THE POLITICAL blogger who broke the story that triggered the resignation of one of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s key advisers at the weekend says he would like to set up a similar blog focusing entirely on Irish politics.
Blogger Guido Fawkes, whose real name is Paul Staines, obtained e-mails sent by Mr Brown’s senior aide Damian McBride to former Labour spin doctor, Derek Draper, in which they discussed plans to set up a website to publish unsubstantiated stories and smears against Conservative Party leader David Cameron and other Tories.
Mr McBride resigned on Saturday after the story came to light.
“The content of the e-mails was so vile, so low, that he couldn’t possibly survive,” said Mr Staines last night. He described the story as “dynamite”.
The British-born blogger has Irish citizenship and lives in Wexford with his wife and two children. He joined the Progressive Democrats in 2004 and remained a member until the decision was taken to dissolve the party. Most recently he donated to anti-Lisbon Treaty group Libertas, and voted No in last year’s referendum on the treaty.
Mr Staines’s blog, which he describes as a mix between the Drudge Report and Popbitch, draws about 120,000 visitors a month and is read in Westminster circles. “I try to mix highbrow and lowbrow, and gossip with a campaigning aspect,” he said.
Mr Staines sometimes blogs on Irish politics, and more recently posted on the State’s economic travails, but he says he harbours ambitions to establish a site dealing specifically with Irish issues.
“I’ve often thought about doing something in Ireland,” he said last night. “All that Bertie Ahern stuff would have been fabulous.”
Mr Staines predicted that political blogs will play a greater role in election campaigns and politics more generally in the future. Ireland’s political blogging culture was still in its infancy, he noted. “More could be made of it here.”