Guido Fawked - Just A Tory Shill

It has often been pointed out here on Zelo Street that the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog may have started off by challenging the establishment, but they have allowed themselves to be bought off, and are now part of it. The renegade who for so long sneered at the “Dead tree press” has allowed that same press to indulge his vanity and so neutralise any threat he once posed to them.

Feared. But only by rickety furniture

So it is with the Tory Party: Staines may protest that he does not do their bidding, but it has long been the impression that the Fawkes blog is a disownable part of CCHQ, with yesterday showing a superb example as The Great Guido pretended he was carrying out an in-depth analysis of Young Dave’s offshore predicament, only to end up concluding that Cameron was in the clear and Labour were rubbish.

You think I jest? There it is on the Fawkes blog: “Why Didn’t Cameron Declare Blairmore In 2009 Register Of Interests?” asks the question. But after it is conceded “Today brings some of the worst front pages for David Cameron since be became PM”, we get “it is worth remembering there is nothing wrong with investing in a foreign fund. Crucially - and wisely - he sold the shares in 2010”. So he’s in the clear, then?

Looks like it: “several top journalists and tax experts agree Blairmore was not a tax avoidance scheme. There is currently no dispute that Cameron paid all the UK taxes on his income from his shares”. And the Register of Members’ Interests? “MPs are not required to declare shareholdings in unit trusts, holdings below £70,000 or 15% of a partnership”. It could have been dictated by CCHQ. And there’s more.

“So this is a blind alley for Labour. Cameron was not the beneficiary of an offshore trust while PM, he appears not to have avoided any tax, and he did not breach parliamentary rules”. Gosh, what a jolly good chap Dave is! Labour, on the other hand, get the full smear treatment: shadow chancellor John McDonnell gets a guilt-by-association connection with Suliman Gani, and Jeremy Corbyn is accused of “losing it” with an LBC journalist.

What the Fawkes rabble manage not to tell readers is that Corbyn had asked the media to desist from doorstepping him, and LBC later apologised. None of that full explanation that Dave got, eh? Then Labour MP Karl Turner gets called a liar for suggesting that a Tweet had gone missing from George Osborne’s feed. It’s something and nothing, and he was not making an assertion. Still, it’s Labour, and so in goes the boot.

Then to round things off, someone in Labour has to be accused of avoiding tax, just to make sure the audience “looks over there”. So the boot gets put in on Ken Livingstone, who, as he had to explain to po-faced right-wingers, was not being serious when he said Dave should go to jail for his offshore activities. The excuse for kicking Ken was that he was paid through a limited company. Like, er, Paul Staines.

The Great Guido might as well go the full hog and use the Tory Party’s branding, such is the slavish and subservient behaviour. Another fine mess, once again.