Guido Fawked – Lying On An Industrial Scale

Back in July, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog persuaded Esquire magazine to swallow the Kool-Aid and write a suitably flattering feature about them, in which Staines pontificated that “The lying in politics is on an industrial scale”. In order to illustrate his point, Staines then tells the interviewer “No-one’s off limits”, which is, er, lying on an industrial scale.

Feared: are politicians more scared of him ...

The Great Guido also helps the impression to be given that his office overlooks the Houses of Parliament, due to the placement of a photo of the corpulent Staines with china cup in hand and Parliament in the background next to a description of that office. This is merely misleading: the location is a flat in Parliament View, the details of which are readily available online.

... or are they more intimidated by him?

The combination of lying and misleading has been passed to Staines’ acolytes among the Fawkes folks, who as a result have great difficulty saying things that are factually correct. Thus when Tory MP Mark Pritchard told earlier that “Glad to have reached ‘amicable settlement’ with Sunday Mirror and have now withdrawn my complaint from IPSO. The settlement is confidential”, it had to be spun.

First to creatively retell this news was Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, the Fawkes blog’s newly anointed teaboy, who asserted “Pleased IPSO complaint over Sunday Mirror Brooks Newmark story has been dropped”. IPSO did not make any complaint, they may yet choose to investigate the sting of their own volition, and one or more other parties may complain via IPSO – and may have already done so.

Still, apart from those three minor problems, Wickham was at least right that a complaint concerning IPSO was no longer hanging over him, although he missed that “settlement”. Meanwhile, his colleague, the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, was also having difficulty with factual analysis on the subject: “It would appear IPSO has passed its first big test”. It would?

Sadly for Master Cole, it would appear to be nothing of the sort: IPSO had not been involved in the discussions between Pritchard and the Sunday Mirror, and so had not been subjected to any test. It therefore could not have passed that test. Small wonder that Twitter commenters were soon passing adverse comment, including the observation that Cole is once again having trouble getting his story straight.

One part of The Great Guido’s story whose accuracy is in little doubt is his thirst: the Esquire article talks of his “usual tipple” at lunchime being “a bottle of Chablis”. He talks of targeting Labour MPs like Luciana Berger, but the last Fawkes attack on her was a pack of lies. Cole’s former blog Tory Bear is lauded, yet its foot-in-mouth ability was legendary. Yes, the lying is indeed on an industrial scale.

Yet our politicians are supposed to fear this shower. Maybe not. Another fine mess.