It reflects badly on you to emphasise Guido’s trivial mistakes, rather than the fine service he has given attacking the unseemly side of politics.

And the reputation of democratic politics as a whole falling by how many percentage?

What I want to talk about in politics is how we can get things moving, how we can get people what they want, how we can resolve the climate change issue, etc etc etc. Not throwing silly insults at each other. I couldn’t give a piece of crap for Guido Fawkes or any other of these pumped-up nonentities who seem onlt to be interested in silly personal tittle-tattle.

Guido Fawkes single-handedly smashes the Labour communications set-up, demolishes a good few reputations – with a few more scalps yet to be taken – and is responsible for Labour taking a 5% hit in the polls.

Stephen Tall describes him as being merely “a naughty boy”.

Tells us a bit more about Stephen Tall than it does about Guido Fawkes, I think.

As for Guido, good on him. He has broken a great story, caused alot of discomfort for the Lobby journalists and has had a real impact.

Well done.

“Back in 2007, Guido spent months attempting to convince his blog’s many readers that Gordon Brown had been photographed on a rocking horse wearing a nappy, and to utilise the power of search engine optimisation and Google to spread this ridiculous tale across the entire internet. It even made it onto Wikipedia, and when I tried to remove it, some patsy came along and reverted my edit.”

I doubt there was ever a serious attempt to persuade anyone of this fantasy. I’m not even sure if Guido came up with it. I’ve followed the blog for a long time and I can vouch for my own lack of persuasion!

“He also gave house-room to a sock puppet called “Stanislav” who suggested, in one particularly disgusting post, that the Prime Minister had been steadily driven mad by the strain of repressing his “homosexuality” over many years – part of a deadly serious attempt by the right to fix the idea of Gordon as a “weirdo” in the public’s mind”

I think there was an err…laissez-faire approach to comment moderation on Guido’s blog. This is in line with libertarian philosophy and it also pushes up the number of comments! The “Gordon is Gay” rumour is one I’ve heard independently elsewhere even before I chanced upon the Guido Fawkes blog….I still don’t believe it.

My main gripe is people making fun of Brown’s partial blindness…this isn’t funny and is unnecessary….the injury and the years of fearing total blindness must have been difficult to bear. This doesn’t mean that people shoud refrain from attacks on Brown’s somewhat megalomaniac personality!

Whatever else that tactic is, “dog whistle” is the wrong terminology.

Dog whistle campaigns are when you say things that can only be heard by certain groups. A classic example is referring to “limits on immigration” when you want people to hear “fewer asians”

The emails were sent in January this year. They were nasty, but no further action was taken.

I know in the past I have entertained nasty thoughts of managers I have worked with. Though fortunately these were stated over a beer, not in text and in those days no one a camera that could record what we were saying.

Guido and the Tories strategy is the ‘dog whistle’ tactic. Every day, every week, every month put out bad info about your target. Get a negative twist on anything they say, or do, or don’t do.

It worked Labour panicked. Instead of trying to aim body political blows on Cameron and his cronies on policy, or their ‘achievements’, such as an ‘improved rail service’ run of capitalist lines, Draper and McBride speculated on fighting in Guido territory setting up Red Rag.

Once the news broke the Tories played their cards marvellously. Indignation, threats of legal action, heavyweights in every radio and TV station.

Why was Gordon smearing them when he should be worrying about the economy?

Then the pressure for Gordon to apologise. If he did he was obviously involved. If he didn’t he was obviously not in control of his office.

(Apparently this was more important then sorting out the economy or they would have let Gordon get on with it.)

Then there is the question of how did the emails get leaked. Did Guido have them for a long time and then decide to release them at an opportune time? I doubt it.

Has Draper’s emails been hacked? By right wing groups or out of control secret service personnel? Possibly?

Or did someone of the Blairite tendency leak them? Stronger possibility.

What is clear is that the Labour Party machine has lost its ability to deal with media problems.

The obvious strategy for Gordon Brown, when asked for an apology was a two word reply. The second word being ‘OFF’

As for being a libertarian – he is one sort of libertarian, and that’s no bad thing, but just as there are different sorts of liberal (just look at the LibDems).

@David
Ayn Rand hated libertarians… (objectivists are possibly one small grouping of libertarian in my opinion, but they will deny that).

To imply, as Paul Linford does, that Guido can be part of any concerted “deadly serious” attempt is either a complete failure to appreciate Irishness and/or an inability to grasp the differnce between ‘serious’ snd flight-of-fancy. It is equally a category mistake to call Guido a libertarian: can you see him as a wooden Ayn Rand character religiously seeking a consistent standpoint against the evils of over-government?

The solution is honest, dogged, investigative jounalism; not Guido. But if a LibDem Guido should arise (I suspect we all are too fair-minded and well-mannered), I would be delighted. No Labour Guido can arise: New Labour is too distrustful and detructive of individual initiative to permit it. permit

GUIDO should go after the UNITE union now and expose what is going on there? Why public taxpayers are funding a party that indulges in smear….

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