Draper to McBride: These Ideas Are Totally Brilliant

The Sunday Times has some of the details of the emails from Damian McBride HERE.

And as a further taster for tomorrow, here is part of the email exchange between Derek Draper and Damian McBride.

From Damian McBride

I think Red Rag should appear with no preview - as you say - but with a good initial story and with Labourlist then mentioning that the bug is catching...........

Tom was going away today after a chat with me to work on a couple of insiderish announcements for Labourlist about appointments to Labour HQ and No10. I'm working on a couple of other things as well........we've got to keep the momentum going over the weekend - it's been brilliant so far.

-----Original Message-----
From: Derek Draper [mailto:derekdraper@............]
Sent: 13 January 2009 18:56
To: Damian McBride
Cc: Dodgshon, Andrew; Whelan, Charlie
Subject: Re: Rag [UNCLASSIFIED] [Non-Record]

These are absolutely totally brilliant Damian.

I'll think about timing and sort out the technology with Andrew this week so we can go asap.

Do we want to tip off anyone about Red Rag having set up? Walters? I could do it and say LabouLlist had been sent the link anonymously.

PS Don't forget LabourList Damian!

Sent from my iphone:

On 13 Jan 2009, at 18:34, "Damian McBride" wrote:

Gents

A few ideas I've been working on for Red Rag. For ease, I've written all the below as I'd write them for the site, but obviously Andrew will want to adapt for his own house style, length, etc.

The first one is a solid investigative story, so may be a good one to use early. The other 3 are gossipy and mainly intended to destabilise the Tories.

I'm not sure how to set up easy links in the copy of the text, so I've stuck in the full links below each bit of relevant text.

Damian

Note the comment by Derek Draper "These are absolutely totally brilliant Damian." These emails are proof that Charlie Whelan is implicated in the whole thing. The reference to Andrew Dodgshon is presumably an indication that he was being lined up to write TheRedRag blog. He works for Charlie Whelan and is the press officer for Unite/TGWU.

It is quite clear from what the News of the World says and from these emails that this was a site that was being prepared for launch. I have my own ideas about why it has yet to see the light of day, which I will keep to myself for the moment. But I am clear on one thing. Draper is lying when he says the whole thing had been shelved.

Hattip: Guido Fawkes