Dirty tricks?

Are bloggers setting the political agenda? The Independent reports that Mr Prescott's allies think so:

"Friends of the Deputy Prime Minister claim he has been the target of a "dirty tricks" campaign by "bloggers" with Tory right-wing links.
They are furious at the use of two Westminster internet sites to name a third woman with whom the bloggers allege John Prescott has had an affair, and a woman civil servant in Beijing who is said to have rebuffed his advances.
Mr Prescott's allies have privately urged him to take action to remove the smears or close the sites down. His advisers said he was unlikely to do so, to avoid giving them more prominence.
"It is the black arts," said a Prescott ally. "They are running a dirty tricks campaign and they are being used as a conduit by journalists."
The Labour MP was named by a "gunpowder plot" website called Guido Fawkes. Friends of the blogger said it was run by a libertarian conservative, Paul Staines, a former Tory activist. The website yesterday challenged Mr Prescott to sue.
The Prescott camp also accused Iain Dale, a past Tory parliamentary candidate, of using his own personal blogsite to recycle the smears."

I hold no brief for either of the websites mentioned, but the beauty of blogging is that readers can make up their own mind. You will find Guido here and Iain Dale here.

There are also a couple of points worth making. The mainstream media, particularly the BBC, were rather slow off the mark in reporting the latest Prescott imbroglio, witness the self-interested pleading here - so why complain when bloggers pick up the ball and start to run with it? The second point is that the traditional conspiracy whereby everyone at Westminster knows who is sleeping with whom but refuses to disclose the (alleged) facts outside the magic circle is thankfully breaking down.

Finally, a labour deputy prime minister who spends a weekend at a billionaire's Colorado ranch when that billionaire has business dealings with the government is not behaving sensibly.