The stories surrounding Chris Huhne, his election expenses, and who might have been at the wheel of whichever car was carrying him from Stansted to Clapham, have once again disappeared from media view. After all, the tabloid interest in Essex isn’t in the M11, but the brevity of reality show participants’ skirts.
It all looked different just yesterday, as an enquiry by the Electoral Commission into Huhne’s expenses was announced. Why should that be? Well, this may have been to do with the Fourth Estate realising that the source of the complaint was a front organisation for Paul Staines and his tame gofer Henry Cole, who are responsible for the Guido Fawkes blog.
That organisation, the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics, is effectively a means for Staines and Cole to go after politicians who they have not managed to nail through attacks in the Fawkes blog. As such, it merely confirms that the blog does not possess the clout its authors would like us to believe it has.
Moreover, the speeding ticket story, where it is being alleged that Huhne got his ex-wife Vicky Pryce to take the points on his behalf, shows that the Fawkes blog has been systematically brushed off by the various participants, reinforcing that lack of clout. I know this as Cole has admitted it on this blog.
In a comment to my previous post on the affair, Cole conceded that Ryanair had declined to talk to him, although whether Huhne had been on the flight from Strasbourg on the night in question does not seem a particularly sensitive item. Nor does the question of whether he checked a bag, and the time the aircraft was “on chocks” and disembarked.
Essex Police are also not interested in talking to the less than dynamic blogging duo, as the Fawkes blog conceded yesterday “yet to coax a comment out of Essex police”. So the “Guido has reason to expect them to apply for a court order imminently” means Staines and Cole are guessing.
They’re even guessing at the identity of the car that got “flashed” on the M11: “The speed camera is said to have caught a car with the number plate H11HNE” [my emphasis]. The talk in the same post about what information the Sunday Times might be holding is also pure speculation.
And, if Staines and Cole don’t know for certain what information the papers are holding, the only conclusion that can be reached is that here too they have been brushed off.
Back to the “plots, rumours and conspiracy”, then.
Tut. There was a time when several anonymous comments would have been made in defence of Paul Staines by now, or more likely attacking his critic(s). Is he getting tired in his old age, or is he merely afraid of being caught sock-puppeting again?
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