Former intimate friend of Derek Draper, James MacIntyre, the New Statesman’s wayward political editor, got his fingers well and truly burnt in a smear straight out of the MacBride/Draper play-book. Macintyre has been moaning about the apparent easy ride the Tories are getting in the press. It seems he likes to hold them to extreme accounts, regardless of the truth. It took Guido days to trawl around for the last edition of the New Statesman but he finally managed to snatch one from a passed-out tramp. Hidden away in it was this apology:

A Carter-Rucking later and a substantial five figure sum gives us confirmation of what was already common knowledge in the  Westminster village: make-it-up-Macintyre smears Conservatives as racists.