Tribune’s Rene Lavanchy reports back from yesterday’s official press launch of DraperList, where Draper lost the plot shouting at the Guardian’s David Hencke

“Justify the headline in that fucking story! Go and change it before you become the laughing stock of the lobby!… Doing Guido Fawkes’ dirty work…”

In the Independent this morning the headline is

Sparks Fly as Draper Meets his Tormentor
By Henry Deedes

Derek Draper yesterday became embroiled in the sort of fracas Westminster hasn’t seen for many a year. The editor of the much-vaunted DraperList website was hosting a “Bloggers Breakfast”, an event aimed at discussing Labour’s internet strategy attended by Peter Mandelson. Proceedings were civil until The Guardian’s political journalist David Hencke entered the fray.

“Draper squared up to him, jabbing his finger, insisting he’d end Hencke’s career,” says an onlooker. “It was quite nasty.” The row was about a Hencke piece accusing Draper of “spinning” his qualification to imply that he had obtained an MA in clinical psychology at the world-renowned Berkeley branch of the University of California. Draper went to the Wright Institute in Berkeley.

Draper, a qualified psychotherapist, rebuffs the claim. “People can say what they like about my politics but if they question my professional reputation it is more serious,” he said. “It made me angry and I didn’t have a problem with showing it.”

One account says that Draper had to be restrained by a horrified Labour press officer. Now what was it that Draper told that blogger’s fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference last year? The quote was:

“If you want to be a superstar blogger and get the headlines yet lose Labour the election, you can just f**k off.“

Psycho-therapist heal thy self.

Guido has more bad news for Derek – Guido has more evidence coming that Draper has misled people as to the source of his qualifications. Come on Derek, serve that writ or “you can just f**k off.“

David Hencke has got Draper to admit that contrary to the impression he gave him for a recent Guardian profile, his qualification comes not from the world famous Berkeley, but from a small private institution called the Wright Institute in California.

According to the report

Unlike Berkeley, the privately owned Wright Institute, according to its website, does not offer full-time degrees. Instead it is aimed at graduates who want most of the week off for other activities. It says: “Our new masters’ programme is designed for students who want a high-quality graduate education and prefer to attend classes on weekends only.”

This course is remarkably good value by American standards, for just $6,525 you too can get a masters…

UPDATE : Draper says this morning that he didn’t go on this particular course, his course was full time. He says he never said he studied at Berkeley, University of California, he said he went to Berkeley, California. To study. Different you see. Yet on his professional website it mentions nowhere that he studied at the Wright Institute, just “Berkeley, California”. It is all the Guardian’s fault and he is going to sue. Stop digging Derek. You will be laughed out of court.

Derek Draper boasts of having an M.A. in Clinical Psychology, Guido wondered if his education could perhaps be applied usefully to the occupant of No. 10, Downing Street. So Guido thought it would be a bit of a laugh to track down Derek’s Master’s dissertation and see if it had any pearls of wisdom that could be applied to the state of mind of the Prime Mentalist.

A quick bit of Google research brought up a recent profile (July) and biography in the Guardian written by David Hencke. In the largely sympathetic article we learnt that Derek is a reformed character and no longer the legendary unsavoury spinner. Even a bitter old foe like Roy Hattersley has been won round:

He is Like a Character in a novel. There is always a whiff of danger because you don’t know what he is going to do next

The spin doctor turned psychotherapist has returned to the Labour fold … Hattersley, who recently lunched with Draper, says: “I believe he is now a changed man. He’s got older, is more measured. I don’t whether it is because he is now a psychotherapist or his marriage but he has changed. He will be an asset to the party.”

Born August 15 1967 in Chorley, Lancashire

Education Southlands high school, Chorley; University of Manchester, economics; University of California, Berkeley, MA in clinical psychology

Family Married to GMTV presenter Kate Garraway. One daughter

Career 1990-92, constituency secretary to Nick Brown; 92-96, researcher for Peter Mandelson; 96-99, director of lobbying firm GPC Market Access. Briefly a columnist for the Express and presenter on Talk Radio; Currently a psychotherapist with a practice in London.

Having now discovered where he got his qualifications Guido contacted the registrar of the prestigious Berkeley campus at the University of California to track down the dissertation. He, and the academic librarian, were unsuccessful in finding the dissertation. Strangely the registrar could find no actual record of a student called Derek Draper:

Because the information you provided did not match any records in our database, we asked the school to research your request. The school was unable to locate either a degree or enrollment record for the subject of your verification request.

Nothing. Derek Draper never studied psychology at Berkeley, University of California. His professional practice website implies he did, though if you read it carefully it says “in” rather than “at”.

Like all good “celebs” Draper has an agent, the CV he sends out to potential bookers says, you guessed it; Berkeley, California. The truth is that a leopard can’t change its spots, he learnt how to spin from Mandelson, like his master he can’t help himself. Derek Draper wants to be Labour’s answer to Iain Dale, instead he seems more like Labour’s version of Jeffrey Archer. A fantasist who exaggerates himself for his own psychological reasons.

Guido approves of the decadent way DraperList hands out champagne willy nilly to encourage readers to comment and sign up for Derek’s twitterings. Co-conspirators here are lucky if they get a T-shirt. Just hope the poor credit-crunched minimum-wage-paid members of the union which funds his ego trip – Unite – are as understanding. As these Twitters show, Draper is literally p*ssing their money away for his own egotistical reasons:

01:03 AM yesterday : just before i go to bed i have decided to give a bottle of champagne to my 1000th follower.
8:47 AM yesterday : did i really decide this last night? must have been a bit pissed. oh well, a promise is a promise

Hard to see how it serves the workers interests to pay out their dues to Draper’s fans in the form of champagne…

Derek Draper’s online campaigning skills are clearly not going to win Labour any votes, perhaps the greatest service he could do his party would require exercising his professional skills. Somebody surely needs to re-connect Downing Street to the reality of the High Street. While Gordon lauds “the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order”, shop after shop is being boarded up as retail chains go bust and jobs are lost. It is Gordon’s denial of the truth that is so apparent.

Interviewer after interviewer, as well as Cameron repeatedly during PMQs, has asked him to admit that he was wrong to claim to have “abolished boom and bust”. Gordon can’t or won’t, because he is too psychologically flawed, face up to reality. How can we secure a national recovery when the head of government is in total denial? Gordon clings to the idea that the recovery will have begun by the end of the summer and that he can win the next election by running around like a headless chicken doing anything for headlines, costing billions in economic vandalism and shouting empty slogans. Derek, your leader needs you…

In the beginning of New Labour there was spin and young Derek Draper was a child of that, in fact he spun so much that he toppled himself in a sleaze defining moment for New Labour. When you speak to Draper nowadays he is, more than most ever so sensitive politicians, keen to set the terms of the discussion, what is on the record, what is off the record, whether he is going to be quoted or whether it is for background.

So it is in this context that Guido reports that when he was tipped that the new site was going to be called “LabourList” and there had been discussions about a “DailyDraper” blog he called Draper who denied the truth of those names. Point blank denial. Which turned out to be totally untrue.

You know, Derek is a compulsive spinner in the, errm, Jeffrey Archer mould. You would think from that comment Guido had got it wrong, alas a co-conspirator draws attention to this website registered last month:

As Guido exclusively revealed (and named) here last month, Draper’s LabourList has finally soft launched. The grand launch was scheduled for Monday, however that clashed with Gordon’s Downing Street Jobs Summit, which meant that it didn’t fit on Mandelson’s media grid, so it was shunted back another month. That in a nutshell is how you will have to view the operating basis of the site. It is a party controlled forum, unlike ConservativeHome, which is a party supportive site. This is going to be a much more controlled environment than Labourhome, which for all its faults, was also more grassroots orientated.

Therein will be LabourList’s major structural fault, however much they may deny this, it is a top-down tool of Labour HQ. On the right ConservativeHome scares, irritates and frustrates CCHQ, Dale is his own man with his own loyalties and Guido is on the whole contemptuous of CCHQ. LabourList will be far more on message. That is deep in New Labour’s DNA.

Guido wishes it well, Labourhome has never really found an editorial direction, LiberalConspiracy still has promise, even if it will never have broad grassroots appeal or the focus of a party structure to sustain itself. LabourList does seem to be heavy with a lot of the same old faces, with no pesky loony lefties, so it is hard to see it being that exciting. We shall see…

UPDATE : Dale has similar thoughts.

A co-conspirator points Guido towards this advert wondering if it is for Draper’s new initiative. Guido emailed Derek to ask him if this advert was in fact for his new hush, hush rapid rebuttal unit, to which he retorted “well, if you applied i guess you’d find out “. Loving the emoticon Derek, so down with the kidz. So we will take that as a yes.

Based in central London this person will act as the administrator / organiser for a new independent Labour supporting campaigning organisation. They will have close contact with senior party figures and will assist with a brief that includes research, media management, writing and new media initiatives. The work will be rewarding and exciting and would be an excellent step to further work in Labour circles. It requires someone with good Labour party knowledge and contacts and will initially run for a three month trial period.

Guido suspects that this means legally it should be a regulated financial unit of the Labour Party under PPERA, with all details of donations available on the Electoral Commission website.

Guido is sure Derek said it was going to launch before Christmas. Can’t wait…

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. So far Draper’s online efforts haven’t really got anywhere, one of the issues that Labour has is that it does not know what it wants to achieve. Blue State Digital have brought over Thomas Gensemer and Joe Rospars, Barack Obama’s former new media campaign director to basically pitch their services and know-how to the Draper assembled collection of lobbyists, spin-merchants and public affairs leeches* that by and large constitute the Labour blogosphere. Blue State Digital have hired Matthew Macgregor to run a soon to be opened London office. Macgregor worked on Ken Livingstone’s 2008 Mayoral campaign, for War on Want, TULO and Jon Cruddas’ deputy leadership campaign. This is their big sales pitch.

Guido called Draper to wish him luck with the meeting, he cursed Guido’s foreknowledge. Draper denied point blank that he was looking for funding for an Iain Dale style, party-supportive blog with titbits of insider news and his spin on the party line. He has been reportedly moaning that he has been working voluntarily for free for the Party and that if they want to take the fight online they will need a full time paid blogger – what he doesn’t say openly is that it should be him. Sources say that the blog is to be known as the “Daily Draper”.

Hopefully Draper’s blog will be more prescient than his writing for the Guardian. In September 2007 he told us – “Get ready for a short, sharp campaign. Gordon Brown is not a ditherer, and I predict he will announce the election very soon“. Today he says the opposite “the Tories are doing what they can to promote the idea that there might be an early election“, before rubbishing the idea. Does that mean there will be an early election?

“Go 4th” was one working title for a Labour supporting rival to ConservativeHome, LabourList is another name being knocked about. Draper claims he hasn’t finalised the plan and it is still at the talking shop stage. Rumour has it that Mandelson (an Iain Dale fan) is being supportive.

Guido has a suggestion for Derek and the embryonic Labour online-spin crew: find a charismatic, young new leader who can be the change that we need. It won’t matter how good the website is until you do…

*Invitation list to Labour’s digerati: Tom Watson (Guido passim), Colin Byrne (CEO, Weber Shandwick), Sadie Smith (ex-Westmonster), Mark Hanson (spinner), Simon Buckby (Popbitch’s spinner boyfriend), David Clark, Charlie Whelan (Unite, former Gordon bruiser), Chuka Umunna, Sue Macmillan, DJ Collins (Google spinner), Sarah Mulholland, Richard Angell, Ed Owen, Simon Alcock, Wee Dougie Alexander, Patrick Diamond, Sunder Katwala (Fabians), Gavin Hayes (Compass), Jessica Asato, Robert Philpot, Richard Huntington, Tristram Hunt, Ben Wegg-Prosser (Mandy’s protege), Damian McBride (Downing Street spinner for Gordon), Andrew Dodgshon, Theo Blackwell, Tom Miller, Tim Allan (Portland CEO), David Bradshaw, Stuart Bruce (Alan Johnson’s leadership spinner, Labour new media guru), Jag Singh (LabourHome and Hilary online campaign guru), Matt Strong, Paul Simpson, Spencer Livermore (ex Gordon spinner), Ed Owen, Chris McShane, Matthew Taylor (RSA boss, ex-Blair policy unit), Alex Finnegan, John Miles, Adam Dustagheer, Dan Thain (Labour HQ), Mark Lucas (Silverfish), Luke Pollard, James Crabtree, Tim Shand, Alex Hilton (LabourHome), Simon Redfern, William Davies, Howard Dawber, Nick Anstead, Richard Lane, Jon Steinberg, Pete Bowyer, Steve Cowan, Hopi Sen, Luke Bozier, Andy Regan, Toby Flux, David Taylor, Chris McShane, Matthew McGregor, Noel Hatch, Sunny Hundal (the supposedly independent Liberal Conspiracy), Greg Jackson, Dave Prescott (son of), Luke Akehurst (spinner Weber Shandwick), Phil Dilks, Jonathan Upton, Simon Fletcher, Tom Price, John Stolliday, Adrian McMenamin (CBI & HateMyTory.com), Paul Hilder, Paul Miller, Ben Brandzel, Anthony Painter, Ravi Gurumurthy.