| Paul Staines | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 February 1967 Ealing, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | "Guido Fawkes" |
| Known for | Political blogger |
| Political party | formerly associated with: Conservative Party Social Democratic Party Progressive Democrats |
| Website | |
| www.order-order.com | |
Paul Staines (born 11 February 1967) is an English-born Irish[1] right-wing political blogger. Writer of the pseudonymous "Guido Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours & conspiracy",[2] which had as of February 2009, 118,000 visitors per month,[3] his political blog has been described as "one of Britain's leading political blogsites".[4]
Staines acquired an interest in politics as a libertarian in the 1980s and promoted acid house parties in the early 1990s. He then spent several years in finance, before his business relationships broke down in a series of disputes described by a judge as "the most acrimonious litigation, hard fought at every turn of a number of interlocutory skirmishes. No holds were barred; no punches were pulled".[5] Staines declared himself bankrupt in October 2003.[6]
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Staines was raised a Catholic, attending Salvatorian College Catholic grammar school in Harrow.[7][8] He lives in Ireland [9] and was a member of the now defunct Irish political party, the Progressive Democrats.[10] He holds Irish citizenship.[1] As a young man he was a member of the Social Democratic Party sitting on the national executive of their youth wing,[11] and the Conservative Party.[12]
Staines declared himself bankrupt in 2003 following lengthy litigation over a commercial dispute[6] and in 2008 was convicted of drink-driving for the second time.[13]
Staines is a former libertarian who described in a 2000 publication[14] how he became a libertarian in 1980 after reading Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. He joined the Young Conservatives whilst at Humberside College of Higher Education "because they were the only people around who were anti-Socialist or at least anti-Soviet", and at this time began calling himself Delaire-Staines, the name shortened by his father to Staines in the 1960s. Having joined the Federation of Conservative Students, he described his politics as "Thatcher on drugs". He relates that at college he was a "right-wing pain in the butt who was more interested in student politics than essays", who went on "to work in the various right-wing pressure groups and think tanks that proliferated in the late eighties". He admitted that his uncompromising attitude towards libertarianism had been harsh and off-putting, but that it was "time for a more effective, kinder, gentler kind of Libertarianism". Staines has stated that he is a republican.
Staines has been active in the Libertarian Alliance. He was pictured at the 1987 Libertarian Alliance conference with a t-shirt supporting UNITA, produced by his Popular Propaganda enterprise (while at college), which produced posters and t-shirts.[15]
Staines worked as "foreign policy analyst" for the Committee for a Free Britain, a right-wing Conservative pressure group, alongside David Hart. Staines acted as editor of British Briefing a long-standing publication by the group that was a "monthly intelligence analysis of the activities of the extreme left" that sought to "smear Labour MPs and left-leaning lawyers and writers".[8]
Staines relates of his work with the Committee:
I was lobbying at the Council of Europe and at Parliament; I was over in Washington, in Jo'burg, in South America. It was 'let's get guns for the Contras', that sort of stuff. I was enjoying it immensely, I got to go with these guys and fire off AK-47s. I always like to go where the action is, and for that period in the Reagan/Thatcher days, it was great fun, it was all expenses paid and I got to see the world. I used to think that World Briefing was a bit funny. The only scary thing about those publications was the mailing list – people like George Bush – and the fact that Hart would talk to the head of British Intelligence for an hour. I used to think it was us having a laugh, putting some loony right-wing sell in, and that somebody somewhere was taking it seriously. You've got to understand that we had a sense of humour about this.[8]
In 1989, Staines published In the Grip of the Sandinistas: Human Rights in Nicaragua 1979–1989, under the auspices of the International Society for Human Rights (of which he was UK secretary-general), analysing the Sandinista's in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1989. He was then the editor of Human Rights Briefing.[16]
Staines's credibility, he says, was damaged by his increasing enthusiasm for drugs and raves. "One minute l would be on News at One saying 'there's no drugs at these parties' and the next minute I'm supposed to be talking about civil war in Angola. It wasn't working." [8]
He founded the Global Growth Org NGO,[17] a campaigning group for free trade for the third world. Campaigns included support for microcredit, as well as a pharmaceutical campaign to "promote the tariff-free trading of drugs in the developing world, secondly defend the re-importation and parallel trading of pharmaceuticals in the rich industrialised nations. Thirdly, to lobby legislators for patient-friendly duration limit". The site shows limited activity in recent month, with its last Hot Sheet published in March 2005, and last blog entry in June 2006.
Staines was PR officer for the Sunrise collective, an organiser of raves and acid house parties in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[8] Sunrise avoided legal issues by positioning its large-scale dance parties as private-member clubs, outside of police control.[18]
Faced with opposition from the Conservative government, and a Private Members Bill to clamp down on unlicensed parties, Staines, along with Tony Colston-Hayter, established the Freedom to Party Campaign at the Conservative Party conference in October 1989. Although the campaign had little impact, with a first rally in Trafalgar Square attracting 4,000, and a second 10,000,[8] Staines was still occasionally active in his role as director of the campaign, arguing in 1995 that individuals should have the right to have occasional noisy parties at home.[19]
Staines later described, in a Libertarian Alliance publication, the actions of police, using surveillance to clamp down on acid parties, as "truly a regime of which Stalin or Hitler himself would be proud, implementing socialist policies to protect the citizens from their own moral weakness", an action that "happened, not under a Communist regime, but under an increasingly authoritarian Conservative government". He described those opposed to rave parties as "the Lifestyle Police ... the conservative, intolerant bigots who demand uniformity ... supported by comfortable suburbia and the reactionary readers of the Daily Express. For them different means dangerous. They truly believe that they represent decent values when in fact they have narrow intolerant values."[16]
Staines says an explanation he related at the 1989 Conservative conference that Acid House was not named after the drug, but for a Chicago term referring to theft of music, was believed by numerous gullible journalists and MPs, to give a false impression that the music was not drug-related.
Staines offered an enthusiastic endorsement of rave drugs relating how "I have fond memories of taking LSD and pure MDMA, trance-dancing and thinking that I had turned into a psychedelic, orgiastic wisp of smoke – it was the most staggeringly enjoyable, mind-warping experience I have ever had. The sense of self liberation was awesome and is to be recommended.", adding "A lot of my Thatcherite/Libertarian friends get very suspicious when I tell them about the love and peace aspects of taking Ecstasy. To them love and peace equals hippies equals leftist. The feeling of unity and shared enjoyment to them smacks of collectivism, not the rugged individualism that they favour. But the drug actually removes inhibitions, liberating your mind." "You feel a sense of solidarity, but it is totally voluntary, there is no coercion. Libertarians are opposed to coercive collectivism, but if I as an individual choose to enjoy a collective experience because I want to, then that is up to me. I suspect that a lot of rightwingers, Conservative, Thatcherite or Libertarian, cling to their inhibitions and are actually afraid of letting go." He concluded "uptight Conservatives are probably the people who would benefit most from taking drugs, particularly Thatcherites, with their machine-like obsession with efficiency and abstract attachment to the freedom to make money. I'm as much of a believer in Capitalism as the most earnest of Young Conservatives, but couldn't we put acid in the punch at the YC ball and then really have a party?"
In September 2004, Staines began writing anonymously about politicians of the United Kingdom parliament, under the name of Guido Fawkes, an alternative name of Guy Fawkes, one of the group that plotted to blow up the Palace of Westminster in 1605.[20] In February 2005, the online version of The Guardian reported that Fawkes' blog shared a fax number with Staines.[21] Although he subsequently refused to confirm the links, further media coverage continued to name Staines as Fawkes until the airing of a BBC Radio 4 documentary[22] about him on 10 February 2007, which gave a fairly comprehensive history and background, and prompted his blog post "So Much For Anonymity".[23]
In 2005, Staines's blog was voted the best in the Political Commentary category of The Backbencher Political Weblog Awards, run by The Guardian. This was an online poll linked to from Guido Fawkes site, and not a poll of Guardian readers specifically.[24] In May 2006, Staines (as Guido Fawkes) co-authored a book with Iain Dale about instances of sleaze from the Labour Party since taking office in 1997.[25]
In April 2006, Staines was one of numerous bloggers subject to an injunction[26] from News International for publishing a picture of undercover journalist Mazher Mahmood. Staines agreed to publish [27] the photo if 10 other bloggers would do so.[28] The picture remained on Staines's site, and subsequently following legal action from George Galloway MP, the photo was released into the public domain.
Staines reported the allegation that John Prescott was having an extramarital affair with an MP, and named the woman in question, saying that such rumours had long been shared among Westminster journalists, but that he was being less hypocritical and breaking the clique by refusing to cover up such stories.[29] The coverage of the Prescott affair drew considerable extra traffic to Staines's blog.[30]
He was named at number 36 in the "Top 50 newsmakers of 2006" in The Independent,[31] for his blog, and his role in the Prescott scandal in particular.
In 2011 he started an e-petition to bring back capital punishment in the UK, stating "I would personally execute child killers" .[32]
Staines encourages readers to forward political documents and information, which he publishes on his blog. One such leak was a strategy document for the Peter Hain for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party campaign. This leak caused embarrassment to Hain's campaign,[33] as it included information on MPs who had not gone public with their support, as well as others who were supposed to be independent.
Several conventions and idiosyncratic traditions have developed over the years on the blog, which may confuse new readers. On Fridays, a caption contest is run usually featuring an amusing political photograph. The caption contest is one of the most popular features on the blog and usually results in a large number of entries in the comments. Caption comments can often be quite vicious. The vague prospect of a T-shirt as a prize for the best wit has been mentioned in the past, but none has ever been awarded so far (although new readers often argue in vain about who it should go to).
The blog does allow anonymous comments. If Guido replies to an anonymous comment, he addresses his retort invariably to "anonymong".
Tottywatch[34] is an irregular feature that comprises pictures of attendees at political events. Although the pictures are of both men and women, the majority are of attractive young women. The comments section invariably discusses their merits in the crudest terms. In response, Fawkes began producing occasional "Tottywatch" pieces often using pictures taken with a phone camera. The Guardian's "Polly C Wonk", a satirical character has featured a "Givea Fawk" character who was "muttering something about birds and brains while fumbling with a digital camera under the table."[35]
Staines' wife is referred to as Mrs Fawkes and his daughter as Miss Fawkes.
On Monday mornings, the blog features a Monday Morning Point of View cartoon by "Rich&Mark", cartoonist Rich Johnston, archived at the RichAndMark website.[36]
A weekly Guy News TV video started in September 2009 and is mailed to thousands of subscribers over the weekend.
Staines has made a number of posts on his blog relating to the Smith Institute, a charitable thinktank set up in memory of former Labour leader John Smith, which he alleged to have engaged in party political activities (forbidden under charity law) and links to Gordon Brown. These complaints led on February 1, 2007 to a formal investigation by the Charity Commission.[37] The Commission threatened him with contempt of court proceedings if he did not release any documents, obtained from whistleblowers, relating to political activities by the Smith Institute.[38] Staines has stated on his blog [39] that he intends to protect his anonymous sources.
Staines has been credited with being the first blogger to "take the scalp" of a serving British minister, following the resignation for a period of well over a year of Peter Hain from the offices of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales in January 2008.[40][41][42]
Over the weekend of 11–12 April 2009, Staines exposed in his blog that a series of scurrillous e-mails had been prepared by Damian McBride, a political adviser working at 10 Downing Street, gratuitously smearing a number of Conservative MPs which had been sent to Derek Draper for consideration for publication on the Red Rag blogsite.[43] This led to the resignation of McBride and expressions of regret to the MPs concerned from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.[44] Staines provided copies of these emails to the News of the World and The Sunday Times and states that, contrary to the comments of his detractors, he did not succeed in his attempts to receive any payments for this.[45]
His success in the McBride affair has occasioned serious criticism from him of the UK lobby correspondent system, which he believes has succumbed to the ethos of political spin.[46]
On July 29, 2011, Staines published a post on his blog entitled "Government Launches e-Petitions Website, Guido Submits “Restoration of Capital Punishment” Petition".[47] He used the HM Government e-petitions site epetitions.direct.gov.uk to create the petition "Restoration of Capital Punishment" [48] requiring 100,000 votes will be "eligible for debate in the House of Commons" [49]
Staines published a series of posts detailing previous examples of crimes that in his opinion should receive the death penalty [50] Guido Fawkes and quotes from Conservative MPs Philip Davies, Priti Patel and Andrew Turner [51] Guido Fawkes supporting his petition and the reintroduction of capital punishment to the UK.
He used Twitter to claim "Since the abolition of the death penalty in the '60s the murder rate has doubled." and stated "I would personally execute child killers. Think you'll find a lot of fathers would feel the same." [52]
As of 17 November 2011 the petition had collected 24,157 signatures, but a petition calling for the retention of the ban has gained more signatures.[53]
In late November 2011, Staines posted on his Guido Fawkes blog the Leveson Inquiry pre-submission of former journalist and Labour Party spin-doctor Alastair Campbell. All pre-submissions are given under strict and full confidentiality, and all core participants - including victims, the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service - are also signatories. Staines stated that he had obtained the submission legally. Lord Justice Leveson immediately called him to the inquiry to make a statement under cross-examination.[54]
Staines has been criticised for his approach to blogging. He often criticises the mainstream media – the BBC in particular – claiming that it is too close to the political establishment, and that it also keeps internal secrets about political scandals from the public. When allegations about John Prescott's private life appeared, Staines wrote that "You can tell it is a big story because Nick Robinson is ignoring it". Robinson responded via his own blog,[55] accusing Staines of having a political agenda to damage the government.
These criticisms were echoed by Peter Wilby, in the New Statesman, who suggested that Staines's claims to have made the news on Prescott were unfounded, as the story had previously been covered in The Times, and that Staines's contribution to the debate was persistent implications of scandal without supporting evidence.[56]
Colin Brown, in response to criticisms from Staines that the media is too cosy with politicians said "We would love to go into print with things that we hear and believe to be true, but cannot prove, but the libel laws are such that we cannot put things into newspapers that he [Guido Fawkes] seems to think that he can get away with on the internet. They don't seem to run by the same rules".[29]
Staines responded, claiming that he is much more vulnerable to libel suits than the print media is, as an individual he does not have a large company backing him, although he says the fact that his blog is published through an offshore company, Global and General Nominees, a Nevis-registered firm offers some protection, as plaintiffs are required to deposit $25,000 in court before commencing any action in Nevis.[57] (The same firm is majority shareholder in MessageSpace, a blog advertising network that sells advertising space on many British political blogs, including PoliticalBetting.com, Iain Dale, ConservativeHome, Labourhome, and Recess Monkey.[58])
In the Newsnight debate with Staines, Michael White said: “You see a naive conspiratorial view of the political process and of politicians which says in effect they’re all crooks, and they all ought to be in jail, and we will fearlessly expose them on the blogsphere. And it isn’t like that... You can be pretty cavalier with the facts sometimes. Much of the blog, for people who don’t know it, this week is devoted to whether or not Gordon Brown picked his nose in, was it the budget or some other recent event? That’s been your top item.”
During the Newsnight interview with Michael White, Staines appeared to reveal Robinson, a long-term political associate, who served as President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1986–1987 as one of his anonymous sources, something Staines later attempted to clarify, claiming that Robinson had never been one of his sources.[59]
Robinson also felt the need to respond on his blog, saying “For the record, if I have stories I broadcast them and don't give them to bloggers. If I ever had thoughts of doing anything else they were removed by Guido's performance last night which demonstrated an utterly cavalier attitude to facts.”[60]
Staines was criticised by Iain Dale and Michael White in September 2010 for publishing rumours about William Hague, alleging that he shared a hotel room with his newly appointed special advisor. Hague confirmed that he had shared a hotel room with the young man but denied any "improper relationship".[61][62]
