Derek Draper Resigns as Editor of Labour List

Dear All,
I am emailing directly because I wanted you to know before anyone else does about developments at LabourList.

Two weeks ago I posted on the site saying I was sorry for my role in the Damian McBride affair. Of course I regret ever receiving the infamous email and I regret my stupid hasty reply. Instead I should have said straight away that the idea was wrong.I do ask people to remember, though, that in the end its contents were never published by me or anyone else involved in the Labour party and they would never have seen the light of day were it not for someone hacking into my emails and placing them into the public domain. Because of that, what was a silly idea ultimately destined for the trash can became a national scandal.

Nonetheless, I should have made clear they were unacceptable from the very beginning.On a much smaller note I al so think I got the tone of LabourList wrong sometimes, being too strident, aggressive and obsessed with the "blogosphere".

Having said that I am proud that I was the founder of LabourList. It really was a Labour of love. In just over 100 days there have been nearly 250 contributors, over 500 posts and 18,000 comments. I’d like to think one day I’ll be judged on all of that rather than just one, admittedly awful, email.What has become clear, though, is that my continued editorship can only detract from what LabourList needs to do now.

That is why, after a couple of weeks of reflection, I am passing on the editorship to Alex Smith, who has been a very able Deputy to me from the beginning. I have no doubt that Alex will steer the site to bigger and better things and I urge everyone who wants Labour to have a vibrant, active space on the internet to give him your backing and get involved in whatever comes next.

Derek Draper

More than a whiff of Tory cant and hypocrisy?

Okay – to be clear what Damian McBride did was plain wrong as well as stupid. He fell on his “sword” (or scribe, pen, QWERTY board – whatever media advisers fall upon) pretty swiftly and resigned. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown sent out handwritten letters of deep regret and has now “finally” according to last nights 6pm BBC News “apologised”. Cue to picture of Osborne saying “it’s a bit late”.

Now all week we have been subjected to various Tories pontificating at length about this and that. I thought that this was all just a little rich. I am not a Westminster village insider, but anyone who doesn’t think that senior Tory officials have not had similar emails exchanges or meetings about slurring Labour Politician’s as those between McBride and Draper are living in cloud cuckoo land. I would have thought that maybe some recognition that “there but the grace of God” humility by the Tories would have been appropriate if they really want to “clean up” the body politics.

By co-incidence I’ve been away recently and it was only last night that I caught up with and read last weeks Sunday papers. This extract from Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography in the Sunday Times review I think is apt. “...we discovered after the election that that some Tories had imported a group of US activists called “the Nerds” whose job was to spread malign rumours and make unfounded personal accusations against senior opposition MPs...after the election Kelvin MacKenzie then editor of The Sun, revealed that at least one cabinet-level Tory minister had approached him seeking to retail scurrilous and untrue allegations against a number of senior opposition MPs.”

Nuff said?

UPDATE: No there is more -Leftygirl tells it as it is here

UPDATE 2: The plot thickens - check out today's Sunday Mirror