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So ’smear-gate’ enters another day and - although the public are slowly getting tired of the story - it shows little sign of slowing down. Round two has begun, the attack - with the mainstream media - on bloggers (see here, here and here for starters). Tim Montgomerie writes a reply here. This follows the green with envy attacks on Dan Hannan, by Michael White in particular.

Labour, caught out smearing the Conservatives, has moved on to bloggers in an attempt to shoot the messenger (how ironic they are smearing blogs when it is their blogging smear plans that got them in trouble - they know all about lying on blogs). They are of course joined by their regular newspaper cheerleaders such as Kevin McGuire (who used his blog to state most people wanted to know what Cameron’s illness was - backing up my fears some believe the smears), and the newly allied media fearful of bloggers.

In The Times Stephen Pollard writes “the difference between quality newspapers and even serious blogs is that your default reaction to a newspaper piece should be that it is true, whereas your default reaction to a blog post should be that it might be true, but it might equally well be a pack of lies.” He must be delusional, whoever trusted what they read in the papers? And who is he to tell us what our default reaction to anything should be?

Dan Hannan believes he was one of McBride and Draper’s targets. I don’t think he was, as we’d have heard about it from the emails, but I do think he was a target for Labour smears and spin. The sheer amount of dirt digging, word twisting and “dark arts” by Labour and their journalistic lackys (see here, here, here, here and here) as well as the “Lima suit lie” were all grossly disproportionate given Hannan is an MEP! Labour seems determined to shoot down every rising star because they don’t have any.

It seems smears are all Labour has left.

Today is the 4th birthday of ConservativeHome, which by a nice coincidence is also the first day NewsJunction is featured in the “Latest news & blogs” sidebar - although we were “tweeted” once before. Thanks to Tim for both mentions.

I first found ConservativeHome during the Leadership Contest of 2005, when Tim provided the best coverage available anywhere, and from that CH developed ToryDiary and more recently CentreRight.

ConservativeHome has also kindly allowed me to write on several occassions including my calls for a planning rethink, my brief history of how governments ruined our railways, my claims that the 2007 Scottish Elections weren’t a disaster but actually not too bad, why Conservatives and libertarians should oppose airport expansion and defend property rights, and how Henry VIII was a chronic currency debaser and “printed” too much money.

So as ConservativeHome celebrates, we wish it a very Happy Birthday and thank those involved over the years - Tim Montgomerie, Sam Coates, Jonathan Isaby, all the CentreRight and Platform authors et al - for all they have done.