A very messy affair

Another big smear-gate story!!

But this time it's about the Tories! And the Guardian have it!!1!1!

I don't know about you but I have this image of the Guardian as the poor kid who has picked up another's discarded toy and thinks it's the bee's knees

It's all incredibly exciting, the left think they have got the Tories stitched up like they did them with McBride...Unfortunately they haven't

As the Guardian are quick to point out, they have nothing on Coulson himself, just a lot of suspicion surrounding him and his former paper

No doubt this is a legitimate story, but there is no 'smoking gun' as it were - no e-mail telling McPoison what a good smear campaign he was running

In actual fact the McBride saga was completely about public opinion, there was no criminal act - which is ironic because it was far more damaging politically than the criminality of the NoW saga

McBride was seen to be completely underhand and dirty and was offloaded for the sake of image, Coulson has only been implicated in a potentially criminal act involving his underlings a few years ago - there won't be an email saying he was involved

Now that doesn't mean he won't be up against it - this still has the potential to damage the Tories by association and he may be forced out, 'spin doctors shouldn't be the news etc' but this seems unlikely to be as damaging as the McBride affair - that was a story about how the government was conducting itself, this is a skeleton in the closet for someone employed by the Tory party - in that sense this doesn't look anywhere near as damaging

He may well lose his job, but the Guardian should tread carefully because they already look like they've gone overboard here - this may begin to look like a hatchet job on the Tories by the left-wing media

*And no I'm not being put up to this - I don't even vote Tory