag is still in place.

Derek Draper wins Improbable Book of the Week

Right now, who is the very last person you would turn to for advice on how to live your life? Derek Draper perhaps?

Which is why this award goes to Draper for his Life Support: A Survival Guide for the Modern Soul:

Psychotherapy helps thousands of people every day: they feel happier, achieve more success and enjoy better relationships. Prominent psychotherapist Derek Draper has chosen to share his tips and tools from the therapy room to help exactly those people.

In this groundbreaking book he explores 40 key issues that impact almost everyone's lives, uses examples drawn from real life to help you gain a better understanding of why things happen, and provides clear insights and advice that will help you think about life's challenges in new, more positive ways.

You really couldn't make it up.

"Absolutely totally brilliant Damian": The McBride/Draper emails

The Sunday Times has details of those emails.

News of the World trails its story on McBride/Draper emails

Later. The full story is now on the News of the World website.

From the News of the World website earlier this evening:

Tomorrow the News of the World will reveal the sensational details in the shocking email smears sent by Gordon Brown's top aide.

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."

Derek Draper: "a pipsqueak" and an "unwise young man"

This is a good day to remember the wise words of Anthony Howard.

And my own from last September:

A bit of free advice to Labour strategists: encourage Derek Draper to go back to California.

The blogging news

The Guido vs Draper mudfight took place on The Politics Show today. I am in an internet cafe in Leicester and the video does not work for me, so I have not watched it yet. From the still, neither participant is an advertisement for blogging as a healthy lifestyle.

In connection with this contest, Draper has slammed Guido and Guido has slammed Draper.

Elsewhere, Mark Pack has got a new job and is leaving Cowley Street. Congratulations to him, but whatever shall we do, O Lord?

And congratulations to two denizens of my blogroll - Iain Dale and Alix Mortimer - on being shortlisted for the blogging category of the Orwell Prize.

This just in: Guido blinks.

Guido Fawkes and Derek Draper to wrestle in mud

From the BBC Daily Politics blog:

They have had a go at each other online and now two rival bloggers will face each other for the first time in the Daily Politics studio. 

The Battle of the Blogs will see Guido Fawkes and Derek Draper go up against each other on our Thursday 26 March programme.

It may be fun, but I wonder if this sort of presentation of blogging will do much for its reputation with the wider public.

Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) and Draper do have one thing in common: both have been taken apart on Newsnight by a senior political journalist.

Staines' encounter with Michael White is well known, but I have fond memories of Draper being taken apart by a headmasterly Anthony Howard too.

I can't find a video of it, but it is described in this 1998 article from the Independent:

One of the most stinging rebukes delivered to Draper did not come from the Left, but from the respected Labour biographer and former New Statesman editor, Anthony Howard. He appeared on Newsnight, wearing black tie, to impose the full weight of his Gaitskellite moral authority on the delinquent whom he called "a pipsqueak" and an "unwise young man".

We are all joining Lynne's Army, apparently

From PR Week:

The Liberal Democrats are planning to mobilise an 'army of bloggers' in a bid to fight Labour and the Conservatives over the web.

Up to 100 Lib Dem bloggers are set to convene at the end of this month to thrash out ways in which the party can improve its internet communications.

The assembled bloggers will discuss ways to use the web to mobilise supporters. They will also look in to the possibility of unleashing a ‘star blogger’ to rival Labour’s Derek Draper or the Tory-leaning blogger Iain Dale.

The meeting on March 28 will be chaired by Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone, who was recently appointed by party chiefs to head a new ‘technology advisory board’.

Did we know about this?

Labour List visits my Farm

Earlier this week I discussed the spat and subsequent making up between Alex Hilton of Labourhome and Derek Draper of Labour List.

Recess Monkey tells us that Alex has contracted bacterial meningitis and been admitted to hospital. He is currently in isolation ward but should be moved to a general ward in the next few days.

I wish him a swift recovery.

Meanwhile Labour List has linked to one of my Calder's Comfort Farm columns for the New Statesman. (You may recall it was recently discontinued as part of the magazine's innovative new media strategy of commissioning no blogs or columns for its website.) It was the one where I laughed at the claim by Daniel Kawczynski, Tory MP for Shrewsbury, that Otis Ferry is being held as a political prisoner.

It was nice of them to do so. Unfortunately, Tom Guise, the author of the Labour List post, combines sententiousness with the sort of prefabricated phrases that George Orwell complained about to say:

Daniel Kawczynski belittles the struggle of hundreds of thousands of oppressed people throughout history by describing Otis Ferry as a ‘political prisoner.’

You can just imagine people in the Gulag saying:

I can bear these sufferings, Alexei Nikolaevich, as long as no one ever compares me with Otis Ferry.

Alex Hilton: "You know I can't be angry with you for long, Derek"

The post on Labourhome I wrote about the other day - the one in which Alex Hilton appeared to be complaining that he had been threatened by Derek Draper - has disappeared without any explanation. It lives on for a while in the Google cache.

Now Labourhome has a touching post that ends:

Despite our differences we have worked together on our own projects and hitherto been supportive of each other. Having agreed to disagree on MessageSpace that will now continue.

Yours in comradeship,

Alex Hilton and Derek Draper

Meanwhile, Dogstarscribe's Weblog has written in reply to my original posting. He says:

Telling Alex that hanging round with Paul Staines can damage your reputation is less of a threat than an observation.

I left a lighthearted comment saying, "It sounds a bit Dinsdale Piranha to me: 'Nice blog you’ve got here. Pity if anything happened to it'.” It has yet to appear on the blog.

Let's be charitable and assume that he is busy.

Who is threatening Alex Hilton?

Later. Alex Hilton's post has disappeared without explanation.

Alex Hilton, who runs the Labourhome blog, has received "a threatening phone call from a Labour member upset that I have a relationship with the Tory blogger Guido Fawkes".

Hilton and Paul Staines (who writes Guido Fawkes) founded the Messagespace advertising scheme for political blogs. And Staines is also a personal friend of Alex Hilton.

Hilton writes:

I have been told that if I don't extract myself from Messagespace I will be painted as endorsing every offensive comment or article on the Guido Fawkes site, that of Devil's Kitchen, Iain Dale and every other right winger on the system.

I have been told that I don't have Labour values by owning shares in Messagespace though, frankly, I feel more guilty about not checking where my tiny pension pot is invested. I have been told that there will be a campaign to rubbish me in the Labour Party and this will inevitably reflect badly on Labourhome.

Who is making these threats?

I do not know and Alex Hilton says he will not say. But it is interesting that Derek Draper, who recently reappeared on the political scene and founded Labourlist, writes as follows on his personal blog:

Another of our commenters, Neil Fraser, has put together the following list of advertisers on Paul Staines' racist website. Anyone who also feels that racism on the internet must be stamped out should also contact these companies. Ther (sic) are some e-mails below, as Neil says, do send in more. Let us know how you get on.

Thanks to Iain Dale.

Derek Draper hosts Labour blogging breakfast

Back in September I reported that Labour's Derek Draper was exploring plans for an online rapid rebuttal unit to kill off damaging stories circulating in the blogosphere.

Now, according to Guido Fawkes, he has raised his ambitions:

Tomorrow morning Derek Draper is convening a "New Media Breakfast" meeting with dozens of Labour bloggers and New Media types to hear from Blue State Digital how Labour can use the internet to win the next election. Blue State Digital are the people that did Obama's online stuff - rather well.

Guido also claims to have the list of attenders. Among them is Sunny Hundal - the moving spirit of Liberal Conspiracy and one of the judges of this year's Lib Dem blog awards.

Hmm.

Labour plans blogosphere rebuttal unit

From PR Week:

the Labour Party is exploring plans for an online rapid rebuttal unit, designed to kill off damaging stories circulating in the blogosphere.

Former lobbyist Derek Draper will oversee the initiative, having recently been called in by Labour’s general secretary to advise on how the party can communicate its message.

Labour strategists are keen to respond to the growing influence of right-wing blogs. The eventual system could resemble a modern-day version of Labour’s famous Excalibur unit, which was successfully used to kill negative stories by Tory-supporting newspapers in the run-up to the 1997 general election.

Draper will meet sympathetic bloggers and web-savvy political campaigners over the next few months to thrash out the details.

A bit of free advice to Labour strategists: encourage Derek Draper to go back to California.

Meanwhile, the Tories have had rather a good idea for their Birmingham Conference next week:

Head of new media Rishi Saha has worked with regional organisation Screen West Midlands to identify ten influential bloggers in the area, who have been given free VIP passes to the conference.

If they ever meet in Leicestershire, I shall expect to receive accreditation.

Thanks to Guido Fawkes.