Staines removal

Guido Fawkes, the right wing political gossip website, once prided itself on its ability to shake the Westminster elite.

Will that still be possible now a new man is taking over at the helm from Paul Staines, the site’s founder, who is stepping down after 20 years? It is Ross Kempsell – Baron Kempsell of Letchworth, to give him his full title – who will be skewering the great and the good from quite close range, since he qualifies as one of them by sitting as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords.

The then 31-year-old was appointed to the red benches by Boris Johnson in 2023, although his peerage was somewhat overshadowed by being announced at the same time as that of 30-year-old Charlotte Owen. But while Owen has spent her time piloting a private member’s bill outlawing so-called “deepfake” pornography, Kempsell, whose Wikipedia entry runs to 245 words, has managed to speak just five times in 16 months.

Kempsell is a former staffer at Guido Fawkes, which younger readers may not recall was once a must-read at Westminster before throwing in its lot and credibility as the Johnson government’s digital cheerleader-in-chief.

Kempsell briefly worked at Times Radio and TalkRadio and then became director of the Conservative Research Department, a role that apparently entitles him to be appointed to Parliament for the rest of his life.

Guido Fawkes is currently being sued by green energy entrepreneur Dale Vince after it falsely suggesting that he supports Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group. The blog’s owner and founder, thirsty former City trader Staines, has previously escaped legal threats by being based in Ireland. (“I don’t have to pay attention to what a British judge orders me to do,” he has boasted).

The attendance list at last night’s dinner marking 20 years of the site, incidentally, doubles as a list of the worst people in Britain. It included Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Robert Jenrick, Richard Holden, Iain Duncan Smith, all five Reform MPs, Dan Wootton, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Nick Ferrari and Toby Young.

The music from Succession was played as Staines announced Kempsell’s appointment, the Sun’s political editor Harry Cole made a joke at the expense of his ex-girlfriend, Carrie Johnson (“we’ve got two former PMs, we’ve got Liz, we’ve got Carrie”) and entertainment was provided by right-wing ‘comedian’ Dominic Frisby with his song Maybe We Should Have Let The Nazis Win (sample lyric: “No stupid pronouns/Unemployment down/We’d have Hugo Boss clothing and luggage”). What larks!