Sure, but I haven’t signed on a dotted line anywhere. It was a closed event by invite only, anyway, so he couldn’t have used it more widely to gain credibility among bloggers.

All I’m saying is, I wanted to learn what the party was up to and what the BSD people were saying. Let the likes of Guido snipe from the sidelines – I don’t give a toss about him. But I’m definitely not being drafted into any project by them.

Maybe not but has it not occurred to you that that’s how it might look? Or that Draper might be tempted use your and others’ attendance to give his venture a veneer of respectability?

Oh I’m perfectly aware… but as Adam said – I wanted to see what the Blue State digital people had to say – people didn’t come to rub shoulders with Draper.

I’ll write about this tonight… I don;t think he’s very clued up about it either…

Well I don’t and wouldn’t as I hope is obvious. And I don’t need to – as it happens I had a copy of that invite list myself all along. The trouble is other people will believe Staines’ spin. In the unlikely even that my name had appeared on that list I’d have been screaming from the rooftops that I am not one of Derek fucking Draper’s go-to guys for his blogging offensive. I can think of little that would ruin my small online reputation more.

You and Sunny have very fine reputations in British blogging and I think it would be terrible if those reputations were damaged unwittingly or not by association with scum like Draper. If I haven’t made it clear enough I regard him as beyond the pale.

What he and his cohort got up to back in the 90s should have finished him for good in politics and yet here he is. He clearly thought you and Sunny worth inviting to his breakfast. I doubt he did it out of the goodness of his heart. Reflected glory springs to mind. A stamp of respectability.

Anyway, I realise I’m getting into ‘will-you-condemn-athon’ territory. The meeting itself sounds encouraging and less stuffed with dragooned useful idiots than I’d feared.

I got the impression that Draper didn’t really understand it all and had a vague idea that the internet could be useful.

People in the audience were more interested in talking about how people could be rallied around issues such as the living wage etc. There was also a lot of talk about how New Labour had ben top-down or ‘Stalinist’ and that the Obama campaign showed that parties needed to be ‘bottom up’ in using it’s supporters and meeting their concerns.

What wasn’t mentioned was that the last real mass ‘bottom up’ issue was the Iraq war and the Labour government completely ignored it. They lost our trust on this and other issues and it’s going to take a lot more than a few nifty websites to turn that around for them. I don’t think the Labour party will fully realise that until they’re out of power (if at all) but I was pleased to hear that at least some of their supporters are beginning to realise what needs to be done.

Come one Sunny, that’s spin. Like it being ‘a pure DD initiative’ makes it any better. He’s building an online propaganda unit for New Labour. Surely you must be aware of his disgusting history? He’s tainted to say the least. I wouldn’t break bread with that fucker for any money. And look at the cock-eyed way he went about it arranging that meeting – what an amateur.

(I’ve just seen the email now. I had seen the title but I ignored the content because Friday 19th was no good for me. I wish I has looked at it now – I’d have been tempted to leak it myself.)

The reason for the ‘league of lefty sock puppets’ narrative is obvious though; most right-wing blogs are rotten with sock-puppetry and have been for years. But for all their noise, they’ve not caught one single puppeteer yet, have they? But they seem to have their eyes constantly on their traffic stats…

Meanwhile, a senior communications guy for the Tories Grant Shapps MP has been caught red-handed when pretending to be a disheartened Liberal Democrat while (oops) still logged into his own YouTube account. I’m yet to blog the details, but Paul Staines was also recently caught red-handed (trying to explain his actions re: Baby P while pretending to be someone else, which takes a special kind of courage).

(I could go on. In fact, I plan to soon. Once again, I invite any right-wingers present to speak up and bring me any proven examples of left wing sock puppetry that I may not be aware of. I’d hate to leave anybody out.)