Tomorrow you will get a glimpse of how Brown’s henchmen really work. Guido has done the rounds of all the broadcasters and Draper has been on some of them. He even now just continues lying, it is not even very good lying. His story changes all the time. Remember how he lied to Guido and Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics? How can he have any credibility? Why don’t decent Labour supporters get rid of him as their online champion? Why on earth was he brought back?
McBride’s resignation statement is bordering on deranged in anger (Guido’s text messaged taunts to McPoison might have been cruel, but hey, this was payback for his contrived smears aimed at Dale and Guido). Guido revealed the truth about how McBride operates, he lies about how Guido operates.
The idea that Damian’s poisonous smears were just a few juvenile jokes between old pals is the joke, this was a discussion as to the sequencing of politcally motivated smears by experienced spin doctors. In the know people include not only McBride and Draper but, for example, Charlie Whelan. Whelan is no juvenile.
Stephen Pound says Guido is laughing all the way to the bank – actually Guido gave the story to the News of the World and the Sunday Times for pleasure not profit. McBride claims in his resignation statement that stories he came up with he didn’t want in the public domain. Lies. He had already put some of those stories in the public domain – as a very angry Nadine Dorries will testify.
McPoison accuses Guido of having Tory backers – it just shows that they just don’t get it – this blog was started for free, with no committee behind it, no plan, on a whim. It is Guido’s plaything. The Tories are rightly wary of Guido and incidentally they have a PR problem tomorrow – the last thing they want are half truths mixed with smears getting out into the open uncontrollably. Coulson is apparently having kittens according to sources at his old newspaper.
Admittedly Guido is no naive innocent. It was deliberate timing to launch this assault on Downing Street this weekend to fill the holiday news vacuum. Nobody so far has commented on the irony that it was also this week that it became legal for the government to read all our emails. Like Guido always says, people should not be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people. Now where is that ’99 Premier Cru Grande Classe Margaux?
Private Eye’s Francis Wheen (of HP Sauce) has some good sources inside Labour circles and has heard some of the stories going around. When Guido previously mentioned Draper’s widely known financial woes, Dolly launched into one of his charateristic blustering tirades:
Needless to say [Guido’s] latest post about me is inaccurate, offensive and libellous… I am clearly not going to get into my personal finances as these are no-one else’s business but the picture [Guido] attempts to paint is patently ridiculous.
You will note there are no names or actual facts just blanket and unspecific insinuations. If he had any actual facts why wouldn’t he publish them?
Guido will be more specific this time. Private Eye doesn’t report that when Macintyre found out about Draper’s treachery, he called Dolly “pure f***ing evil”. Macintyre also complained to friends that it wasn’t just the difficulty of getting Draper to pay back the money he owed – it was that Draper had enjoyed many an expensive alcohol fuelled lunch with Macintyre, unfortunately invariably at the latter’s expense.
The left-wing New Statesman political correspondent fancies himself as someone with an understanding of economics – he recently had a spat with Fraser Nelson, the Spectator’s number crunching political editor, which was hysterically one sided. It has taken Macintyre a long time to grasp that there is no such a thing as a free lunch – except for Draper.
Guido is on the BBC’s Daily Politics later today. Originally the idea was that Guido would record a short video about Draper and Labour’s approach to blogging. Guido’s view is essentially that LabourList is failing because it is just a spin and propaganda site, not a genuine independent initiative discussing openly the future direction of the Labour Party. It is a top-down tool of Labour’s spin machine.
The second charge is that Draper is the wrong person to run a blog. Good blogs succeed because they have good content and an authentic voice. Draper is a shyster who is the embodiment of New Labour’s spin and sleaze. His supposed personal rebirth as a morally reformed psychotherapist is just spin. He hasn’t changed one little bit. He still spins his credentials just like he did in the past.
Guido went to California last week to get to the bottom of the story, what Guido discovered was shocking. Guido has already revealed that Draper didn’t go to the prestigious Berkeley campus of the University of California, instead he went to a small institute, based in a house in the suburbs of Berkeley.
What Guido found out in Berkeley was even more surprising. Guido has established as fact from reliable sources that in March 2004 Derek Draper was asked to leave the third year of a Clinical Psychology (PsyD) programme normally lasting 5 years. Further that in April 2004 it was determined that he would not receive an M.A. from the Wright Institute. So how does Derek come to have an M.A.? Why was he expelled? Did he win an appeal? Is it all the same old Derek with the same old spin?
The BBC say that this is off topic and they didn’t want to run a video from Guido on this subject. Guido thinks it gets to the core of Draper’s character. He spins the truth and you just can’t get away with that inauthenticity online. Draper just isn’t the real deal.
Apologies for the sound quality – this is a rough excerpt from the video that Guido wanted to show on the Daily Politics:
[Updated video]
At the request of readers Guido has been trying to avoid blogging about Draper, so this plug is a bit of a, hopefully forgivable, relapse. This anecdote is to illustrate the difference in the approach taken by Draper (spin) and the rest of the blogosphere (authenticity). Do you recall when Guido wrote about the suspension of Dolly’s Twitter account for abuse of the service? A co-conspirator has just pointed out that at the time Derek’s rapid rebuttal claim was:
“Guido and Iain Dale are upset that I am the most followed political twitterer.”
Mike Power, the long established blogger retorted via Twitter:
In the reality-based part of the blogosphere we know that Draper has a little over 3,000 followers and Boris Johnson a little short of 20,000 followers – none of whom Boris spammed for attention.
Yet another example of the same old Derek, same old spin.
Some of you will be looking forward to the Daily Politics Draper v Guido show next week. It might not be as exciting as you think, the producer is determined that it will not be a personal slagging match and we are to be restricted to the subject of Labour’s approach to blogging. Guido will be contrasting Prescott’s authenticity with Draper’s artificiality. Draper’s CV has unfortunately been ruled off the agenda.
The Mirror and the Telegraph this morning have stories about the financial difficulties of Derek and Kate Draper. The family car was crushed for non-payment of vehicle taxes, and it transpires that Kate (the major breadwinner in the family) was taken to court and had to remortgage the family home in order to pay £173,000 in back taxes. Guido has been aware for some time of Derek’s financial problems – he left debts behind him in the U.S. and his lack of accepted qualifications has made it difficult for him to get NHS patients. The video business he set up to exploit the wife’s celebrity is not a huge success. Draper supplements his income by writing pop-psychology pieces for the tabloids and his own brand of “insider” political analysis for the Guardian – remember his warning to “Get Ready for a Short, Sharp Campaign“ in September 2007? Clearly there is only limited money in his journalism because he has been reduced to doing deals selling pictures of his kids to the downmarket OK celebrity magazine run by pornographer Dirty Desmond.
What many people won’t know from today’s tabloid revelations is that Derek has borrowed heavily from (some now former) friends, political figures and even journalists, some of whom have confirmed to Guido that he has borrowed thousands off them – and they have had great difficulty and embarrassment in getting their money back, sometimes for years. Now he is apparently once again passing round the begging hat to raise money for LabourList, claiming the endorsement of Peter Mandelson for the website. Perhaps he can call on Mandelson’s blind trust to help him out?
UPDATE 21.00 : “I have excellent qualifications as a psychotherapist including an MA in psychology and another MA which I am about to receive from a very distinguished UK institution.” If, and Guido means if, you already have an “excellent” MA in psychology, why do you need another?
Guido also called a source close to Twitter HQ in San Francisco. They confirmed that Draper’s account was suspended for abuse of the terms of service as reported. Draper pleaded with them for it to be restored in a “Do you know who I am?” way. They didn’t, nor did they care. They restored it anyway.
Dolly was suspended for spamming; James Graham says he has had mulitple Twitter spam follow/unfollows from Derek, which only ended when he finally followed Draper. Yet, despite this being widely attested to, Draper denies spamming people.
Derek is such a spinner, at no time has he admitted being suspended, nor has he mentioned that he begged Twitter to unsuspend his account. Guido has put the facts to him today. He has not as yet responded.
