Damage limitation

The BBC's article about "key people" involved in "smeargate" is rather hopeless. We get to hear about McBride, Draper and Guido Fawkes (Paul Staines), but that is all. What about Tom Watson, Charlie Whelan and Gordon Brown? Limiting the scandal to the former three is confining it to the status of backroom vs blogger spat (and btw what's going on with Draper's photo- the last time he looked like that was surely around the time that things could only get better?). Whelan was apparently copied in on the emails, and helping to fund Draper's Labour List through his union position at UNITE. Tom Watson is parliamentary secretary at the Cabinet Office, "proppa blogga" and co-author of a Cameron spoof video with Sion Simon MP which went viral through its very awfulness and unpleasantness. The medium, the nature and the origin (the Cabinet Office) of the dirty tricks campaign were right out of the heart of Watson's political territory.

Nadine Dorries writes today that Radio Five Live said in advance of an interview that they "were being leaned on by lawyers with regard to any reference to Tom Watson MP and before I went on, would I just be aware of that". Sounds like a cover story to me- because Watson is unquestionably worthy and uncontroversially part of the context of the scandal of the smear campaign. Could the BBC really be as submissive to nuLabour as not to realise that? Mention of him need only be reference to his position next to McBride in Gordon's bunker. Apart from that, he was either copied the emails or not- but why would he need to be if he could read them over McBride's shoulder. And isn't Watson's proximity to events and authority over those responsible key too?

All of which does not explain for a moment why Whelan and the Prime Mentalist Minister were left out of the equation. What would explain it is the BBC's soft heart towards their cherished nuLabour project.