Guido Fawked - Bullygate Hypocrisy

Joining in with those rushing to throw former RoadTrip 2015 head man Mark Clarke under as many buses as can be mustered, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog have returned to the subject today with a piece not at all subtly titled “Tory Sex Scandal: Who Shagged Whom?” As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point. But The Great Guido is forgetting something here.

Feared. But only by rickety chairs

“The latest revelations in this morning’s Telegraph allege that a 22 year-old activist woke up in a Tory MP’s bed with no memory of the night before. One MP is threatening an injunction, and at least three others have been accused of inappropriately having sexual relations with young volunteers on Mark Clarke’s infamous RoadTrip campaigns” the post continues, but still something is missing here.

Staines’ former tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, was not mentioning it either as he told “Explosive new emails show a senior Conservative Party figure did receive complaints about disgraced senior aide Mark Clarke before May’s general election - despite claims to the contrary. With bullying, blackmail and harassment allegations swirling, on Thursday Tory HQ claimed they could find no evidence of accusations about Mr Clarke made before August”. It’s as if they never met the guy.

Aidan Burley(already disgraced) was there ...

But, as Zelo Street has previously revealed, Master Cole at least has been big pals with Clarke, to the extent that he took time out to go and see his new-born. And Staines is being spectacularly disingenuous when he gives the impression of looking at Clarke’s catalogue of interesting behaviour from a remote third party point of view.

Because he too was enough of a pal to ask Clarke along to the Fawkes blog’s tenth anniversary crawl-fest last year. Not only that, there was also the “in joke” that he was actually an MP (he is listed as Mark Clarke MP). That part of the Fawkes-fest guest list was revealed by Peter Oborne after he attended the bash and decided to take some of the hard copy lists of attendees with him. They later appeared in the Telegraph.

... and so was Mark Clarke!

And not only was Clarke invited to The Great Guido’s bash, also at the same table were Clarke’s pals Aidan Burley, at the time still and MP although it was known he would not be standing at the 2015 General Election after the Mail On Sunday revealed his involvement in a Nazi-themed stag party at the French ski resort of Val Thorens, and Matthew Richardson, whose antics did not go down particularly well at UKIP.

Staines and Cole were happy enough to invite Mark Clarke to their party, and in October last year, well after Clarke’s unpleasant behaviour had reached a wider audience (see Zelo Street example HERE, from July that year). Anyone who needed to know about Clarke’s behaviour - such as those considering inviting him to their bash - knew there were concerns by then. The Great Guido apparently did not consider this a problem.

But now Staines would look bad if he didn’t join those throwing Clarke under the bus, no matter what kind of pal he might have been. Another fine mess, once again.