Mind boggling stupidity

An interesting post in the FT’s Westminster blog on McBride, Draper and Red Rag, under the title -A saga of mind-boggling stupidity.

The post has some interesting comments which perhaps are worth taking note of here in NZ.

Damian McBride, one of Gordon Brown’s closest aides, was forced to resign at the weekend over emails which he sent to Draper suggesting a variety of smears of senior Tory MPs. Many were sordid. Some were disgraceful. All were false. (McBride’s defence is that they would never have gone public.)

The fact that Draper welcomed the suggestions – describing them as “brilliant” – shows that he missed the entire point of the right-wing blogs which he wanted to emulate. Vicious Guido may be but many of his stories are genuine scoops based on fact. You wouldn’t expect to find utterly unfounded smears on his site of the kind suggested by McBride.

The sad thing is that there is still a vacancy for a left-wing blog which could be amusing, whiplash-smart, irreverent and readable; and could hold the Tories to account.

Draper’s first effort, Labourlist, fell short because it was imposed by Labour high command from above. Red Rag was dead before it even began.

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