PB could be under threat if he succeeds

A couple of years ago the Labour PPC for Chelsea and the man who founded LabourHome, Alex Hilton, set up a company with Paul Staines (Guido) to develop the advertising potential of political blogs. It took a bit of time to get going but now the firm, MessageSpace, is producing significant revenue that is under-pinning dozens of different sites.

For Politicalbetting this has been a godsend – and the prospect of regular advertising revenue was a key reason why I gave up my day job and full-time salary in December 2007 to work full-time on the site. I’m now seeing a reasonable income stream that should this financial year cover all the site costs and hopefully provide me with, together with the bookmaker commissions, a net profit of maybe £750 a month.

But this is all being threatened by the man pictured above as part of his pathetic little spat with Paul Staines. Draper and his cohorts have tried to find a cause over some comments that have appeared on Guido’s site in order to claim that he is a racist.

Note that they could not find anything that Guido himself wrote to object to – but managed to dig out two or three comments that could be described as racist. I understand that these were subsequently removed.

Now LabourList is trying to get supporters to contact MessageSpace advertisers to warn them off from using the firm – a move that would hurt many sites and not just Guido. And, in an even nastier intervention, LabourHome’s Alex Hilton has been threatened and told in no uncertain terms to break his relationship.

Could this have anything to do with the stories Guido has been carrying about what Draper has put on his CV It looks like it.

Come on Draper. Stop this contrived campaign and get on with trying to produce a decent site for the Labour Party. LabourList still has a long way to go.