Mirror Mirror on the wall...

Seems the Mirror have done a bit of hatchet job in hiding the story they pulled about Derek Draper and the mystery computer. An eagle eyed reader - Dr Feelgood has sent TB this screenshot of the Mirror website

blog directory

at three o'clock today:

Still there at time of publishing - 17.25.

Still no comment from the Mirror. Anyone home?

Totty Watch - Results:

The votes have been cast and counted...

Her mother has barely been out of the news all week, but it seems that Nadine isn't the only Dorries to make a stir. Jenny Dorries came out top of the lady researchers with 46% of the vote:

As for the lads, well with a percentage of the vote that most Lib Dem's can only dream of; congratulations to Alex Kendell:

Look in your MPs post for your prize... Email TB with your nominations for the next round.

A little dig...

TB isn't holding his breath for a reply:

Please get involved and ask those fine people at the Mirror what is going on for yourself...

Destroying the evidence.

TB is most grateful to an eagle eyed reader who has managed to dig out the elusive Mirror story about Draper's computer from the

deepest darkest interwebby

. Rule number one of the internet is that anything you write, even if it is deleted, lasts forever. However Draper freely admitted that he doesn't know his RSS from his elbow. As TB reported last night, the Mirror have seemingly pulled their negative story about Draper from their website and are standing on the street corner whistling...Move along people, nothing to see here. However in case you missed the original content of the story, allow TB to fill you in. Draper was doorstepped by a pack of hacks and they spotted that he was shifting his computer equipment into the back of a cab:

This story was linked to be various bloggers including TB,

Guido

and

Old Holborn

, suddenly a few hours later the whole thing has disappeared from the Mirror website.

What the hell is going on? 

What is on that hard drive that needs to be hidden away, and why is the Mirror bending over backwards to protect Draper? The tone and style of the original post was rather anti-Dolly and whoosh, like that it was gone...

TB has a feeling he might be making some phone calls today...

The Guidoisation of politics comes of age...

Guido gives the lobby two barrels

in The Times

.

Oh come on, that isn't even subtle.

It seems that Draper still has some friends left at the Mirror. Yesterday the pictures of him leaving his house with his computer were displayed on the Mirror photographer

James Vellacott's blog:

However today it seems they have, rather strangely,

disappeared

:

There are some serious questions to be answered about what was on the hard-drive of the computer that Draper seemed so keen on keeping close to him and now the plot thickens with the photo evidence vanishing.

TB smells a rat.

This is why people don't vote for the Liberal Democrats.

TB has

tears of laughter

...

Show me the money!!!

Wow...

TB does enjoy winding up the Lib Dems but it seems the Cowley St and

cyber-LibDem grassroots

went into rebuttal overdrive on that last post. TB expects the normal rebuttals in the comments and on Twitter, but the email he just received was way, way too far.

We all know why the Lib Dems are

so jumpy

about the smear-gate story:

However is it really a good idea when discussing a scandal that involved email based smears to play the McBride card and email someone threatening them with ridiculous accusastions and lies? If you don't like what TB writes then don't read his blog. Don't try threaten him. Due to the content of the email and bullshit innuendos about TB's private life, he is pretty certain he knows who you are. IP address noted. 

This is your only warning.

Say something Nick

Nick Clegg must be used to not having his voice heard by now. His irrelevant and floundering party is on target to be given one mighty squeeze. Regardless of the fact that nobody cares what he has to say, his silence over the last six days has been shameful. He and the Lib Dems were quick to slam Labour for the arrest of Damian Green, both at the time and today, yet for a man who is obsessed with "politics being broken" he has been far too quite about the irritatingly named Smear-gate. Surely the McBride/Draper scandal is case and point for his entire argument? What the hell is his problem? Even on a human level he must be outraged about this scandal, regardless of trying to play politics with it. 

The membership is apparently in uproar and a little birdy tells TB that the

Lib Dem Voice Forums,

 and more so comments on Facebook, are going crazy about this, with the "I voted for Huhne" crowd out in force. Regardless of not wanting to give Dave any publicity all members of the political classes have had a comment to add on this. Except it seems Clegg, or any other Lib Dem MP for that matter. Why have they been silenced? Clegg really is useless, he seemingly can't get anything right. He either pushes things too hard or not at all. No wonder his party is set to get about twenty MPs at the next election. 

The man is a disaster and an embarrassment to an already ridiculous party. 

UPDATE: 17.48: Seemed to have somehow missed Cleggs two liner in The Independent today. Makes a change from the "no comment" this weekend. The point still stands though - with the Green affair Clegg and Huhne hit the airwaves hard, yet this time they have been meek and timid and the cat clearly got their tongue until today. As for the LDV forums, well there are certainly some pissed off people out there and every lib dem TB has spoken to has been pretty grumpy about the whole state of affairs.

How odd...

Credit where credit is due - they may be spouting a load of centrist fudge and drival, but the Young Labour kids are giving this whole Labourlist thing a

good crack of the whip

. There has been a stream of stories this afternoon and TB ended up having a look at

their website

, and the relationship it has with the main Labour Party

website

. Links to Young Labour and Labour Students are very prominent and the websites contain detailed information about how to join and get involved.

This got TB thinking...

The Conservative Future

website

is excellent and finally up to scratch. It has all the information that anyone could want as well as frequently updated content. However lets have a look at

conservatives.com

:

Not a single mention on the frontpage, fair enough. However upon further clicking, there is not a single mention of Conservative Future on the Party's website. Why not? You would think that there would be a very prominent link to Conservative Future on the "get involved" section, but no nothing, despite the fact that a well known CF member is used on the other promotional boxes: 

Associations across the country are aided and helped every day by their youth members and they will make up the backbone of the ground army come election time. Surely we should be furiously recruiting and promoting the largest political youth movement in Europe?

Just a thought...

A little light relief:

Don't miss out on your chance to vote in the first round of Researcher Totty Watch. Competition closes on Friday... TB just ordered the prizes.

Click here to vote.

Brown says sorry, then lies through his teeth.

So Gordon has finally apologised, six days late to the party. However, while this is a good start, in the very same statement Gordon lied a further two times. Firstly he said all that can be done about Smeargate has been done. That is just not true, no inquiry will take place, and the role of Tom Watson MP in this scandal has not been fully explored. Brown also said that Damian McBride lost his job immediately. Well that's not quite what happened is it? He tried to spin his way out of it and keep his job up until late on Saturday afternoon. Downing St put out statements defending McBride's emails as banter. Brown also said that McBride "lost his job" - implying he had been fired, as he should have been, when in fact he resigned "honorably" as Liam Bryn claimed.

Good start though in taking full responsibility for what happened...

If that is the case isn't it time to go now?

A dire week for the government.

"There is no better symbol for an out of touch  authoritarian and failing government that has been in power far too long."

+++Shock - Lib Dem appears on TV+++

Having remained very quiet, near silent in fact, all week about McBride's lies, it is odd to finally see that the Dead Duck Party are in fact still alive and kicking. As Damian Green and his mole are cleared, those fence sitting, supposedly liberal bunch have hit the airwaves:

So why the silence all week? Could it be that smears and dirty tricks are top of the Lib Dem campaigning rulebook? 

Why hasn't Clegg said anything about McBride, is he upset he wasn't considered important enough to smeared by McBride and Dolly?

Dead Trees vs. The Keyboard

It seems that freelance journo 

Alice Hutton

hasn't had as much fun as the bloggers while playing her small part in Dolly-gate II. She was lamenting the very worst aspects of being an up and coming hack on her

Twitter feed

last night:

You should stick to your blog Alice, much more productive. 

Exclusive: Footage after Draper called to Labour HQ:

"I'll will try twice as hard, I know I've been complacent, and I'll turn this place around if we just say it's not definite, starting from...now."

So who will be the Gareth to Draper's Brent?

The lunatics take over the asylum...

The Young Labour putsch at LabourList is seemingly complete. Given the way that the likes of Alex Smith and Tom Miller have acted behind the scenes in the last few days to ensure that Draper is eased out, it was with a chuckle that TB noticed this on the

front page

of the website:

The guest editorship was planned a couple of weeks back, but given the behaviour of Miller and Smith, apparently paid employees of LabourList, it is hilarious they would be so brazen with their takeover. There has been a flurry of phonecalls and emails doing the rounds from these two in the last 48 hours. Draper has clearly taught the young ones all the tricks of the trade, and they have turned round and stabbed him the back. LabourList risked going down with Draper but it has, for better or worse, been snatched by the junior members of LabourList who have seemingly built a new team of contributors to stamp their own authority on the website.

No wonder they will be toasting their success at the Young Labour Conference this Saturday. Should make for some entertaining stories...

And then he was gone...

Ah the fun always happens when TB is away from the computer... So

farewell it is

then Dolly. Labour once again says so long farewell and your own minions have

seized control

 of your website. There are still many questions left unanswered, such as who else was involved with these smears and more importantly, given that this is a computer based scandal, what are you hiding on

this hard drive

??

Tomorrow is another day, but this is well and truly a victory for the ideas that have built the right-wing blogosphere - mainly that top down control will not work. Even Draper and Labour have admitted that now. This scandal has been going six days now and it could have been killed with one simple word - Sorry. But instead it has been a bloody mess and Draper has rightly taken his share of the blame. 

TB would be making another video right now if he wasn't library bound all day but let's hear it one more time:

Goodbye Dolly.

Come on Dolly, do the right thing...

Newbie blogger and good read 

Tory Rascal

has a message to the junior LabourListers and the left-wing blogosphere in general:

Couldn't agree more.

Flashback: Draper and No10 spinners have learnt nothing in ten years.

On a hunch Tory Bear dug out his copy of Donald Macintyre's 1999 biography "Mandelson and the making of New Labour." It seems that Dolly has learnt nothing in the last ten years and there are some rather amusing similarities between

Drapergate I

and II:

As the story was beginning to break:

"By nine the following morning the potential dangers were beginning to become clear. Mandelson phoned Wegg-Prosser, asleep after returing from a party in the small hours. Why had he just seen Alan Clark on the BBC TV's Breakfast with Frost, denouncing Derek Draper as a "dodgy bloke"? Wegg-Prosser, physically trembling as he did so, begun to read out selected passages from the Observer to his boss over the phone. They agreed a "line to take" - namely this was a piece of "typical Derek Draper swaggering", that Draper risked doing himself great harm, and that he should learn some lessons from the episodes."

Remind anyone else of the "banter between blokes" line that Downing Street tried to take on Friday night/Saturday morning as the McBride/Draper smears story broke?

And where was Draper when the story broke? On holiday of course:

"Wegg-Prosser repeatedly asked Mandelson whether he should try and contact Draper, currently staying with his friend Jane Bonham-Carter at her family's villa in Campania. Eventually he did so , reaching him mid-afternoon, and breaking the news of the Observer scoop. He reported to Mandelson that Draper had seemed "taken aback but not that concerned"."

Perhaps McCavity would be a more appropriate nickname for Dolly...

One thing that Draper didn't get this time though was any defending from No10: 

"In fact it was initially Blair himself, who in the course of routine meetings at Number Ten, had taken the view that Draper, as a long-time Labour activist who had worked tirelessly for the modernisation of the party, should also be defended. It might be much too cavalier to say, as his ex-girlfriend Charlotte Raven would tell Draper later in the week, that the story really only amounted to boastful boy drinks champagne."

No such defence this time round, Brown is ruthless at cutting loose those who cause embarrassment. Perhaps most telling about Draper would be Mandelson's take on the whole situation:

"Draper, having cut his holiday short and flown into Gatwick during the afternoon from Naples, spoke to Mandelson at around 7pm. When he asked his former boss if he really believed he had said all the things quoted in the Observer, Mandelson was over-heard saying, "Unfortunately I can imaging you saying most of it all too easily"

Unfortunately Derek, everyone can imagine you plotting with the likes of Brown, McBride, Watson and Wheelan to smear the tories with RedRag lies all too easily...