A fond farewell

An emotional day today as I travelled to North Wales to bid farewell to my former regional lobby friend and colleague Ian Craig. A sad occasion, for sure, but it was lovely to meet Ian's family and to see so many old faces from my Westminster days. The turnout at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Wrexham, which included one or two senior politicians as well as numerous Press Gallery figures past and present, was yet a further indication of the huge esteem in which Ian was held.

Remembering Ian Craig

Last Friday I received an email from an old friend in the Press Gallery informing me of the death of Ian Craig, until earlier this year the political editor of the Manchester Evening News. We have since covered this sad story on HoldtheFrontPage, while both the Evening News and the North-West media website How Do have also published lengthy pieces.

As will be seen from those links, the tributes have been led by no less a figure than Tony Blair, and whatever you think about the former Prime Minister, the fact that he has chosen to take time out from campaigning for the EU presidency to express his sorrow at Ian's sudden loss is a measure of the huge respect in which this great journalist was held.

For those that don't know, I worked in the same room as Ian for the whole of my nine years in the Lobby. Not only was he someone I was proud to call a friend, but he was a hugely important guiding influence on my career throughout my time there.

As his distinguished former editor Mike Unger has already said, Ian was quite simply one of the greatest political journalists of his generation, and proof if ever it were needed that not all the best lobby hacks are to be found on the nationals.

There was nothing that went on at Westminster that Ian didn't know about - often several days before it appeared in print or was broadcast on the airwaves. But more than that, as the comments on the various threads have shown, he was a true gentleman, whose personal kindness and courtesy towards colleagues and contacts alike were legendary.

I find myself in complete accord with the comments of his former MEN colleague Rodger Clark on HoldtheFrontPage: "You could not wish to meet a finer journalist or a finer gentleman. Ian will be sorely missed."

Ian was one of the people I hoped I would stay in touch with after I left the Lobby in the summer of 2004, and although I did have one last drink with him on a brief visit back there in May 2005, I hadn't seen him since then.

That's modern life I guess. Times change, and people move on. But I never forgot Ian, and I never will.

Smeargate was a car crash waiting to happen

So much for cartoonist Slob's take on "Smeargate." Do I share his sense of nausea at the Adoration of the Guido that has followed the RedRag scandal and the defenestration of Damian McBride? Well, up to a point I guess.

Paul Staines is at least right in his analysis of the Lobby, although the initial diagnosis that it had become part of a client media was not Guido's, but Peter Oborne's, in his brilliant book The Triumph of the Political Class.

I myself watched it happening from close quarters and it became very obvious fairly early in my Lobby career on that you could not expect to receive help and favours from the New Labour machine if you also insisted on telling it like it was for the benefit of the readers who paid your salary.

I made my bed, and although those contemporaries of mine who took the Campbell spin subsequently saw all sorts of exciting career doors opening to them, I have never once regretted the road I took.

That said, there is a central hypocrisy at the heart of the Guido version of history that should not be overlooked. In my relatively limited personal dealings with Paul Staines, I have always found him to be an okay bloke - he even bought me a drink once - but when it comes to smear campaigns against rival politicians, his blog is the last word.

Back in 2007, Guido spent months attempting to convince his blog's many readers that Gordon Brown had been photographed on a rocking horse wearing a nappy, and to utilise the power of search engine optimisation and Google to spread this ridiculous tale across the entire internet. It even made it onto Wikipedia, and when I tried to remove it, some patsy came along and reverted my edit.

He also gave house-room to a sock puppet called "Stanislav" who suggested, in one particularly disgusting post, that the Prime Minister had been steadily driven mad by the strain of repressing his "homosexuality" over many years - part of a deadly serious attempt by the right to fix the idea of Gordon as a "weirdo" in the public's mind.

None of this in any way excuses the suggestion that David Cameron is suffering from some embarassing health complaint. But it does put it into perspective, and should serve as a corrective to those tempted to hail Guido as the new conscience of British public life.

Labour of course should have risen above all this. Instead, it set up LabourList, bringing in Derek Draper as editor despite the fact that his previous spell as a NuLab adviser had ended in embarrassing circumstances for the government. It was, in short, a car crash waiting to happen.

I disliked the idea of LabourList from the start. I was in fact invited to attend one of the breakfast sessions, and would have gone if I had been in London and at a loose end, but the whole thing seemed to me to be built on two false premises - firstly, the Dale Hypothesis that all left-wing blogs are basically crap, and secondly the Guido Hypothesis that smearing one's political opponents is a legitimate purpose of political blogging.

In other words, Labour thought they needed a Guido-style "attack blog" to take the fight to the Tories, and they concluded that none of the existing left-of-centre blogs was up to the job.

Had the party not got the first of these questions so catastrophically wrong, it would have realised that instead of trying to impose its command-and-control approach on the blogosphere, it would have been better off discreetly encouraging some of the excellent, well-established left-of-centre blogs that were already out there.

In short, instead of listening to Dolly Draper, they should have listened to Sunny Hundal. His post on Liberal Conspiracy is the best defence I have thus far read of the left-of-centre blogosphere and why Labour would have been better tapping into that rather than attempting to out-Fawkes the Tories.

Then again, New Labour has been ignoring its own natural supporters and trying to mimic the Conservatives ever since it was invented, so we should probably not be that surprised.

Meanwhile the issue of "spin" has once again become the issue that defines New Labour, the single word that I suspect will be associated with the Blair-Brown government long after everything else it did has been forgotten.

And those of us who thought Gordon would put a stop to all this nonsense have suffered another, perhaps terminal, disillusionment.

An old debate rears its head again

Today's call by the House of Lords' Communications Committee for the introduction of televised lobby briefings inevitably gave me a certain sense of deja vu. They were talking about this back in 2004 when I left the Lobby and, given the usual pace at which things tended to change in that august place, I'm not entirely surprised to find they are still talking about it now.

I suppose that now I am a website editor I ought to be instinctively in favour of the committee's proposal for video-streaming the briefings on the No10 site, but the regional press print journalist in me still suspects that it would be bad news for the sector.

To me, what was so remarkable about the lobby briefings was how incredibly democratic they were, in the sense that a regional political reporter like myself had as much opportunity to ask a question as the political editor of the BBC. That would no longer be the case if they were televised, as the broadcasters would invariably fight to get their questions in first for the requisite news footage.

I was surprised to find that my written contribution to the original Phillis Review on government comunications in 2003 in which this issue was also raised is still available online at the Cabinet Office archive. You can read it in full HERE.

Remembering Big Cyril

The latest issue of Total Politics is now out and Sir Cyril Smith is the latest subject in my Where Are They Now? series. The short answer is that he's alive and well and living in the same terraced house in Rochdale which he's lived in for 80 years, but you'll have to click on the link to see the rest.

The mag also has a poll on The Top 100 Political Journalists in Britain on which I feel obliged to pass some comment. I don't want to be too critical, as it was compiled fairly objectively from the votes of politicians, lobby journalists, and the TP Facebook group, but any such poll that places Peter Oborne at 60 and David Hencke at 93 has to be taken with something of a pinch of salt.

It seems the editorial team of Total Politics weren't entirely in agreement with their electorate on this either. In the preamble to the piece, they say: "We found it difficult to understand why neither Andrew Neil nor Ben Brogan made the Top 20. Surely Patrick Hennessy, Nick Watt and Peter Oborne should have been far higher than mid-table mediocrity?"

Leaving aside the odious Mr Pad, who Daily Politics show I find consistently unwatchable on account of his overweening presence, I would second all of that.

The other point I would make about polls listing political journalists is that you are essentially trying to compare very different skills. During my time in the Lobby, Philip Webster of The Times was regarded by many as the greatest story-getter, which on a traditional view of what constitutes journalism would make him the No 1 political journalist. But not even Phil would claim he was the greatest writer, commentator or sketchwriter.

The truth is that while the most highly-rated political journalists tend to have more specialised skills, venture lower down the list and you are more likely to find genuine all-rounders. The Guardian's ace sketchwriter Simon Hoggart (No 14) would be hard-pressed to write a front-page scoop, but the Mail on Sunday's Brendan Carlin (No 73) not only excels at that but wrote a mean parliamentary sketch in his Yorkshire Post days as I recall.

Bloggers and the Lobby

After initially taking the view that political bloggers had little to gain, and much to lose in terms of their independence by joining the parliamentary lobby, my thinking has changed on this point over the past couple of years. The gradual convergence of the blogosphere and the mainstream media which I wrote about in the Guide to Political Blogging earlier this year has rendered the old dividing lines obsolete.

As I have pointed out before, what we must now call the Big Five political blogs are, by virtue of their size, influence, and networks, practically part of the mainstream media already. They are, in no particular order, Iain Dale's Diary, Guido Fawkes, Political Betting, Conservative Home and the most recent newcomer to the elite, Liberal Conspiracy. In my view, all should be in the lobby.

I wrote in the 2008 Guide: "I always thought the day political blogging really entered the mainstream would be when one of the big four blogs managed to obtain a lobby pass. If they haven’t yet given one to the new co-editor of Con Home, I have a feeling they soon will do."

This was a reference to Jonathan Isaby, who had just proved my point about convergence by moving from being a Daily Telegraph lobby hack to editing the site which used to be, rather unfairly, known in some circles as Continuity IDS.

But according to this report in a well-known journalism trade publication yesterday, I was apparently premature in my forecast. In a speech at the London School of Economics, lobby chair Ben Brogan said the issue of whether to admit bloggers to the lobby was in fact causing "a huge headache."

Asked by a member of the audience whether the Commons authorities would consider the move, Brogan replied: "They've been very reluctant to start issuing passes to new media outlets. There's an ongoing conversation whether the House of Commons authorities start issuing media passes to bloggers. That remains unresolved."

Now I am all too aware of the limitation on desk space in the Press Gallery, having been involved in the very early planning stages of the refurbishment that eventually took place in summer 2007, but in the era of wireless broadband, bloggers hardly need a permanent desk in the Gallery in order to update their sites. This is essentially an argument about access, not desks.

Ben's comment doesn't make it entirely clear whether it's the lobby or the Serjeant-at-Arms Office - or both - which is resisting the move. But as a blogger himself - and a very fine one in my view - I would hope that Mr Brogan is quietly making the case for reform.

Those Top Ten Journal Moments

My old colleague Graeme Whitfield recently celebrated ten years on the staff of Newcastle's Journal by naming his ten most memorable Journal moments on his blog.

I well remember hearing about some of the hilarious newsroom incidents he describes although being based down in Westminster I unfortunately never witnessed them in person.

Anyway, even though I only managed seven and a half years on the staff, Graeme's piece has inspired me to do the same and list my own Top Ten Journal Moments.

Here they are.

1. Going more than 40 hours without sleep as New Labour came to power on 1/2 May 1997. I was officially on duty in Newcastle from 2pm on May 1 and we wrapped up the final edition of our election special 14 hours later at around 4am. I then caught the first train down to London and was outside No 10 for Blair's triumphal arrival later that morning. It was exhausting, but the sense of watching history in the making was intoxicating.

2. Sitting in the Commons Chamber in March 2003 and listening to Robin Cook's masterful resignation speech.

3. Being on Prime Minister John Major's plane during the 1997 election campaign when smackhead novelist Will Self was caught jacking up in the toilets mid-flight. We were en route to a photocall with Margaret Thatcher in Middlesbrough.

4. Falling asleep in a fishing boat moored on Brighton Beach after a rather heavy night during a Lib Dem Conference. It was a long walk back to my hotel and the boat seemed a rather comfy place to lay my tired head.

5. Having an argument over the phone with my old editor about how much space to give Labour conference coverage which culminated in him threatening to "fill the paper with pictures of Kylie's arse" instead. I was laughing so much I couldn't think of a witty response.

6. Cherie Blair's attempts to get me to go soft on her husband after I interviewed him during the 2001 election campaign by sharing a bag of chips with me and telling me what a great paper The Journal was. Or maybe she was just being nice.

7. Alastair Campbell accusing me during a lobby briefing of having asked the Governor of the Bank of England whether he had stopped beating his wife. Being subjected to a full-frontal personal attack by Campbell signified your arrival as a lobby hack and, for me, this was the best bit of the whole Eddie George saga.

8. Spotting a North-East government minister lighting-up on the Commons Terrace in 1997 a few days after his press officer had told me he had given up smoking.

9. My ingenuous wife handing Nick Robinson her mobile phone so he could snap a picture of the two of us together outside No 10 following a Downing St reception. To his eternal credit, he took it.

10. A Labour press officer's unusual reaction when I told him Peter Mandelson had been involved in a traffic accident in his constituency in 1997. The accident turned out to be quite minor, but the press officer in question was so alarmed he spontaneously cracked one off.

Calling all rats up drainpipes

As long-standing readers of this blog will know, Tony Bevins was one of my journalistic heroes. So it was good to hear that a group of friends and former colleagues have established the Bevins Prize both as a way of remembering him and as a means of encouraging and promoting investigative journalism.

The prize is a bronze statue of a rat up a drainpipe, which the organisers believe captured the essence of his approach to journalism.

Always a great believer in the merits of original research, Bevins would have been appalled by the prevalence of "churnalism" in the national media that exists today.

The organisers say the judges will be looking for work that required assiduous digging, and that successfully challenged those in power. I can think of a few bloggers whose work might well qualify.

Clegg "to back election winner" shock

God forbid that I ever turn into one of those gnarled old ex-lobby hacks who continually lament that political reporting is not what is was in their day....but the latest breathless revelations from Rosa Prince of the Telegraph's new-look political team had me shaking my head.

Writing on the usually excellent and informative Three Line Whip blog, she informs us that Nick Clegg will back David Cameron to become Prime Minister in the event of the Tories being the largest single party in a hung Parliament at the next General Election.

"Before now, it had been thought likely that Mr Clegg would wait until after an election to embark on negotiations with both of the main parties in the event of a hung Parliament. But The Daily Telegraph understands that he has decided that the public would not forgive him if he propped up a Labour administration that they had voted to throw out."

Well, blow me down. How long did it take The Daily Telegraph to "understand" that one, I wonder? I mean, it's not exactly rocket science, is it, to suggest that there would not be many votes for Cleggover in propping up a defeated Brown administration? With a second General Election likely to follow within the space of a year, he knows perfectly well it would be electoral suicide for him and his party.

The real dilemma for Clegg will come if Labour is the largest single party and the Tories are sufficiently far behind that they cannot form a government even with Lib Dem support - still a possible if currently rather unlikely scenario. In those circumstances the Lib Dem leader might be obliged to prop-up Labour in order to avert constitutional chaos.

Avid election speculators may like to take part in my Poll on the election outcome which I will be running between now and whenever the election comes. I plan to tot up the results each month and track the changes to see how opinion among blog readers is moving.

White on Brown

Donnish Times commentator Tim Hames caused a stir earlier this week by nominating the Guardian's Michael White for a political fixer's job at No 10.

White's response to this remarkable suggestion is contained in a Guardian podcast on today's local elections and is well worth hearing.

Fellow UCL alumnus Michael reveals: "Gordon has barely exchanged six words with me for several years. I don't know what I did to upset him."

The nauseating hypocrisy of Peter Kilfoyle

I used to have a lot of time for Peter Kilfoyle. He should in my view have been made Chief Whip after Nick Brown was moved from the post in 1998 and after his resignation from the government the following year he played a valuable role in speaking up for the interests of Labour's forgotten heartlands, although such was Tony Blair's obsession with Middle England it didn't ultimately achieve much in terms in of the overall direction of government policy.

So I was even more amazed to read his early day motion tabled last Wednesday which has so far obtained nine signatures from MPs of all three parties, at least one of whom should have known better.

It reads:

That this House notes recent media commentary on the rolling programme of maintenance involving the Speaker's rooms; notes that £8.2 million has been spent on the renovation of the Press Gallery; also notes that the media pays nothing for the use of the premises, nor for London telephone calls; is bemused that 10 male members of the lobby have a car parking pass for the Palace of Westminster; is conscious of the annual subsidy to the Press Bar of £210,000; and therefore calls upon members of the Press Gallery to apply to themselves the same standards that they would demand of others.

This edm is so mendacious and misleading, so full of half-truths and innuendo that it deserves a damned good fisking, so here goes.

Half-truth: "This House....notes that £8.2 million has been spent on the renovation of the Press Gallery"

Fact: The Press Gallery essentially had the refurbishments forced on them. Back in 2003, when I was a member of the Gallery Committee, it was told that its offices no longer complied with Health and Safety Legislation, and would therefore have to be upgraded. This being the case, the Committee reluctantly went along with the refurbishment plan and tried to shape it as best it could, although it was abundantly clear from the start that the House authorities were working to a particular agenda, namely removing as many of the Gallery's communal facilities as possible and maximising the amount of office space.

This, in the end, is precisely what happened. The Press Gallery dining room was lost, the gallery library was moved to a much smaller area, and the gallery bar was infamously combined with the cafeteria. In the words of the syncretistic lobby hack Bill Blanko it now has all the atmosphere of an airport terminal.

Half-truth: "This House...notes that the media pays nothing for the use of the premises, nor for London telephone calls."

Fact: Kilfoyle knows perfectly well that if the media were to be charged market rates for the use of office accommodation in Westminster, the regional press, including Kilfoyle's own Liverpool Echo, would cease to have a presence in the Commons altogether. It is frankly unbelievable to see a man who has previously posed as an advocate for the interests of the English regions making this argument.

Half-truth: "This House....is bemused that 10 male members of the lobby have a car parking pass for the Palace of Westminster

Fact: What Kilfoyle doesn't mention is that many MPs now have two car park passes. This enables them to park their second cars in the Palace underground car park permanently. The Commons authorities actually stopped handing out new car park passes to journalists several years ago. The ten that remain are held by extremely long-serving lobby men. Each time a journalist passholder leaves or retires, their pass is now reallocated as an additional pass for an MP.

Half-truth: "This House.....is conscious of the annual subsidy to the Press Bar of £210,000."

Fact: Peter Kilfoyle has regularly benefited from the availability of subsidised ale in the Press Bar. By my reckoning only John Spellar and Phil Woolas (whose job it was to patrol the Bar and find out what hacks were writing about the next day) were more regular attenders than Kilfoyle in the years 1997-2004. Maybe he's sobered up a bit since then.

The Chairmen's Pint

Good to see some old lobby traditions have survived despite the demise of the old Press Bar. And congratulations to the two new chairmen Colin Brown and Ben Brogan - a formidable duo if ever there was one.

Good luck Bob

Sincere congratulations to my old Lobby colleague Bob Roberts on his promotion to Mirror political editor. Although one of the nicest guys in the Press Gallery, Bob is well-used to coming first, having once won an Alan Shearer lookalike competition at his local boozer in Sarf London.

Less than bostin Austin

Ian Austin was not someone who endeared himself to the Lobby during my time there. He took over from the great Charlie Whelan but entirely lacked his illustrious predecessor's wit, roguish charm or indeed ability to tell you anything useful, so I naturally enjoyed this piece from the inimitable Simon Hoggart Bill Blanko.

Happy Memories....

The start of the Parliamentary recess today spells the end of an era for a great and venerable journalistic institution - the Press Bar at the Palace of Westminster. Apparently it's going to move next door as part of a "rationalisation" of press facilities that the Commons authorities have long planned.

The Guardian's resident lobby gossip Bill Blanko - who is almost certainly not Simon Hoggart or Michael White as is commonly supposed - has written a moving lament in his latest column. Reading this I was not surprised to hear that Rob Gibson, former Gallery chairman and songsmith, had composed a musical tribute to mark the occasion.

It's two years or more since I had my last drink in there, but I still miss the place. Yes, the Lobby was a brutal, backstabbing environment at times, but it also had great camaraderie, and none more so than on those magical Press Bar evenings when a leaving do or some other celebration was in full swing.

I hope they manage to replicate some of that atmosphere in the new "cafe bar" opening next door in the old canteen area, but something tells me it won't ever be quite the same again.

Frustrated politicians?

Iain Dale posed the following very interesting question on his blog yesterday: Political journalists are merely frustrated politicians? Discuss.

There are several journalists-turned-politicians in the current House of Commons - Yvette Cooper, Ed Balls and Martin Linton to name but three. But so far as I am aware the only lobby hack during my time who successfully made the switch was Julie Kirkbride, formerly of the Daily Telegraph.

It took her a fair while to establish herself as a Tory MP, and I think this was in part down to a reluctance on the part of the Lobby to take seriously one of their former number.

By contrast, one who tried and failed to make the switch was Hugh Pym, who attempted to become a Liberal Democrat MP at the 2001 election and has now returned to journalism. On this evidence, the answer to Dale's question would appear at best inconclusive.

There were of course a number of lobby journalists who went off to become researchers or spin doctors, most famously Alastair Campbell but also the likes of Charles Lewington, Nick Wood and John Deans, who all became Tory press officers, Mark Davies (ex-BBC and Liverpool Echo) who became a government special adviser, and the late David Bamber of the Sunday Telegraph, who went to work for Labour MP Fraser Kemp.

Spin doctoring, though, is not the same as real politics. I don't doubt that Alastair Campbell was a powerful political figure, but would his colourful past have withstood the scrutiny of his former colleagues had he attempted to forge a political career in his own right? I doubt it.

Another reason why relatively few senior lobby journalists make the move from the Press Gallery to the green benches below is quite simply that they would be taking not only a huge drop in salary but also a huge drop in influence.

Senior Lobby hacks like Trevor Kavanagh who effectively become players in the political process have significantly more power than the average backbench MP, without all the attendant hassles.

For my part, though, I think the reason there is relatively little movement between the worlds of politics and political journalism is more fundamental - that the two disciplines demand a totally different mindset.

Throughout my own career, people have repeatedly asked me if I was interested in a political role. As I said in my interview with Paul Burgin last year, one reason I haven't is that there isn't a political party that comes close to reflecting my economically progressive yet socially conservative political views - and there isn’t ever likely to be.

But the biggest reason I've never seriously considered it - and I think this is probably true of many journalists - is that I could not dissemble in the way that politicians are required to.

Politicians need to be able, as CP Snow put it, "to send the old familiar phrases reverberating round." Like Roy Calvert in The Masters, I cannot do that without falling over with laughter.

David Bamber RIP

I can't claim to have been a friend of Dave's, but we worked together in the regional lobby for a couple of years in the 1990s and I was shocked to read this via Tom Watson. I share Tom's assessment of his rapier-like wit and quick mind.

Guido, Sir Michael and the so-called "car crash"

Another thing that happened while I was away was the infamous Newsnight interview involving blogger Guido Fawkes. Guido has himself conceded that it was mistake to break his own rule and agree to be interviewed, while the reaction on blogosphere as a whole has been scathing, the consensus being that he was made mincemeat of by veteran Guardian hack "Sir" Michael White. But having now looked at the film, and the ensuing studio discussion, I am not convinced it was quite as one-sided as has been presented.

White kicked off the studio discussion, chaired by Jeremy Paxman with Guido appearing in "shadow" from Westminster, with a well-made point about how it is not only political journalists who run the risk of getting too close to their sources. In fact it is far more of a problem in entertainment journalism. One-nil to White. But Michael then threw away this early advantage by revealing Guido's real name, which was somewhat cheap, and saying he looked a "prat" for wearing a rugby shirt at a lobby lunch, which came over as simply pompous. One-all.

White then reacted to Guido's oft-made allegation that the Lobby had effectively concealed the truth about John Prescott's private life with the counter-claim that Prescott was being "stitched-up" by bloggers. To which I can only respectfully say: Bollocks, Michael. Prescott fairly adeptly stitched himself up by (i) shagging his secretary, and (ii) infuriating Labour MPs by allowing himself, as the keeper of the cloth cap, to be pictured playing the decadent upper-class sport of croquet at his country retreat. Two-one to Guido.

Sir Michael then compounded even this error by maintaining he did not know John Prescott's age, despite an earlier report that he had attended his 68th birthday party. Well, sorry, but whether he attended the party or not, I find it preposterous that someone who was a national newspaper political editor for 16 years would not actually know the Deputy Prime Minister's age, particularly as it was a point at issue in his decision to retire along with Tony Blair. Three-one Guido.

At this point in the discussion, Guido was well ahead in my view, but threw away his advantage with two silly errors in the closing stages. First, he made a reference to Lord Levy's forthcoming "trial" which presented an absolute gift-horse for White and Paxman to accuse bloggers of being cavalier with the facts. Three-two. Then, in injury time, Guido made the grievous mistake - which a real lobby hack would never make - or naming a source (BBC political editor Nick Robinson) for one his stories. Three-all.

In conclusion, even though Guido managed to break the first rule of journalism - not exactly surprising given he isn't a journalist - he still got away with a score draw. He may not have covered himself with glory, but I don't think White did either and he came over as both pompous and petulant, which oddly is the very opposite of how I remember him from my lobby days.

As it is, the degree of gloating on other blogs about this interview is to me symptomatic of the marked lack of charity that currently characterises the blogosphere. It seems a long time ago that Guido, Iain Dale, Tim Ireland, Justin McKeating and myself were among a large group of bloggers who joined forces to put together the Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze. It was a great collaborative effort, masterminded by Dale, but at least two of us were not invited to contribute to the second edition, and you probably couldn't get all five of us together in a room these days without fisticuffs.

I don't agree with Guido's politics, or all of his methods, and I do agree with some of Tim's points about the need for some commonly agreed standards of blog etiquette. But even if the blogosphere might be a little more well-mannered without Guido, it would almost certainly not have as a high a profile - and we have all benefited from that.