Andy McSmith in the Indy has compiled a short list of McBride’s smears and their victims.  It is not a complete list, most of the victims listed are Labour MPs.  Shame that journalists didn’t have the courage to name McBride as the source of the smears at the time that they printed them.  If they did, it might have shed some light on the potential truth of those smears at the time.

Guido’s challenge to the fearless members of the press is a simple one.  Show you are not, in the words of Peter Oborne the ‘client media‘, check your notebooks and identify the smears passed to you by Tom Watson, the Minister for Mudslinging.  Are you copy-takers or journalists?   Or will you just leave it to Guido once again to do the hard work and dispatch him?

UPDATE : John Rentoul in the Indy has enough self awareness to  realise he is in a self-inflicted Kafkaesque situation. People are starting to hint; Matthew Taylor, the Blairite Downing Street insider turned wonk,  joins Guido in mocking the press;

I have had a few ‘phone calls from Sunday journalists about the McBride affair. ‘Can you tell us more about his operation?’ they say. Which, when you think about it, is a bit like someone saying:

‘me and my mates have for years been having a very intimate relationship with someone you might vaguely know – what was it like?’.

Er…you could start by asking each other

Newspapers writing indignant exposes about the briefing operation of someone upon whom they relied for years for stories! You couldn’t make it up.

Journalists can name the names, they are in their contacts books already.