Westminster blog

When last September I advised Derek Draper to set up a “sort of anti-Guido of the left” I didn’t exactly have Red Rag in mind.

The site never went live. But Draper and his friends got as far as registering it – here it is – with the dreadful tagline: “Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer we’ll keep the red flag flying here”.

Damian McBride, one of Gordon Brown’s closest aides, was forced to resign at the weekend over emails which he sent to Draper suggesting a variety of smears of senior Tory MPs. Many were sordid. Some were disgraceful. All were false. (McBride’s defence is that they would never have gone public.)

The fact that Draper welcomed the suggestions – describing them as “brilliant” – shows that he missed the entire point of the right-wing blogs which he wanted to emulate. Vicious Guido may be but many of his stories are genuine scoops based on fact. You wouldn’t expect to find utterly unfounded smears on his site of the kind suggested by McBride.

The sad thing is that there is still a vacancy for a left-wing blog which could be amusing, whiplash-smart, irreverent and readable; and could hold the Tories to account.

Draper’s first effort, Labourlist, fell short because it was imposed by Labour high command from above. Red Rag was dead before it even began. Maybe the saviour of the left will arrive after a Tory general election victory in 2010 as a Cameron government struggles under a mountain of public debt. We will see.

Meanwhile here are some outstanding questions over McBride-gate.

1] Who other than McBride sent suggested articles (smears or otherwise) to Draper for Red Rag? Will they ever see the light of day?

2] Who would have funded Red Rag? Would Unite the Union have paid the salary of Andrew Dodgshon, the Unite official who was supposedly going to run the site?

3] Who else at 10 Downing Street knew about Red Rag? (Nadine Dorries, one of the smeared Tory MPs, pointed the finger this morning at Tom Watson, the cabinet office minister who worked closely with McBride at Downing St. Watson denies any knowledge of the site and has condemned the smears).

4] Will Draper continue to run LabourList, which despite being arms-length from the party gets many Labour big-hitters to write posts? Or will he honourably walk today, when he gets back from his Easter holiday?

5] Will Gordon Brown express any disapproval of McBride – until now a close confidante – at his next public appearance?

6] Will McBride re-emerge in a different form, just as he did last October when he shifted from being Brown’s spokesman to the more backroom role of head of strategy? (and just as Derek Draper, Charlie Whelan and Lord Mandelson returned from exile?)