Three new anonymous pro-Tory political blogs have popped up in recent weeks. All are rather curious: none carry bylines, and two are so technically similar that they could have been made in the same place. They were introduced to the world by Louise Mensch in a post for ConservativeHome. In fact, Guido Fawkes has suggested that Mensch might know who is behind them:
So are they real? Or astroturf — a Westminster term for something that looks like grassroots but is actually from someone connected to the campaign? I’ve done some digging to find out more.
Publicly Inconvenient
Publicly Inconvenient is a cheerfully designed site, layered with cartoons by Gary Barker. Mensch described it as a ‘good policy blog’. The tag line is ‘for the chaotically incorrect…and the politically disturbed’, which sits alongside a P.J. O’Rourke quote about China, Cuba and communism. The posts are mostly focused on attacking Labour and the SNP. The most recent post from yesterday says that ‘Cadbury wins it for Cameron’, in reference to the Labour PPC who forgot the party’s manifesto. There is also some media bashing: a post from February looked at ‘BBC Bias’ while another a few days later focused on the Guardian and columnist Polly Toynbee. All fair and balanced stuff.
A reverse DNS lookup on publiclyinconvenient.com shows the site is hosted by Heart Internet Ltd in Nottingham. The domain was registered on 4th February 2015 for just a year. Whoever purchased this domain has taken up the services of ‘Domain Privacy Protector Ltd’ to hide his/her details, so all we know is that the domain is registered to an office in Albany House at 324/326 Regent Street. Similarly to many other blogs, Publicly Inconvenient is powered by WordPress and uses the off-the-shelf Loma theme.
Might it be linked to CCHQ? The site’s Twitter account — @winnwithus – has just 50 followers, including the CCHQ Press Office. The account itself follows 23 people — the first being CCHQ. Some of the tweets from @winnwithus have been retweeted by the CCHQ account:
All of the posts on the website are bylined ‘The Editor’ and nowhere on the site does it mention who is running the blog. There is no contact form to get in touch with ‘The Editor’ either.
Pestminster
Mensch described Pestminster as her ‘favourite’ out of the ‘new anonymous blogs’. The site’s tag line is ‘Westminster Mischief and Devilry’ and promises ‘Casting a Caustic Eye on Election Shenanigans’. But most of the posts are focused on Ukip and Nigel Farage’s campaign to become the MP in South Thanet.
On a technical level, pestminster.com is nearly identical with publiclyinconvenient.com. A reverse DNS lookup shows the site is also hosted by Heart Internet Ltd, registered for a year with details hidden by Domain Privacy Protector Ltd. It is also powered by WordPress using the off-the-shelf Loma theme. Great minds!
Pestminster has a Twitter account @pestminster under the name ‘The Editor’ — the same as Publicly Inconvenient — with 131 followers. The account has been mostly retweeting negative stories about Ukip. One of the first accounts it followed was the CCHQ Press Office. They have again been retweeting its output:
The final new blog on Mensch’s list is from my Spectator colleague Toby Young. Campaign Watch has an ‘about’ page, which says it is ‘an irreverent, right-of-centre blog about the general election campaign’. There is also a list of who is involved. None of the posts, which are mostly well-written attacks on Labour or articles promoting the Conservatives’ message, are bylined.
Being a .co.uk domain, it is public information that Young registered the domain on 4th January 2015 for two years. Unlike the other two, the site is hosted by Lionde, a provider based in New Jersey. But like Pestminster and Publicly Inconvenient, it is powered by WordPress, with a custom theme. Campaign Watch also has a Twitter account @CampaignWatchUK with 318 followers. CCHQ has again been retweeting its posts about Labour.
So who is behind Pestminster and Publicly Inconvenient? I asked Mensch and she responded that she had only seen them via Twitter. I also tried to get in touch with both blogs via Twitter and comments on the site but I have had no response. Similar blogs have been used by the Conservatives in the past to attack opponents — for example Not Ken Again which operated during Boris’s 2012 mayoral race. The site has disappeared but the Internet Archive shows us that it also ran non-bylined attacks on Labour. Unlike any of these sites, the blog had the standard party political disclaimer at the bottom:
Like the Tories’ general election campaign, the Boris 2012 campaign was masterminded by Lynton Crosby. In fact, the last tweet from @NotKenAgain was a retweet of Crosby about BBC bias:
Given the pro-Tory message, I also asked Conservative HQ if there were any connections between the Tories and these blogs. A spokesman said ‘there are no Tory links’.
UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that both Pestminster and Publicly Inconvenient were built by Westbrook Creative, a website agency in West Yorkshire.
I’ve just spoken to Cilve Allen, who is the Managing Director of Westbrook. He said that all clients are confidential and would neither confirm or deny who was behind the sites. Allen did say that he can ‘categorically say no’ that anyone from the Conservative Party approached him about the sites.
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All of the posts on the website are bylined ‘The Editor’ and nowhere on the site does it mention who is running the blog. There is no contact form to get in touch with ‘The Editor’ either.
Given the pro-Tory message, I also asked Conservative HQ if there were any connections between the Tories and these blogs. A spokesman said ‘there are no Tory links’.
UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that both Pestminster and Publicly Inconvenient were built by Westbrook Creative, a website agency in West Yorkshire.
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