The tragi-comedy aspect is that Draper started out with goodwill (or at least tolerance) from almost everyone – excepting those he had bullied/deliberately had fights with before.

He blew it all through his own actions, ignoring the advice he received from everywhere on and offline- Dale, LabHome, you name it. The man is a bull with a built-in China shop.c
One has to be completely bonkers or hallucinating to go out to attempt to destroy the livelihood of those who are supposed to be your political allies (threatening phone calls to Jag Singh/Alex Hilton, campaign against Messagespace etc).

The death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts.

>However, it has all been blown up out of all proportion. What McBride did might have been odious, but it is in a long tradition of political smearing.

I think that is starry-eyed. My take is that the McBride stuff is simply the outcome of a political culture in the heart of New Lab that puts retaining power above human decency. I see no difference in attitude from the way they operated under Blair 12-15 years ago. The clearest example was perhaps the insistence on Robin Cook confessing his affair to his wife at the airport for media reasons. Exactly the same: damage a political non-combatant because it is politically necessary.

>Bernard Ingham as Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary did more than his fair share of smearing.

At least an order of magnitude different in my view.

“New” Labour was always unattractively paranoid and vicious. What is surprising is that they have been pilloried for it for ten years and more and still not got the message. More…

http://paulseaman.eu/2009/04/only-nlabour-thought-thered-be-mileage-in-gossipe/

I also agree with Guido's suggestions!

Glad to see you condemning McBride's behaviour. But you have fallen into the trap of dismissing the episode on the grounds 'everyone's doing it'. You're right to remind us about Bernard Ingham, though he had the luxury of indulging in such tactics under a government with a comfortable majority, long before social media had been invented. (As an aside, as a measure of hypocrisy it's hard to beat Ingham's polemic against New Labour spin, The Wages of Spin!)

Times have changed. One of the tragedies of the post 1997 Labour government is precisely that it broke its promise to be different, to banish sleaze. We learned the reality almost immediately with the Bernie Ecclestone affair, the attempt fix elections in London and Wales … and the obsession with spin. I'm not naive enough to think that Labour could afford not to tell its story effectively and forcefully. But the social media revolution means that the days of control are all but over. It's about time those involved in politics realised this.

The McBride scandal (not to mention the parliamentary expenses row) gives the impression yet again that politicians cannot be trusted, and have a very loose relationship with truth. This matters if we are to have any chance of reversing voter apathy and cynicism.

@GuidoFawkes – can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with everything you say! Except I wasn't suggesting that Tom should head LabourList. That's not what Jeremy Hunt does, I've explained more fully on Kerry McCarthy's blog (not actually up yet!).

Does Tom Harris actually want the job? He clearly has a nose for news, his personal blog is a success and he is frankly, "a grown up".

Next find yourself a backer – Mike Danson bought LabourHome, is he interested in merging LabourList into it? Seems divisive and inviting of conflict to have two grassroots Labour organisations. Maybe have Tom in a chairman of the board role and Alex Hilton in a CEO type role?

Don't try and occupy my turf. I am not trying to win votes, I can afford to play by very different rules and take risks as well as be risque. Despite what some of simpler minded types think, the Tories in government will find Guido as much of a thorn in their side as McBride did.

Technology: Drupal or WordPress are the way to go. Tangent don't really have much of a clue. How much of a budget will this need? £50,000 should do it for staff. Guido costs £100 a month or so to run – which is tiny compared to the advertising revenue it generates.

Draper has provided us with three months of comedy, or tragi-comedy depending on your viewpoint. He was always going to do that, when I told a senior newspaper political editor I was going to destroy Draper, he said there was no need; Draper will destroy himself, it is his nature, it is what he does.

There was a certain inevitability about it all. From the launch day at Labour HQ when he had his deranged shouty rant at the Guardian reporter to his more recent barefaced lying on the Daily Politics, he now says "part of me in the dark night of the soul feels like I just attract controversy". Yes Derek, that is because you are still a bullshitting shyster. I shall really, really miss you. He did achieve one ambition, LabourList has become known, through blanket Smeargate coverage, to "60 million people, not 60 bloggers". You can't take that away from him.

First thing absolutely no doubt the Cons will win the next election so in those terms this is irrelevant.

This story, for me, is mainly interesting because of the spin, Lab ******* it up and Con excelling angle.

Serf the story is also staying top of the news stack because the Cons cleverly keep changing what's pissing them off about it and they are absolutely hammering Lab in the spins stakes. Fantastic media manipulation, although they need to very soon say, 'OK, lets drop it, Browns not going to apologise or accept responsibility' and play the badly done by victim.

Cams new indignation (yesterday, don't know what it is today) is that it is 'cultural', using the same argument he's the man who 'allowed' Spelman to commit fraud and left her in his shadow cabinet but the Labour spin machine, unlike the Tories, is in complete disarray.

I'd be absolutely fuming if I was senior Lab, not only did the Tories first notice that the gen pub would be pissed off if they looked closely at the expenses situation (that had been public domain for years) but they also found 'a friend' in the expenses/accounts department to keep drip feeding (anonymously) stories of Lab politicians to focus the public beautifully on Lab when both parties were 'guilty'. Cam and Osbourne (for the first time in God knows how long) kept their heads down and absolutely stum knowing that they were just as guilty. Brilliant spin.

Give me the national average hourly wage and Cameron's expenses and I absolutely guarantee that I'll find claims that are just as 'scandalous' as Smiths claims. I'd have to exclude the London MP second home claim from that as I don't know if Cam is a London MP but I'd certainly find a Shadow Cabinet member who was claiming for a second London home. But if Cam hasn't got a second London home how the **** is he claiming roughly the same as Smith? Labour spin getting left on the red smear on their pants.

The expenses claims reality both 'guilty', Con = good spin, Lab = terrible spin/defence.

This latest email thing I'd be absolutely pulling my hair out, they had a “solid investigative story”, about a Tory MP promoting his partners business interests in the Commons. **** did they need that story and it's a legit story, not as bad as Labours Lord Blackburn who I hope goes to prison although he won't, he's above the law.

But the spin doctor mixed up a 'solid' story with lots of spurious rumour about scandalous ******s and instead of us thinking about the possible bad behaviour of a Tory MP we're looking at Labour thinking dirty, cheating *******s. I'd remove Damien's tackle with a fork and rusty spoon.

Another couple of media manipulation/spin questions how did the emails become public knowledge? How fantastic is it for the Tories that their spin machine is purring like a Rolls Royce on newly lain tarmac while the Lab machine is a Mini Metro newly abandoned in Meanwood beck?

Keeping up the cars analogy just as Prescott is known as '2 Jags Prescott' if the Labour spin machine had even been on the road for the last 2 years David should be known as 'Cameron the man who jogs in front of his Humvee to save the planet'. The Labour spin vehicle should have tattooed that image across Cameron's forehead in the mind of the nation.

For me, Cameron is an extremely slick, presentable and intelligent PR man, I've seen nothing else, other than a ropey understanding of economics. But hey, it's on such spurious ******s that we elect people.

Hi Stuart

I do have to pick you up on this. I tweeted you a couple of months ago to see what your view on Draper's efforts to date was. I paraphrase your reply but it was not dissimilar to the above comment. In short, you had spoken to him, he knew he had a lot to learn and we would all see some changes (for the better) soon. In fact, it turns out, that it was at this time that he was up to his neck in the Red Rag/ MacBride smears.

I'm not sure that any engagement with social/digital media is better than none when the results of Draper's efforts have been so catastrophic for the Labour Party's reputation.

I find it difficult to understand what aspect of his involvment with the Labour Party's digital strategy he deserves credit for? His extraordinary approach to engaging with social media, which seems to consist of importing the worst aspects of the Westminster Village, has probably done more to damage the enterprise he was seeking to help than any other individual. He may have even hastened the demise of the government (time will tell). None of this merits credit.

Cheers

James