Fawkes Feeble Fox Feint Foxed

Once again, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog attempt to pin their own ineptitude and partisanship on others, and once again they end up covered in rather more than confusion. This time, it’s those UK-US trade documents that then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn got hold of last November.

The Guardian has reported “A personal email account belonging to Liam Fox, the former trade minister, was repeatedly hacked into by Russians who stole classified documents relating to US-UK trade talks … Whitehall sources indicated the documents were hacked from a personal account rather than a parliamentary or ministerial one, prompting Labour to ask why Fox was using unsecured personal emails for government business”.

Without pausing to consider the implications for both Fox and themselves, the Fawkes massive were off and running. “Corbyn’s Russia-Promoted Leaked Trade Documents Were Hacked From Liam Fox’s Email … Sources have informed [Reuters] that suspected Russian hackers can now be pinpointed to be behind both the leaking, and the promoting of the documents Corbyn was so desperate to pedal his privatisation conspiracy with”.

And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, as I never tire of pointing out, Jezza began his address that day at 1010 hours, and would have taken a few minutes to get to the relevant part. The Fawkes blog published every one of the six leaked documents at 1012 hours - including names of the civiil servants involved (they later became most righteous about potential data breaches by the Labour Party).

Moreover, Two, as the Guardian goes on to tell, “The stolen documents - a 451-page dossier of emails - ultimately ended up in the hands of Jeremy Corbyn during last winter’s election campaign after Russian actors tried to disseminate the material online … They had been posted on the social media platform Reddit and brought to the attention of the then Labour leader’s team”. There was no Russia-Corbyn link.

Worse for The Great Guido is that Fox, whose candidacy for heading up the World Trade Organisation has been enthusiastically backed by him, has shown an appallingly poor understanding of his duty to keep data secure - and confidential. The Guardian report goes on to explain “The attack is understood to have deployed a ‘spear-phishing’ technique frequently used by Russian actors, in which superficially plausible emails are sent inviting the recipient to click on an attached file. The file contains malicious code designed to give access to or take control of the target’s computer”. And the upshot of that is?

You guessed it: “The security breaches last year, which are subject to an ongoing police investigation, pose serious questions for the Conservative MP who is currently the UK’s nominee to become director general of the World Trade Organization”. Fox was not exactly in pole position for the WTO job before these latest revelations. He is now well and truly at the back of the grid, with a time penalty for good measure.

No wonder the Fawkes rabble wants to get its readers to Look Over There at Corbyn and Russia. Because their choice for the WTO just showed he isn’t fit to do it.

Another shameless promotion, another inglorious failure. Another fine mess.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet6